Eleven by eleven depressions in limestone. Green cardamom from the south, black from the north. You choose where the spice moves — al-hāl, the condition of the board, decides how much. And when a pile grows too heavy, the board plays itself.
In Will Manidis’s The Cardamom Game, a (fictional) medieval game is played with spice on an 11×11 limestone board: green cardamom against black, where the quantity moved “was not determined by the player’s choice” but by al-hāl — the condition of the surrounding positions — so that one move could cascade across the whole board. The post gives no complete rules, so this recreation fills the gaps with mancala’s instincts: captures, and a race to bring your spice home.
Eleven columns, eleven rows. The middle nine rows are open ground. The top row is the northern market, where green sells; the bottom row is the southern market, where black sells. Green begins on the two rows nearest the south, black on the two nearest the north, four pods to a cell.
On your turn, choose one of your cells and an adjacent cell (never diagonal). You do not choose how many pods go: the move carries one pod, plus one for every neighbouring cell holding as many pods or more than yours — crowded ground squeezes spice out in numbers, while a lone heavy pile leaks a single pod at a time. A cell can never send more pods than it holds — however crowded the ground, a single pod travels alone. The number is shown on each destination before you commit.
You may move onto an enemy cell only if you arrive with at least as many pods as stand there. Do so, and their whole pile is seized and sent to your market — one point per pod — and your pods take the ground.
Move a pod into the far market row and it is sold at full price — two points per pod. The long road pays double. Your own back row is a wall: nothing may enter it.
After every move, any cell holding six or more pods is overburdened. It topples: one pod is thrown to each of its four neighbours, and the wave repeats until the board is calm. A toppled pod landing on enemy spice grinds one pod away with it; one thrown over the edge, or against its own back wall, is lost to the desert; one thrown into the far market is sold. Chains of topples can redraw whole regions of the board — watch cells glowing ember-red: they are one pod from the brink.
The game lasts an afternoon: 120 moves in all, the counter under the score. It ends sooner if a player has no pods or no move. Most points wins; if points are level, the larger army on the board, then the deeper advance, settles it.