Mancala Rules of Stalling

Video Transcript

"Hello! My name is Melissa Schenk on behalf of expertvillage.com, today we’re discussing strategy techniques for playing the game Mancala. Our next strategy technique that we want to discuss is called stalling. Stalling of course is the opposite of rushing, the last technique that we discussed. Now, installing, we’re trying to prolong the game. If we go to the board, we’ve set it up so you can see we’re nearing the end here, but you still have quite a few stones on your side. What I’m trying to do by stalling the game is to allow you to play your stones onto my side of the board so that should you go out or I go out, I’m going to allow more stones on my side of the Mancala so I can add them to my larger Mancala and to my count. Again, the object of the game is to get the most stones in your larger Mancala. Now, we’ve set this up here so that by stalling, you have to think about a couple of different things when you’re thinking strategy. If I move A to B, well then I get to keep all the stones. I get to raid K basically, or I can do the same with C-D, I would raid I. Now, with stalling, of course stalling a companion strategy to starving, but stalling doesn’t necessarily avoid putting pebbles on the opposite player’s side. For instance, if I take the stones from E, you’re going to go to F, Mancala, M, and then G. But I still am stalling slightly, and by putting only stone into G, I know that somewhere along the line here I’m going to gain that stone back on my side of the Mancala later on in the game. "