Twelve pits and two stores sized for real counters — beans, coins, buttons, pebbles — with the free-turn and capture rules printed under the board.
Mancala predates boards entirely — it has been played in pits scooped from the ground for well over a thousand years, so a printed sheet is firmly in the tradition. Print it, raid the junk drawer for 48 small counters, and set four in each small pit. Dried beans are the classic; coins, buttons and pebbles all work. Print on card stock and it survives the school term.
The full rules are compact enough to sit under the board. On your turn, scoop every seed from one of your six pits and sow them one at a time counter-clockwise, dropping into your own store as you pass and skipping your opponent's. Land the last seed in your store and you go again; land it in an empty pit on your own side and you capture that seed plus everything in the pit directly opposite. When either side's pits empty, the other player sweeps their remaining seeds home, and the fuller store wins.
The board is standard Kalah — the version nearly everyone in English-speaking countries means by "Mancala", and the version our online game plays. The same printed board works for Oware and other family variants; only the sowing and capture rules change, and our Mancala rules card covers the details and strategy in full.
What can we use as seeds? Anything small and roughly uniform — 48 of them. Beans, coins, buttons, aquarium gravel.
Which direction do you sow? Counter-clockwise, always, including into your own store and past your opponent's.