Fanorona Strategy: Approach, Withdrawal and Capture Chains

Updated October 2026

Fanorona rewards a kind of vision that most board games never ask for. Pieces are not taken by jumping or by landing on them; they are taken by stepping towards a row of enemies or by stepping away from one, and an entire line can vanish in a single move. This guide explains exactly how the version on this site applies the rules, what the opening really looks like, how the computer opponent thinks, and the habits that turn one win into a long streak.

How the board and the rules work here

The board has 45 points arranged in five rows of nine. Every point connects to its neighbours straight up, down, left and right. Points where the row number plus the column number is even also carry diagonal lines, and those diagonal crossings are the strong points. The corners and the very centre are all strong points; the points directly beside them are weak ones that only allow four directions. The lines are drawn on the board, so you can always check which way a piece may travel.

Each side has 22 pieces. Yours fill the bottom two rows and four points of the middle row; the computer fills the top two rows and the other four. Reading the middle row from the left, it goes yours, theirs, yours, theirs, empty, theirs, yours, theirs, yours. You always make the first move of a game.

A move is a single step along a line onto an empty point. If the point just beyond your destination, in the same direction, holds an enemy piece, that piece is removed along with every enemy piece lined up behind it without a gap. That is an approach. If instead the point you just left had an enemy piece on its far side, opposite to the direction you moved, that piece and its unbroken line behind it are removed. That is a withdrawal. The removed line stops at the first empty point, the first piece of your own colour or the edge of the board.

When a single step would make both captures at once, the game pauses and shows two buttons, Approach and Withdraw. Each option's pieces are marked in its own style: the pieces Approach would remove get a solid red ring, matching the solid red Approach button, and the pieces Withdraw would remove get a dashed blue ring, matching the dashed blue Withdraw button. Each button also shows how many pieces it takes, for example Approach ×4 and Withdraw ×3. Compare the two sets before you choose.

Forced captures and capture chains

Capturing is compulsory. If any capture exists anywhere on the board, every quiet move is hidden and the message reads that you must capture. Only the pieces that can capture are highlighted when you are choosing.

After a capture, the same piece may keep going. Each further step must itself be a capture, and the game enforces two limits: the piece may not move in any direction it has already moved in earlier this turn, and it may not land on any point it has already occupied this turn, including the point where it started. Because every used direction is banned, a chain can never contain more than eight steps, and in practice most chains end after two or three. You are never obliged to continue: an End turn button appears whenever a further capture is available, and tapping it hands the move to the computer.

Stopping early is a real decision. A chain that grabs one extra piece but leaves your capturing piece next to a long enemy line may give back far more on the reply. Before every extra step, look at where the piece will finally stand.

What the opening actually offers

At the start the only empty point is the centre, so the first move must go there, and capture is already compulsory. We checked every legal move from the starting position: there are exactly three, and each one is an approach that removes two enemy pieces. You can step straight up from the point below the centre, which clears the two pieces stacked above it, or slide diagonally into the centre from either of the two strong points beside that one, which clears the two pieces lying on that diagonal beyond the centre. None of the three lets the capturing piece continue into a chain.

Whichever you choose, the computer replies with a capture of its own, because opening the centre also opens lines into your camp. In our check of all three openings, the straight move up leaves it two possible captures, while each diagonal entry leaves it five, and in every case its best reply removes three of your pieces. The opening phase is a rapid trade in which both sides lose many pieces, and the position after the first few moves matters much more than which of the three first moves you picked. Use the opening to keep your remaining pieces staggered rather than to chase the largest immediate haul.

Reading lines before they are lines

The single most useful habit is to scan for your own pieces that sit one behind another along any drawn line, including diagonals through strong points. Any such run can be taken in one move if an enemy piece can step next to its end with an empty point to step into, or step away from it with your piece directly behind. A row of four is not a wall; it is a target four pieces long.

Look at gaps too. An empty point inside your formation is where an approach lands, and an empty point beside an enemy piece is where a withdrawal begins. Ask two questions about every empty point near your pieces: if an enemy stepped here, what would lie directly ahead of it, and what would lie directly behind where it came from?

Withdrawals are easy to overlook because they look like retreats. A piece that backs away from your group can be making the most destructive move on the board. The same applies to you: when an enemy line is pressed up against one of your pieces, stepping that piece away along the line removes the whole row.

How the computer chooses its moves

The opponent searches ahead a number of moves and scores the positions it reaches. Its scoring is simple: 100 points for every piece it has more than you, plus a small bonus for occupation of strong points, worth four for a piece on a strong point and one for a piece on a weak point. When several moves score the same, it picks one of them at random, so the same position does not always produce the same reply.

How far it looks depends on your streak. With a streak of zero it searches two moves deep, at one it searches three, at two and three it searches four, and from four onward it searches five. Every individual step of a capture chain counts as one of those moves, so a long chain uses up its lookahead quickly. Each move has a time limit of 1.5 seconds: it deepens its search one level at a time and keeps the last level it finished, so on a slow phone it may occasionally answer from a four-move search instead of five.

It also makes careless moves, and those fade as your streak grows. On each turn there is a chance that it skips the search and plays any legal move instead, which during a compulsory capture means a random capture. That chance is 25 percent at a streak of zero and shrinks by a fifth with every win: about 10 percent at four, under 3 percent at ten and about 0.3 percent at twenty. It never stops shrinking, so every win makes the next game a little harder.

One quirk is worth knowing. The computer has no option to end a chain early. Whenever its capturing piece can capture again, it will, and it only stops when no further capture is legal. If you can arrange for its chain to continue onto a point where that piece is then exposed, it will walk into the trap. Leaving a single piece that can be swept up as the last link of a chain is a practical way to pull an enemy piece out of a strong position.

How a game ends and how the streak counts

You win by removing every enemy piece, or by leaving the computer with no legal move when its turn begins; the same conditions apply against you. There is also a length limit. After 300 single steps in total, counting each step of every chain, the game stops and the side with more pieces wins. If both sides have the same number, the result is a draw, and a draw ends your streak.

Your score is your win streak. A win adds one, and a loss or a draw ends it. After a win, the New button on the result card starts the next game and keeps the streak, but the New button at the top of the screen always resets the streak to zero, so treat it as resigning. Any streak above zero can be saved to the Hall of Fame from the result card, and your best streak is stored on your device.

The length limit has a practical use. Late in a long game, being one piece ahead is enough. If you lead on material and the step count is high, you can stop taking risks, keep your pieces apart and let the limit hand you the win.

A plan for longer streaks

• Count before you commit. Before each move, check every line through the point you are leaving and the point you are entering, in both directions.
• Prefer strong points for the piece that ends your turn. A piece on a diagonal crossing has eight directions to capture with on the next turn, while a piece on a weak point has only four.
• Break up your own rows. Leave single empty points between your pieces so that no enemy approach can run through several of them at once.
• Use the forced-capture rule. If the computer must capture, it cannot defend. A small sacrifice that forces its only capture can open the line you wanted.
• Expect a harder opponent at four. That is where the search reaches five moves, its deepest level. After that the opponent keeps improving only through fewer careless moves, so the long games are won by not giving it anything to punish.