📖 Articles
Guides, tips and news from the SynerWorlds games — read up, then play to practice.
Ô Ăn Quan vs Mak Khom: One Mancala Family, Two Philosophies of Sowing
Vietnam's Ô Ăn Quan and Thailand's Mak Khom (หมากขุม) sow seeds into stores the same way but differ on everything else: free vs fixed sowing direction, forward chain captures vs the sideways kin thaen, a reseed tax vs a game-ending sweep — and which skills transfer.
Ô Ăn Quan Strategy: Count the Seeds, Chain the Captures, Never Let Your Land Burn
Ô Ăn Quan is deterministic arithmetic on a 12-cell ring: count where the last stone lands, build empty-full bridges for capture chains, watch both mandarins ripen past 5 stones, and avoid the 5-stone reseed tax.
"O An Quan — a beginner's guide"
O An Quan** ("Mandarin Square Capturing") is Vietnam's beloved mancala-style folk game. The board is a **ring of 12 pits** (2-player game): 10 small dân (citizen) pits and 2 large quan (mandarin)...