Cups is a two-player abstract strategy game belonging to the ancient Mancala family of sowing games. It was created in 1965 by Arthur Amberstone and his son Wald Amberstone, co-founders of the New York Gamers Association, and first reached a wide audience through publication in Sid Sackson's 1969 anthology A Gamut of Games. Players sow tokens around cups arranged in two ranks facing each other, capturing an opponent's cups by landing the final token of a sowing lap in a cup that brings its count to a winning total. As a single-lap, two-ranked member of the Mancala family, Cups sits within a lineage of sowing games whose roots trace back thousands of years across Africa and Asia, reimagined here as a compact modern design for two players.
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Sources
1. Board Game Matcher: Cups
2. Cups (game) (Wikipedia)
lead paragraph, game-type-category
Cups is a contemporary American two-ranked single-lap member of the ancient game family of Mancala.
Lead sentence
It was one of several games invented in 1965 by father and son Arthur Amberstone and Wald Amberstone who were both co-founders of the New York Gamers Association (N.Y.G.A.).
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