Gamehelpmammalath

For tips on how to play mammalath, see Tips_mammalath

Overview

• Mammalath is an animal-themed board game inspired by the idea of having a winning condition and a losing condition that’s a subset of the winning condition, as seen in Yavalath (by Cameron Browne’s Ludi) and Manalath (by Dieter Stein and Néstor Romeral Andrés).
• The goal is to capture three squares in a horizontal, vertical, or diagonal row which don’t contain animals.
• However, if you make three in a row and at least one animal is in those cells, you lose!
  • Think of the members of an animal activist group getting angry at you for capturing the animals.
• To win, you must strategically free the animals while going for three in a row.

Start of the game

The board is 6x6 by size. The spaces contain 6 each of 6 animals (red armadillos, orange badgers, yellow cougars, green deer, blue elephants, and violet foxes), distributed randomly. One player plays with black tokens, the other white tokens; a randomly-chosen player starts.

Player's turn

• In a player's turn, a player must do one of three things:
  • Place a token of your colour (on a space with or without an animal, but without a token already).
  • Release three consecutive animals, on spaces with or without tokens, in a horizontal, vertical, or diagonal line, removing them from the board.
  • Release all the animals of one type (for example, all of the foxes), on spaces with or without tokens, removing them from the board.
• After performing one of these three actions, the turn passes to the opponent.

The first turn and the swap rule

• On the first turn, the first player must play a token.
• The second player then has the option, for the first turn only, of switching that token with one of their own.

End of the game

• The game ends when one of the following happens:
  • A player has tokens on three consecutive spaces in a horizontal, vertical, or diagonal row, at least one of which still contains an animal, and loses.
  • A player has tokens on three consecutive spaces in a horizontal, vertical, or diagonal row, none of which have animals, and wins.
    • If you fulfil the winning condition and the losing condition at the same time, you still lose.
  • One player plays all 18 of their tokens (without making a winning or a losing formation).
    • The game ends in a draw.