Bagh-Chal

Playing the goats

You have twenty goats against four tigers, and the two sides play completely different games. Your goats arrive one at a time and cannot move a step until all twenty are on the board, while the tigers prowl from the very first turn, sliding along the lines and leaping any goat that has an empty point behind it. Lose five goats and it is over. Pen all four tigers so none can move and you win.

The board deserves a look before your first goat goes down. It is a five-by-five grid of points joined by lines, the same crossed pattern used for the medieval game alquerque, and the diagonals only pass through half the points. That detail is strategy, not decoration. A goat standing on a point with no diagonals can only be jumped along a row or column, so it has fewer ways to die than a goat parked on a big diagonal crossroads.

The placement phase decides the game

The mistake most beginners make is dropping a goat where it can be jumped straight away. Before you set a goat down, check the point directly beyond it along every line: if that point is empty with a tiger on the other side, you have just fed it. Make that check a ritual, every line, every tiger, every landing point. It takes five seconds, and it is the whole margin between fencing the tigers and feeding them. During placement your goats are sitting ducks, so build them in solid, backed-up clumps where no goat has open space behind it. Edges are your friends early, since the rim of the board rules out half the jump directions all by itself. A steady plan is to claim one region, wall it off, and grow the wall a safe point at a time toward the middle.

Fencing the tigers

• Herd, don't scatter. A wall of goats with no gaps behind them can't be jumped, and it steadily shrinks the ground the tigers have to roam.
• Drive the tigers toward the corners and edges. A tiger on a point with fewer lines leading out is far easier to immobilise.
• Accept that you may trade a goat or two. Losing one to close a net around a tiger can be a fair deal. Losing five is the end.
• Once all twenty are placed and your goats can finally move, tighten the noose one step at a time, never opening a jumping lane as you go.

Corner traps are the usual finish. A corner point has only a few lines leading out, so a tiger stuck there needs just a handful of plugged points, but every plugging goat must itself be backed up so it cannot be leapt. That is why traps get built from walls, never from single brave goats.

What the computer's tigers are trying to do

Good tiger play is about forks: positions where one tiger threatens two jumps at once, so plugging one landing point leaves the other open. When a tiger slides into range of two goats, stop and count both landing points before you touch anything. The tigers also want to keep all four of themselves mobile, since a tiger pinned early is half a defeat, so expect the computer to hold one or two back in open ground while the others test your wall. Do not chase them. Every goat that runs ahead of the wall is a goat with air behind it, and tigers eat exactly that goat. Advance as a line, fill the landing squares first, and let the tigers waste their moves pacing.

An old hunt game

Bagh-Chal means something close to tiger move in Nepali, and it is Nepal's classic board game. Boards turn up scratched into temple steps and courtyard stones, and brass sets are handed down as family treasures. It belongs to a family of hunt games found all over the world, in which a few strong hunters face a crowd of weak prey: fox and geese in northern Europe, aadu puli attam (the goat and tiger game) in southern India, adugo, the jaguar game, in South America. The balance is famously delicate. Patient goats can strangle the tigers, but a single careless placement snowballs into disaster. Choose Easy, Medium or Hard to match the computer's tigers to how confident you're feeling.