Bagh-Chal बाघचाल

About Bagh-Chal

Bagh-Chal (बाघचाल, "the tiger's move") is a traditional two-player board game from Nepal. It has been played for centuries on boards scratched into stone steps, temple courtyards and rest houses along trails, and on wooden and brass boards with cast tiger and goat pieces sold in Bhaktapur and Patan. One player has four tigers. The other has twenty goats. The two sides want completely different things, which is what makes the game unusual: the tigers hunt, and the goats try to hem them in.

The board is a 5 by 5 grid of points joined by lines. Every point connects to its neighbours up, down, left and right, and diagonal lines run through every second point, forming the star pattern you see above. Pieces only ever move along a line.

How to play Bagh-Chal

1. The four tigers start on the four corners. The goats start off the board.
2. Goats move first. On each goat turn, place one goat on any empty point. Goats cannot move until all twenty are on the board.
3. On a tiger turn, move one tiger one step along a line to an empty point, or capture.
4. A tiger captures by jumping over a goat next to it, in a straight line along the lines, onto the empty point just beyond. The goat is removed. Only one goat can be captured per turn.
5. Once all twenty goats are placed, goats move one step along a line to an empty point. Goats never jump.
6. The tigers win when they have captured five goats. The goats win when no tiger can move.

Playing the goats

The goats have the harder job and the stronger long game. Fill the edges and corners first, because a goat on an edge cannot be jumped from outside the board. Place goats in solid blocks so that each one has a goat or the board edge behind it; a goat can only be taken if the point behind it is empty. Never leave a gap directly behind a goat that stands next to a tiger. Patience wins: losing one or two goats early is survivable, but losing five is the game.

Playing the tigers

Keep the tigers apart and in the centre, where the diagonal points give them eight directions instead of four. Look for moves that threaten two captures at once, because the goats can only block one. Avoid the corners once the board fills up: a tiger in a corner is the easiest one to trap.

This version

You can play the goats or the tigers against the computer, or pass the device between two people. The computer looks four moves ahead and weighs captures, how free the tigers are to move, and any tiger that is already trapped. It plays a fair game for a beginner and can be beaten by either side. A position repeated three times once all goats are down is a draw. The board and the tiger and goat pieces are drawn for this page by ICE; the rules are the traditional ones taught across Nepal, and variants exist from valley to valley.