Oware is the national game of Ghana and is commonly played in the streets but is also used in education among the Asanti children for the development of maths skills. Our Oware board games are handcrafted from Ghana with traditional symbols of the Asanti people carved into the wood with stones representing the seeds.
The game requires an oware board and 48 seeds (stones). A typical board has two straight rows of six pits, called "houses", and each player controls the six houses on their side of the board. The game begins with four seeds in each of the twelve smaller houses.
The object of the game is to capture more seeds than your opponent. This is done by landing the last seed you are "sowing" in a pit on the opponent's side which already contains one or two seeds.
INSTRUCTIONS:
- You must start by deciding which opponent goes first, once decides that player can then move by picking up the stones in any hole on their side of the board and move anti-clockwise around the board placing 1 stone per hole.
- A player who has no stones on the opponent's side must (if possible) put stones on the opponent's side. If this isn't possible, all of the stones remaining belong to player whose side they are on.
- You can capture your opponent's stones by landing on the opponent's side of the board where the final hole contains 2 or 3 stones. Captured stones are immediately removed from the game.
- The first player who can capture 25 stones is the winner.