Mancala Avalanche: Rules and How to Play

You can play Avalanche mode right here on this page, free, against the computer or a friend. Below the board: a quick walkthrough, then the complete rules, because most people arrive here from the GamePigeon iMessage game with no idea why their opponent’s single move just circled the board three times.

How to Play Avalanche Mode, Step by Step

1. Pick a pit on your side. Any of your six pits with stones in it is a legal move. Tap it and you pick up every stone in it.
2. Drop the stones one at a time, counterclockwise. Put one in each pit you pass. Your own store gets a stone when you pass it; your opponent’s store is skipped.
3. Look at where the last stone landed. That one spot decides what happens next.
4. Occupied pit? Keep going. If that pit already had stones, on either side of the board, scoop up the whole pit and keep dropping from there. Repeat every time this happens.
5. Your store? Move again. The chain stops and you take another turn right away.
6. Empty pit? Your turn is over. Nothing is captured, so it doesn’t matter whose side the pit is on.
7. Play until one side runs dry. When one player’s pits are all empty, the other player adds their own leftover stones to their store. Most stones in the store wins.

A good first move to try: your third pit from the left. Its four stones end exactly in your store, so you bank one stone and move again before the chains start.

The complete Avalanche rules

Setup is identical to standard mancala: two rows of six pits, four stones in each, a store on each player’s right, 48 stones total.

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On your turn, pick any pit on your side, scoop up all its stones, and sow them one per pit counterclockwise. You drop stones into your own store as you pass it and skip your opponent’s store. So far, standard.

Now the mode’s namesake rule. Look at where your last stone lands:

1. A pit with stones already in it (yours or your opponent’s): pick up everything in that pit, including the stone you just dropped, and keep sowing from there. This repeats as many times as the board allows. Long chains really do feel like an avalanche.
2. Your own store: your turn ends and you immediately take another one. Same as standard mancala.
3. An empty pit: your turn is over. Nothing is captured, no matter whose side the pit is on.

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The game ends the standard way: when one player’s six pits are all empty, the other player sweeps their own remaining stones into their store. Most stones wins; 24-24 is a tie.

Avalanche vs Capture mode (standard mancala)

Rule	Capture (standard Kalah)	Avalanche
Last stone lands in an occupied pit	Turn ends	Pick up that pit and keep sowing
Last stone lands in your store	Extra turn	Extra turn (same)
Last stone lands in an empty pit on your side	Capture the opposite pit’s stones	Turn ends, no capture
Last stone lands in an empty pit on their side	Turn ends	Turn ends (same)
Captures	Yes	None
Typical turn length	One sowing	Can be ten or more sowings

Everything else carries over: sow counterclockwise, feed your own store, skip theirs, sweep at the end. If any of that is unfamiliar, the mancala rules reference covers the base game. Deciding which mode to play? The Capture vs Avalanche comparison covers what each mode rewards and how to win each.

Where Avalanche came from

Avalanche is one of the two mancala modes in GamePigeon, the iMessage game pack (the other is Capture), which is why millions of people learned this version without ever hearing the word Kalah. It belongs to an old family of “multi-lap” mancala rules; relay sowing, where a landing pit gets scooped up and play continues, is how congkak in Malaysia and sungka in the Philippines have worked for centuries. GamePigeon didn’t invent the idea so much as put an ancient mechanic in front of everyone with an iPhone.

Basic Avalanche strategy

Captures are gone, so the entire game is about one thing: ending your turns in your store and denying long chains to your opponent.

Count before every move. A pit reaches your store exactly when its stone count matches its distance from the store, and in Avalanche you have to trace the whole chain, not just the first sowing. Good players follow the cascade in their head before touching a pit; on shorter chains this is very doable, and it’s the core skill of the mode.

Empty pits end chains wherever they are: a turn stops the moment its last stone lands in an empty pit on either side of the board. When you trace your own chain, every empty pit in both rows is a place it can die early; when you read your opponent’s options, the same pits are what can cut their chain short.

Watch out for feeding. Long chains pass through both sides of the board, so a greedy chain that dumps six stones into your opponent’s row may set up their monster turn. Sometimes the short, boring move that banks two stones and ends cleanly beats the flashy lap around the board.

Since turn order matters and one big chain can decide the game, alternate who goes first across a series, same as you would in standard play (see who goes first in mancala).