Hus
Opening Position
Alternate Names
||Hūs (The || at the beginning of the name is a click sound used almost exclusively in Khoisan languages), Xoros, Ogoro, Onjune, Owela (a minor variant), Otjitoto, Wera, Thuskae, Lochspiel.
No. of Playerspture.
Two
Equipment
The 4x8 Hus Board is probably the most common, but larger sized boards are used. 48 undifferentiated pebbles or counters are also required for play.
History
Hus is played in Namibia by the Damara (Berg-Dama), Namaqua, Herero, Kanyama, Ndonga, Kwangari, Mbukushu, Shambyo and Hei||om in Namibia.
Objective
A player loses the game when he does not have any pebbles in any of the pits on his side of the board or only has pits with singletons.
Play
The board is setup as shown above. The players sit across from each other and each player controls the sixteen pits in the two rows closest to them. Alternate turns entail a player picking up all of the counters from any pit on his side of the board that contains two or more counters and sowing them clockwise, one at a time, into the ensuing holes. In Hus, a player only sows into holes on his own side of the board. If the last counter of a sowing is dropped in an empty hole, the turn ends. If the last counter is dropped into an occupied hole, its contents, including the last pebble sown, are picked up and distributed in another lap.
If, however, the last counter is dropped into an occupied pit in the player's inner row and his opponent's inner row pit, directly opposite, is also occupied, the player then picks up the contents of both of his opponent's pits (from the inner and outer rows) and continues sowing with these counters on his own side of the board, starting with the pit immediately after the pit into which he dropped his last pebble.
Hus is often played in tournaments where the winner triumphs with the best of seven games (first to four).
Strategy
Variations
Hus is also played on a 4x12 Hus board and a 4x16 Hus board.
Children in Windhoek, Namibia’s capital city, play Hus with an obligatory opening move: each player moves out his or her leading pair of stones on their first turn.
There are descriptions of this game that say sowing is counter-clockwise(2).
Parlett(3) gives a much different description of capture. Incomplete
Sources
Hus at Mancala World. http://mancala.wikia.com/wiki/Hus
Parlett, David. The Oxford History of Board Games. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1999