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Malawi box art
1986 Ranked #15,856

Malawi

An abstract strategy game has opponents move ball-powered pieces, redistribute their balls, and capture rivals’ movement capacity. Reaching the opposing back row wins, while losing every ball leaves a side unable to move.

Abstract Abstract Strategy Grid Movement Square Grid Category: Combinatorial

Players

2

Play time

Not listed

Age

10+

Complexity

2.4/5

Rating

6.32

Overview

How it plays

How does it play?

from the translation: OBJECTIVE Place one of your pieces on your opponents back row. THE GAME The players each stand their pieces on their back rows.

Core mechanisms

Key systems that shape the decisions players make.

Read the full game description

from the translation: OBJECTIVE Place one of your pieces on your opponents back row. THE GAME The players each stand their pieces on their back rows. They place two balls on each figure. They now take turns and choose one of the following three actions. 1.Move: Players can move the chosen piece as many squares sideways, forwards or backwards as the piece has balls, if it has 4 balls it must move 4 squares. The pieces may neither jump nor change direction. 2.Sharing: Players may take all the balls from a selected piece and place one each on any of their other pieces. Exception, if a tower has six balls only five balls may be placed on the other five pieces and so one ball is lost and is removed from the game. 3.Capturing: Only balls are captured, not pieces. The capturing piece and the threatened piece stay on their own squares. Example a white piece and a brown piece stand two squares apart. They have two balls and three balls respectively. It is whites move and white can remove the three brown balls from the game as long as there is no piece between the white and brown pieces. Pieces whose balls have been captured can be activated again by the sharing of balls. Therefore, capturing only limits the movement possibilities, the number of pieces always remains the same. If a player loses all their balls they can no longer move and have lost.

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Editions

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Game and edition data

All specifications (5)

Play and group

Players
2
Best with
2
Play time
20 min
Age
10+
Complexity
2.4/5
Credits and catalog connections

Credits

Designers

1
Gerhard E. Kodys

Artists

1
(Uncredited)

Publishers

1
Piatnik

Linked items

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