[hermitcrab]

Have you come across the Mancala family of board games? I learned to play the Hus variation in Namibia:

https://mancala.fandom.com/wiki/Hus

It is fun how it is deterministic in theory, but it is hard to predict more than a few moves ahead - so seems random in practice. Also that you can go from being way ahead to losing, very quickly. I implemented a game engine for it. Can discuss if you are interested.

[zahlman]

> deterministic in theory, but it is hard to predict more than a few moves ahead - so seems random in practice. Also that you can go from being way ahead to losing, very quickly.

How does one become skilled in something like that?

[hermitcrab]

I guess similar to chess. You have to be able to see more moves ahead than your competitor. The game tree is quite narrow compared to chess, but complexity is added by the cascading nature of moves. It is a fun game. I recommend trying it. Good for kids as well.