Moruba Game

Moruba (also Maruba) is an ancient mathematical strategy board game usually played with stones, pebbles, marbles on a board or on the ground. The game is popular in the Bapedi tribe in the South African provinces of Limpopo ( and mostly in the North Sotho speaking parts) and Mpumalunga in former Transvaal. Later, the game has been spread by mine workers to Gauteng.

Most common boards have 2/4 rows of 6/12 holes. Stones are distributed equally in pairs of 4-6 per hole while the crawl starts empty.

This game is now available electronically and it allows you to play any person worldwide. The best start is to invite a friend.

The objective of the game is to collect more stones (usually called “cows”) to your crawl until one player has lost all their stones. In betting, stones represents money or lives stock.

Each player (or team) only uses their side of the play area or “play board”.

On a turn, a player takes the contents of one of their holes and distributes them; one by one counter-clockwise into consecutive holes on their own side.

If the last stone falls into an inner empty hole, and the opponent’s adjacent outer hole contains stones, these "enemy stones" are moved to the player's crawl.

Every-time a player pass by their crawl, one stone will be banked. If the last stone ends in a crawl, the player gets another chance to play.

If the last stone falls into an empty hole of the inner row and

the opposite hole of your opponent contains stones, these opponent stones are captured. Additionally, the stones in the hole of the same file in the outer row are also captured. These captured stones are removed from the board to your crawl.

Other similar games include: