L'ib el Merafib

L'ib el Merafib , also known as the hyena game , is a game common in North Africa that is played with a spiral as a game board. It is said to be particularly widespread among the Baggara in Sudan . The ancient Egyptian Mehen is believed to be the origin.

procedure

The game is played on a spiral track, which can be round or angular depending on the design and has no fixed number of fields. The players each have two tokens, a mother and a hyena . Is rolled with either a regular dice , bar dice, bones, shells or marked beans. The players try to bring their mother as quickly as possible over the spiral path from the outside (the village ) to the innermost field (the well ). Sometimes a successful starting roll with a six is ​​required to bring your own mother into play. Mothersthat meet each other on the field are not captured, but remain next to each other on the respective field. The innermost field, the well , must be reached with an exact throw. If the number on the dice is higher than the number of steps that are still missing, then you cannot move.

If a player and his mother have reached the inner fountain , she must first “wash her clothes” and may only leave the fountain again when a six has been rolled. The figure is then guided back to the village via the spiral path . The player whose mother was the first to return to the village may start again with the hyena . The dice for your steps are counted twice. If the hyena overtakes a mother , it can eat it and thus take it out of the game. When the hyena has returned to the village , the number of mothers it was able to eat is counted . Several rounds are played. The winner is the player who could eat the most mothers with his hyena .

literature

• Erwin Glonnegger : The game book, board and placement games from all over the world, origins, rules and history . Drei Magier Verlag, Uehlfeld 1999, p. 53, ISBN 3-9806792-0-9
• Robert Charles Bell: Board and Table Games from Many Civilizations , Courier Corporation, 2012