How to Play Kolowis Awithlaknannai

By Jaques of London · Est. 1795 · Updated 2026-08-17

Kolowis Awithlaknannai is a two-player abstract strategy game played on a distinctive board of intersecting lines and points. One player commands snake pieces, the other commands bird pieces, and the entire contest comes down to capturing every one of your opponent's men through direct replacement moves. There is no luck involved: every outcome follows from the decisions each player makes.

The game appeals because its rules are simple enough to teach in minutes, yet the interplay of piece positions creates genuine tactical depth. It is traditionally played on a board scratched or drawn on a flat surface, making it a game that needs almost no equipment to enjoy anywhere.

A little history

Kolowis Awithlaknannai is traditionally associated with the Zuni people of the American Southwest. Its origins are unclear in precise historical terms, but ethnographic records from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries document it as a game played within Zuni communities, with the name understood to refer to the snake-and-bird contest the two sides represent. Beyond that broad cultural context, the detailed historical record is thin.

Setting up

1. Place the board flat between the two players so both can reach all points comfortably.
2. Assign one player the snake pieces and one player the bird pieces.
3. Each player takes 23 pieces of their colour.
4. Place all pieces on the board at the start: fill every point on the board except the single central point, alternating snake and bird pieces as you fill outward from the edges so that no two pieces of the same side are adjacent where possible. The traditional starting arrangement places the two colours interleaved across the board.
5. The central point is left empty. The player assigned the snake pieces moves first.

How to play

1. Players alternate turns throughout the game, snake moving first.
2. On your turn you must move exactly one of your pieces.
3. A piece may move to any adjacent empty point connected to it by a line on the board.
4. If an adjacent point is occupied by an opponent's piece and the point directly beyond it along the same line is empty, you may capture: move your piece over the opponent's piece and remove the captured piece from the board.
5. Multiple captures in a single turn are not permitted: only one capture may be made per move.
6. A player must move on every turn. If a player has pieces remaining but no legal move, that player loses immediately.
7. Pieces may not jump over their own pieces under any circumstances.
8. The game continues until one player has captured all of the opponent's pieces, or the opponent has no legal move available.

Winning and scoring

The player who captures every one of the opponent's pieces wins the game outright. Equally, if a player still has pieces on the board but cannot make any legal move on their turn, that player loses immediately and their opponent wins. There is no points scoring system: each game produces a single winner.

The fine points

The most common dispute concerns whether a capture is compulsory when one is available. Standard play does not require forced captures: a player may choose any legal move, including a non-capturing move, even when a capture is possible. If house rules require forced capture, agree this explicitly before the game begins. A second frequent question is whether the piece jumping over the opponent's piece must land on the very next empty point in line, or may travel further. The standard ruling is that the capturing piece lands on the immediate point beyond the captured piece only, not further along the line.

Edge cases around pieces with no legal move arise occasionally mid-game when a player's remaining pieces are completely surrounded by their own pieces or blocked by the board boundary with no capture available. Under standard rules this counts as no legal move and that player loses, even if they still hold many pieces. Agree before play whether you consider this a rare but valid win condition or prefer to treat it as a stalemate requiring a rematch.

How to win more often

• Control the centre early: pieces placed near the central empty point have more adjacent points available and therefore more options each turn.
• Avoid clustering your own pieces together. A tight group restricts your own movement and gives your opponent fewer capture targets while boxing you in.
• Count your opponent's escape routes before committing to a move. A capture that leaves your piece stranded with no subsequent move can cost you momentum.
• Preserve pieces on the edges carefully. Edge and corner positions have fewer connecting lines, so pieces there become trapped easily and offer fewer attacking options.
• Think two moves ahead: a move that does not capture now may set up a forced sequence that removes two or three of your opponent's pieces in consecutive turns.

Variations

Forced Capture

Under this variant, if a capturing move is available on your turn you must make it. If more than one capture is available you may choose which to take, but passing in favour of a non-capturing move is not allowed. This tends to produce shorter, sharper games and removes some of the quieter positional play found in the standard version.

Smaller Board

For a quicker game or for younger players, reduce the board to a smaller grid of intersecting lines and issue each player a correspondingly smaller number of pieces. The rules remain identical. A board that yields 15 or 16 points per player produces a game typically decided in under ten minutes and is a useful teaching format.

Draw Condition

Some players add a draw rule: if the same board position repeats three times with the same player to move, the game is declared a draw rather than continuing indefinitely. This prevents the rare situation where both players can manoeuvre endlessly without either side being able to force a capture.

Open Starting Arrangement

Rather than placing all pieces before play begins, players take turns placing one piece at a time onto any empty point until all pieces are on the board, then immediately begin moving. This gives both players influence over the opening formation and adds a placement phase that rewards forward planning.

Kolowis Awithlaknannai: frequently asked questions