Bagh chal

How to play Bagh chal

Bagh chal, «tigers moving», is the board game of Nepal: four tigers go hunting, and twenty goats try to hem them in.

The rules

• The board. Twenty-five points in a five-by-five grid, joined by lines. Every point is linked to its neighbours up, down and sideways, and every second point, counting from the corners, is linked along the diagonals as well. The pieces stand on the points and move along the lines.
• The two sides. One player has four tigers, which start on the four corners. The other has twenty goats, all waiting off the board.
• The goats come in. The goats begin. On each of their turns they put one new goat on any empty point, and the tigers answer with a move. No goat may move until all twenty are on the board.
• Moving. A tiger steps along a line to a neighbouring empty point. Once every goat is in, the goats move the same way, one step along a line. Goats never jump.
• A tiger eats. A tiger takes a goat by jumping over it, straight along a line, to the empty point just beyond; the goat leaves the board. One goat per jump, and a tiger never jumps over another tiger. Tigers are never forced to eat, and they may do so from their very first move, while the goats are still coming in.
• No going back. Once all the goats are on the board, no move may bring back a position the game has already had.
• Winning. The tigers win when they have eaten five goats. The goats win when no tiger can move.

In this version

• The goats can be hemmed in too: when the goats have no move left, they have lost. A side whose every move would bring back an earlier position has no move either, and loses.
• The machine looks several moves ahead. It counts goats taken first, then how much room the tigers have and which jumps are open to them.

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