About The Marble Game
What The Marble Game is
The Marble Game is a classic cross-board race from Tamaki Technologies. Each color has four marbles, a start, a path around the board, and a home row of its own. You roll, move, and send other colors back to start. The first player to bring every marble home wins.
Objective
Get all four of your marbles out of start and into your colored home row. There is no separate point total. Finishing the race is the whole match. A marble sent back to start has to begin again, so slowing another color is how you protect your own lead.
How a round works
Players take turns rolling. A marble can leave start only on a 1 or a 6. Rolling a 6 also earns another roll. Move one of your marbles that many spaces along the track. You cannot jump your own marbles. Land on another color and that marble goes back to start. The center is a shortcut, and you may enter it only from your home arm, on an exact roll. A roll of 1 leaves the center onto the junction of your home arm. Entering the home row, and every step inside it, also takes an exact count. Anything short of exact stays where it is.
How scoring works
The only score is the race. The first player to place all four marbles in the home row wins. Sending an opponent back does not add points. It costs them the steps they had already taken. A marble sitting in the center is not home yet. It still needs a 1 before it can come back out and finish the row.
Number of players
The Marble Game seats two, three, or four players. The colors share one track, so a fuller table means more chances to land on someone and more traffic in front of your own marbles.
Strategy
Get a marble onto the track early, then look for a landing that sends a color back when that marble is close to home. Do not ignore your own marbles that are one exact roll from the home row. Use the center when the count is exact and the long way around is crowded. A marble parked in the middle still has to roll a 1 to leave, so the shortcut is only a shortcut if you can get back out.
Local and online play
Play locally against bots, and pick two, three, or four seats before the first roll. Local play works offline once the game is on your device. Online, host or join a room with a short code. A room needs at least two people, and empty seats can be filled with bots. No account is required.
Where to play
Play in the browser at themarblegame.tamakitech.com, or install The Marble Game on Google Play.