Vietnam

Ô ăn quan

Also called the mandarin square capturing game

Ô ăn quan is a Vietnamese sowing game, often drawn in chalk on the ground and played with pebbles or seeds.

Its name means roughly "the mandarin's squares". The two large end squares each hold a mandarin, a bigger stone worth more than the others.

The rules, briefly

Ten small squares in two rows of five sit between two large end squares.
On your turn you scoop the stones from one of your squares and drop them one by one into the squares that follow.
When you run out, the squares after where you stopped decide what happens next: an empty square followed by a full one lets you take the full one.

Try this: Count before you scoop

Before you scoop, count the stones and say where the last one will land. The AtlasTales board plays one common set of rules; many families play theirs a little differently.

Play on AtlasTales (two players, one screen)

Read more: Ô ăn quan on Wikipedia. Written from published sources; if your family plays it differently, write your rules down in Heirloom Rules, and if something here is wrong, tell us: hello@sparkanvil.org.