Morabaraba | Mlabalaba

Now with online play: real opponents, tournaments and a global leaderboard. Seven levels of AI offline, a daily puzzle, and both the Traditional and Koti rule sets.

Morabaraba (Mlabalaba) — the classic Southern African strategy game.

One of Africa's oldest and most-loved board games, played for generations across Lesotho, South Africa and Botswana. Learn it in a minute, spend years getting good at it.

PLAY ONLINE

• Get matched with a real opponent, casual or ranked • Challenge a specific player, or host an open game anyone can join • Tournaments with a live bracket • A global leaderboard with ratings and country flags • Follow players, and see who is online • Chat rooms, direct messages and post-game discussion • Everyone plays in one pool, so there is always an opponent to meet

PLAY OFFLINE

• Seven levels of computer opponent, Easy through Master • Pass-and-play on one device • Watch two computer players fight it out • No connection needed — the whole single-player game works offline

TWO RULE SETS

• Traditional (South African) — the 24-point board, mills protected • Koti (Lesotho) — the 25-point board with the centre point and diagonals, plus the restrictive rules: you must form a mill when you can, you must block one when you can, a blocked player passes instead of losing, and no cow is safe inside a mill

Or set the four rules yourself and play your house variant.

THINGS TO COME BACK FOR

• A new puzzle every day • Daily quests and a weekly challenge • Experience, levels, and three journeys across Southern Africa • Achievements to collect

MADE TO BE PLAYED

• Move hints, threat warnings and confirm-before-you-move, all optional • Colour-blind mode that tells the herds apart by shape, not only colour • Seven sound themes, or none at all • Two piece sets: River Stones and Carved Bulls • Full statistics, and a replay of any finished game you can step through, scrub and share

HOW TO PLAY

Placing: take turns putting your twelve cows on the board, trying to line three up.

Moving: once every cow is placed, slide one to a neighbouring point each turn.

Flying: down to three cows, you can jump to any empty point.

A mill is three of your cows in a line. Make one and you take one of theirs. Reduce your opponent to two cows, or leave them with nowhere to move, and you have won.

MORE THAN A GAME

Morabaraba is played on scratched boards and bottle tops across the region, and the vocabulary is part of it: your pieces are cows, a mill sends one of your opponent's to the kraal. The game carries its own history, and so does this app.

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