Achi
Traditional
How to set-up
1. Achi is played on a 3-by-3 grid. Lines indicate permitted moves.
2. Each player selects 4 BEADs the colour of their choice. All BEADs start off the board.
3. Players decide who begins the game by rolling a die.
How to play
1. Players take turns to place a BEAD on the board.
2. Players try to make a row of 3 BEADs. The row can be horizontal, vertical or diagonal.
3. Once all the BEADs are on the board a player can move their BEAD 1 space horizontally, vertically or diagonally onto an empty play space.
How to win
To win the game, a player must make a line of 3 BEADs.
History
1. Some of the oldest games, being over 3,500 years old, belong to a type of game called games of alignment. Tic-tac-toe is one of the most popular of these games in the United States, but in the African country Ghana children play Achi.
2. They usually mark the game board on the ground and use little sticks as playing pieces. One player will have 4 little sticks with the bark on, and the other player will have four sticks with the bark off.
3. A game board similar to those used for Achi was found carved into a roofing slab of the temple at Al-Qurna in Egypt. It's about 3,500 years old. In addition, Confucius describes the game of yih that was played in China as far back as 500 B.C. Yih is now called tic-tac-toe.
1. Tant Fant uses the same board as Tapatan and Achi, and it has very similar rules and gameplay.
2. The only difference is that in Tant Fant the pieces are lined up initially on each player's side (aka homerow).
3. Additionally, players can't win with a 3 in-a-row formed with their own pieces in their home row.
4. The standard version of Tant Fant allows a player to make any kind of a three-in-a-row (horizontal, vertical, diagonal) except in one's home row.
5. There is another version which is more challenging, and allows only for diagonal three-in-a-rows.
