Ludo Rules - Masters Traditional Games

Fanorona
Fanorona is one of several games including Draughts and the native American
'Fighting Serpents' that appear to be derived from the old medieval game of
Alquerque as outlined by Alfonso X in his 13th century book of Games. Fanorona is a
Madagascan game that appeared around 1680 and which has adopted an unusual
and interesting form of capture.
Equipment and Objective
The best and most common form of Fanorona is played on a 9 x 5 grid with diagonal lines. It
starts with an almost entirely populated board as shown in the diagram.
The objective of the game is to take all of the opponent's pieces. If at any point, a player is
unable to move or capture, the game is a draw.
Basic Play
Players take turns to move one of their pieces. For each turn, a player either moves or captures. To move a piece, it is simply
moved along a line to an adjacent vacant point.
Capturing is compulsory, if it is possible, and is done in one of two ways.
Capture by Approach – A piece captures by moving to an adjacent empty point so that an
enemy piece is on the next point in the direction of movement. The enemy piece and any
further enemy pieces forming an unbroken straight line in
the same direction are taken.
Capture by Withdrawal – this is the reverse of capture by approach. If a piece begins next to an
enemy piece and moves away from it in to an adjacent empty point in the opposite direction,
then that enemy piece and any adjacently beyond it in an unbroken straight line are captured
and removed from the board.
Like Draughts (Checkers), multiple capturing moves in a single turn are allowed – once a
player has made a capture, if another capture move is possible, the player must play it and so
on until no more capturing moves are possible. So in the second example, the player should
have continued the capture, moving down one and capturing a further single piece.
Sometimes, a piece is in the lucky position of being able to capture by approach and by
withdrawal in the same move. In this case, only one type of capture is allowed – the player
decides which. In the diagram, for the final move, the player could have chosen to capture the single piece on the right by
withdrawal instead of the 4 pieces on the left.
Capture Move Restrictions
You may wish to play using the basic rules above before using the following full capture rules. The following restrictions are added
to multiple capturing moves by one piece in a single turn:
•
you cannot move along a line already traversed during the multiple capture move.
•
you cannot return to a point previously occupied during the multiple capture move
•
you cannot capture in the same direction as the previous capture move
The first two multiple capturing restrictions require players to stay alert and remember the path of the capturing piece!
Variations
•
•
A common additional rule is to say that the first time a player captures in each game, only a single capture is allowed – the
player's turn ends immediately the first capture move is taken.
It improves the game slightly to say that after the first capture, further captures in a turn are not compulsory - the player
can choose to stop capturing at any point.
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