Sadeqa III
Game type: Two-player, two-row mancala without stores (2×8 board, 6 seeds per hole) — multi-lap relay sowing; landing in an own-row empty hole captures the opposite pit while leaving the landing seed; highest capture total wins
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Overview
Sadeqa III is a prominent two-row mancala variant native to the historic Welega (Walaga) province of western Ethiopia. Cataloged as Game 92 in Richard Pankhurst's pioneering 1971 monograph Gabata and Related Board Games of Ethiopia and the Horn of Africa, it was documented as a favorite recreational pursuit of young Oromo pastoralists watching over livestock in the fields. Games are played either on carved wooden boards (sadeqa) or in parallel rows of hollows scooped from the ground, with stones (daga) placed inside each pit (mana, literally "house").
Board
- Ranks/rows: Two
- Holes per row: 8
- Stores: None
- Seeds per hole at start: 6 (96 stones in total)
- Native terminology: the board is known as sadeqa, each hole is a mana ("house"), and the playing pieces are called daga ("stones").
How to Play
- On their turn, a player lifts all stones from one of their own occupied holes and distributes them one by one in a counterclockwise direction into the ensuing holes around the board.
- If the final stone falls into an occupied hole, all stones in that hole are scooped up to continue sowing in another lap (multi-lap relay sowing).
- Sowing terminates when the last stone drops into an empty hole.
Capturing
- If the last stone drops into an empty hole in the player's own row, the contents of the directly opposite enemy hole are captured and removed from the board.
- Crucially, the stone that effected the capture remains in its landing hole and is not taken.
- If the opposite hole is empty, no capture occurs.
End of Game and Winning
- The game terminates when a player has no legal moves remaining at the start of their turn.
- All stones remaining on the board are swept up and awarded to the player who made the final move.
- The player who has captured the greater number of stones wins the match; an equal tally results in a draw.
Notes
- Richard Pankhurst documented an identical variation (cataloged as Game 91) played throughout Welega with four stones per hole (64 stones total) instead of six.
- Unlike East African mancalas such as En Dodoi or En Gehé where the triggering seed is collected alongside the prize, Sadeqa III leaves the triggering counter in place, keeping holes occupied and active across the board.
Source: Mancala World – Sadeqa III