Bagh Chal

I recently learned how to play "bagh chal", or the tiger-moving game. Its the national game of Nepal and a little bit like checkers, but so far its been a lot more fun. I especially like that the players have different objectives. Its quite easy to build your own board so give it a shot if you're into this sort of thing.

Start with a board that looks like this:


To play this game you need 4 tigers and 20 goats. (We used quarters and pennies.)

Put a tiger into each of the four corners. One person plays the tigers and will attempt to eat all of the goats; the goats will attempt to surround the tigers so that they can't move. At any point in the game a tiger can jump over a goat and eat it, but only if there is space on the other side of the goat... Think checkers. The goats try to surround the tigers until they are unable to move. If you're the goat player and you've lost five goats you should just give up. It's pretty much hopeless at that point.

The goat player goes first by placing a goat onto any intersection on the board. Then the other player moves one of the tigers along one of the lines to an adjacent intersection. This continues until all the goats have been played, at which point they are allowed to roam like the tigers. The tigers continue to play as before.

The only additional rule is that you are not allowed to make a move that results in the board looking identical to how it looked previously. This means that you can't just keep moving forward and backward.

I've read complaints that the game is too easy for the goats. I haven't played enough to find out if that's true, but it seems to me that there is an easy solution to that problem - play with one less goat.