Ayoayo
Game type: Two-player, two-row mancala with end stores and six pits per row — multi-lap relay sowing, origin-skipping on full laps (12+ seeds), opposite-on-empty captures into the store, and compulsory opponent feeding
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Overview
Ayoayo is a traditional two-row mancala game played by the Yoruba people of southwestern Nigeria. While the term "Ayoayo" (or simply "Ayo") is often used colloquially in Nigeria for the classical West African game of Oware, this specific ruleset constitutes an independent relay-sowing tradition closely related to Eritrea's Andada and northern Tanzania's En Dodoi. Yoruba players play on elongated wooden boards featuring two ranks of six circular pits flanked by carved storage troughs (oju) at each end, balancing continuous relay momentum with the tactical duty to sustain their opponent's mobility.
Board
- Ranks/rows: Two
- Holes per row: 6
- Stores: Two large storage compartments (one at each end). Each player commands the row of six pits nearest to them and the store located to their right.
- Seeds per hole at start: 4 (48 seeds in total)
How to Play
- A player selects an occupied pit from their own row, scoops up all its seeds, and distributes them one by one in a counterclockwise direction into subsequent pits around the board. End stores are never sown into.
- If the final seed of a lap falls into an occupied pit, its contents (including the newly dropped seed) are picked up to begin another lap (relay sowing).
- Sowing terminates when the last distributed seed falls into an empty pit.
- Full-lap origin skipping: If the pit being emptied contains twelve or more seeds, the starting pit itself is skipped when sowing completes a full circuit.
- Compulsory feeding: If the opponent has no seeds remaining in their pits, the active player must select a move that supplies the opponent with seeds if possible. If no available move can deliver seeds across to the opponent, the game ends immediately.
Capturing
- If the final seed of a sowing turn lands in an empty pit on the player's own side of the board, all seeds in the opposing enemy pit directly across—along with the seed that executed the capture—are captured and placed into the player's store.
End of Game and Winning
- The game terminates when an immobilized opponent cannot be fed by any legal move.
- All counters remaining on the board are swept up and awarded to the player who made the final move.
- The player who has amassed the higher total of seeds in their store wins the match.
Notes
- Unlike Oware, which relies on backward chain captures of two or three seeds in enemy territory, Ayoayo centers on empty-pit captures from one's own side into terminal stores combined with multi-lap relay sowing. It preserves the classic West African mancala ethic of feeding (fifi), penalizing total starvation maneuvers when supply lines remain viable.
Source: Mancala World – Ayoayo