User:Mr Mancala

From Mancala World

Welcome and "Hallo"!

My page in German. Meine Seite auf Deutsch.

My name is Ralf Gering. I live in Germany, in a tiny village between Bonn and Koblenz. My favorite hobbies are mancala games, hiking, cooking and animals (I have three chicken and four running ducks). In my spare time I co-moderate the Yahoo!Group mancalagames, a gorgeous forum founded by the British Oware player Paul Smith, and I am the owner of a large international forum (over 700 registered members) on intentional communities. I have studied Culture and Religion at Tübingen University and graduated in 1999 (Master of Arts).

That's me (not the dog).

My favorite mancala games are Togus kumalak (German spelling ;-), Lamlameta, 55Stones, Kauri and Layli Goobalay (as played in Berbera, Somaliland).

I have invented numerous mancala games: 55Stones (2002), Afrika (2004), Geisterfahrer (2004), Pas de Deux (2004), Progressive Mancala (2004), Rondell (2005), Kauri (2006), Manji (2007) and Trias (2008). In addition, I suggested some meta-games such as Condi Mancala (2006) and Royal Mancala (2006). There are also a few other board games I authored: Netak (1973), Doppelt hält besser (mid-1970s), Dornröschendame (1986), 1000-Volt-Go (1988; tournaments in Germany and the USA), Walking Purchase (2001) and Écoute-moi! (2002).

In my library, I have a small collection of mancala boards (about 45), a growing number of monographs on mancala games (29 at the moment) and many research articles on mancala (more than 400).

The highlights of my collection (traditional boards only) are:

An Adi board (Teak wood, adorned with graven huts) from Togo (Kpalimé region)
Five Oware boards ("Airport" style) and one magnificent Oware game table (board carried by an elephant) from Ghana
Two Bao boards from Zanzibar, Tanzania
A Toguz Kumalak board (Soviet style, plastics) from Kazakhstan
A Chonka board (lacquered wood) from Borneo, Indonesia
A fish-shaped Dakon board (wood batik) from Java, Indonesia
A sophisticated Mechiwa board from Bali, Indonesia
A Sungka board (wood batik) from the Philippines

I authored numerous articles for the Canadian Abstract Games magazine. In 2002/2003 I was a jury member of the Simultaneous Game Design Competition sponsored by About Abstract Games and Abstract Games magazine. What a pity - there wasn't even a single mancala game!

My Articles

First published on wikimanQala

I authored the following articles (the actual name on Mancala World is given):

Modern Mancala Games

Traditional Mancala Games

Other Sowing Games

Meta-Games

Other Terms related to Mancala

People related to Mancala

Mancala Lists

Dictionaries

Bao dictionary (together with Víktor Bautista i Roca).
Hus dictionary
Omweso dictionary

First published on Wikinfo

Modern Mancala Games

Two-dimensional Sowing Games

Traditional Mancala Games

Meta-Games

Time-limited Mancala

General Mancala Articles

Capturing

First published on Mancala World

The following articles were first published here:

Mr Mancala