AYO

OBJECTIVE

To get the most seeds.

EQUIPMENT

The 'Ayo board' which basically looks like this and includes 48 seeds:

(It usually folds up nicely into a little box.)

If you don't have the Ayo board, you can improvise by using:

An empty 12-egg carton, or 12 little containers, called 'cups' from now on.
2 bigger containers to keep your winnings, called 'bank' from now on.
48 beans, stones, marbles, or other round objects, called 'seeds' from now on.

NUMBER OF PLAYERS

RULES

The game starts by placing 4 seeds in each of the 12 cups on the board, and each player sits with 6 of the cups on their side of the board.
Choose a player to start.
For each turn, a player chooses a cup, takes all the seeds in that cup (it will the 4 seeds for the first player, but it may be more or less as the game continues), and goes around the board in a counterclockwise direction, planting one seed in each cup as they go.
- If your last seed lands in your opponent's cup, you can capture all the seeds in that cup, and add it to your bank.

The game continues until one player can not move, at which point, the one with the most seeds wins.

VARIATIONS

The seeds can be captured in other ways, but if one of these variations is chosen, it must be decided upon before the game, and the rules apply until the end of the game.

If your last seed lands in an opponents cup, you may capture the seeds only if it previously contained 1 or 2 seeds.
If your last seed lands in an opponents cup, you may trace your path backwards, and capture the seeds in cups containing only 2 or 3 seeds, but ONLY THE ONES YOU PASSED.
Rather than stopping when you finish the current cup, you may pick up all the seeds in it, and continue to drop one in each consecutive cup, and continue doing this until you reach an empty cup. If that empty cup is on your side of the board, you may capture all the seeds in your opponent's cup right across from this last cup. If it is on their side, you don't capture any seeds.