presentation
Etoile
Mancala in a Star
On a wooden board 32 dents are arranged in a start shape, four dents in each of four spike rows. If two are playing, you receive 11 marbles of a color and begin with four marbles in the innermost spot of each row, player colors alternate in the spots. In a game of three players, each player receives eight marbles and two players begin with three marbles, the starting player with two marbles in a given arrangement.
In your turn, you take a marble from stock and put it in a row that already holds at least one marble, regardless of the color. Then you take all marbles in this row and seed them in clockwise or counter-clockwise direction, beginning with the adjacent row, and one marble per row. The order in which you seed the marbles is up to you. Rows with four marbles are left out. The second option for your turn is to take a row with four marbles and seed the marbles as in the first option, in this case without placing one of your marbles. When you seed a marble into a row, the marble is placed in the first free spot in the row, seen from the center.
When, after seeding marbles, you have four marbles of your color in one of the eight rows or four marbles as part of one of the four possible circle, that is, in the same spot of four adjacent rows, you win immediately. If not, the turn passes to your opponent.
Etoile offers a very good adaptation of the Mancala principle; the very simple basic mechanisms provides a lot of game depth and tactic and demands spatial imagination to visualize the results of seeding. Abstract, challenging, thrilling and very beautiful and a very good game for families, too.
Players: 2-3
Age: 8+
Time: 20+
Designer: Michael Palm
Artist: not named
Price: ca. 30 Euro
Publisher: Gerhards Spiel und Design 2016
Genre: Collect, seed, Mancala
Users: For families
Special: 2 players
Version: multi
Rules: de en fr
In-game text: no
Comments:
Classy, high-quality components
Simple rules
Abstract, good family game
Compares to:
Other versions of Mancala
Other editions:
Currently none
Chance (pink): 0
Tactic (turquoise): 3
Strategy (blue): 0
Creativity (dark blue): 0
Knowledge (yellow): 0
Memory (orange): 0
Communication (red): 0
Interaction (brown): 3
Dexterity (green): 0
Action (dark green): 0