Ô ĂN QUAN (Mandarin Square Capturing)

Ô ĂN QUAN

(Mandarin Square Capturing)

Ô ăn quan (literally Mandarin square capturing) is one of the Vietnamese traditional board games that I have played many times through my childhood. Until very recently, I had the chance to play it again and introduced it to some of my Viet-kieu and foreign friends who have only heard or played it for the first time. This is the reason why I translate the rules here so anyone can access and maybe try to play it with your family and friends as it is fun, easy and good for improving calculating ability. The pictures used below and the game instructions are translated and adapted from nhatnam.vn

SETUP:

Each player places one big stone (named the “Mandarin piece” and it is equal to five citizen pieces) in the Mandarin square & five small stones (named the “citizen pieces”) in each of the rice field squares.

Here you can use peddles or anything round and small. Last time I made them from newspaper and cellular tape 🙂

SCATTERING:

1. Players play rock paper scissors to determine the first player.

2. The first player takes up all the pieces of any rice field square on his/her side of the board (blue no.2).

3. Distributes one piece for each square, starting at the next square in either direction.

4. When all pieces are distributed, the player repeats by taking up the pieces of the following square (yellow no.5) and distributing them in the same direction.

CAPTURING:

5. When the next square to be distributed is empty (blue no.2), the player wins all the pieces in the square after that (blue no.1) and take them out of the table.

 

* When the square next to the won square (blue no.3) is empty (blue no.2), the player also wins the all the pieces in the square after that (blue no.1).

** Similarly, when the last piece is distributed in the Mandarin square (on the right), the following squares are empty (blue no.5, no.3, no.1 and yellow no.1), the player can take all the citizens in the squares blue no.4, no.2 and yellow no.2)

PASSING:          

You will lose your turn and the other player can start in the following cases:      

6. Your next distribution is the Mandarin Square (have pieces or not).

* Or your next distribution turn are two empty squares.

DISPATCHING:

If there is no left citizen piece in a player’s side of the board, they must use five previously-won pieces to place one piece in each square on their side before starting their turn. (If they do not possess enough pieces, they must borrow the remaining from the other player and return it when counting the points at the end of the game.)

WINNING:

The game ends when all the pieces are captured. Whichever player has more pieces is the winner.

Or if both Mandarin pieces are captured, the remaining citizen pieces belong to the player controlling the side that these pieces are on. Then you say:

“hết quan, tàn dân, kéo về“

(“Mandarin is gone, citizen dismisses, retreat”)