Modern mancala-style game where the goal is to empty out your own pits.

• Designer: Mark Steere, 2006
• Diffusion at BoardGameGeek
• Diffusion at Mark Steere Games

Diffusion is a two player Mancala game. The board has a 2×6 array of pits and two stores, one at each end of the board. 48 like-colored stones are used. At the start of the game, 4 stones are placed on each pit.

The pits are divided into two 2×3 blocks. Each player owns the block to his left. Draws cannot occur in Diffusion.

Players take turns scooping and distributing stones. A player scoops all of the stones out of any one of the 12 pits and distributes them into adjacent pits. Starting at the most clockwise pit, stones are distributed one by one in the counterclockwise direction.

Treat a store as two pits when distributing stones. The number of stones in a store has no relevance in the game. They’re literally just used for storage.

Each pit can hold a maximum of 5 stones. If the addition of a stone to a pit would create a total of 6 stones in the pit, put the 6th stone in one of the stores instead. It doesn’t matter which store you put it in.

If at any time one of the two blocks becomes completely vacant, the owner of that block wins.

Each player owns the row closest to them (as in most mancala games) rather than the left half of the board.

• Current engine version: 20231228 (2023-12-28). On Abstract Play since 2023-12-29.