Fanorona

Two ways to capture, and you choose

Fanorona lives or dies on its capturing rule, which feels strange for about five minutes and then becomes the whole game. You never capture by landing on a stone. Instead you capture a line of enemy stones by moving toward it (an approach) or by moving away from it (a withdrawal). A single move can threaten stones in two directions at once, and here is the catch: you pick only one of them to carry out.

Make it concrete. Three of the computer's stones stand in a row, with an empty point at the near end of the line. Slide one of your stones into that empty point, moving along the line toward them: that's an approach, and all three come off. Now the mirror image. Your stone already stands on the point touching the head of that row. Step it one point straight back, away from them along the same line: that's a withdrawal, and the same three stones fall. Nothing was jumped and nothing was landed on. The captures happen at a distance, which is why new players miss threats that a Fanorona regular sees instantly.

Making chains pay

Captures chain, so one turn can sweep a huge part of the board. After a capturing move you may keep going with the same stone, turning to a new direction, peeling off line after line, as long as each step is a legal capture and you don't revisit a point. Two things separate good chains from greedy ones. First, you're allowed to stop early. If the last leg of a chain would strand your stone deep in enemy territory, take the shorter harvest and keep the stone safe. Second, count the reply. The computer recaptures with chains of its own, and a turn that takes four stones but opens a lane through your position can lose the exchange on the spot. Once you're ahead on stones, trade freely and let the arithmetic grind for you.

Strong points and weak points

Look closely and you will see that some intersections have lines running off them in eight directions while others have only four. The eight-way points are strong (a stone there can move and capture diagonally as well as straight) and the four-way points are weak. Controlling the strong points, above all the centre, gives your stones far more capturing reach. A stone stuck on a weak point is easy to dodge and hard to make threats with. The opening tends to be one long storm of exchanges, and it can feel like the board is emptying at random. It isn't. Count stones after every trade, and steer the swaps so your survivors end up sitting on the eight-way crossings while the computer's are left on the four-way ones. Coming out of the opening even on material but better placed is a winning result.

The mistakes that lose stones

The biggest one is lining up your own stones. A whole connected line falls to a single approach or withdrawal, so three of your stones standing in a row is one enemy move from vanishing. Keep your formation staggered, especially near open lanes. Next, don't automatically play the biggest capture; a move that takes two stones but holds the centre is often worth more than a five-stone chain that scatters you. And watch for the double threat: a stone placed so that next turn it can capture by approach in one direction or by withdrawal in another is very hard to answer. Building that fork is the cleanest way to win material against the computer.

Madagascar's national game

Fanorona is the traditional board game of Madagascar, played there for centuries on a board called the fanoron-tsivy: nine points by five, each side starting with 22 stones and only the centre point empty. It descends from the medieval family of games around Alquerque that also produced draughts, but the withdrawal capture is Madagascar's own twist. The game carries real cultural weight on the island. One old story says the succession to King Ralambo, around the year 1600, turned on it: his elder son was so absorbed in solving a classic three-against-five endgame, the telo noho dimy, that he ignored the summons to court, and the throne went to his younger brother. Whatever the truth of that, the tale gets the game right. Retreating and capturing in the same motion takes a while to see and never quite stops being satisfying. Capture every one of the computer's stones and the game is yours.