What is Bagh-Chal?
Bagh-Chal is the traditional board game of Nepal, an asymmetric hunt game where four tigers and twenty goats fight for different goals on a board of 25 points in five rows and five columns. In Nepali, bagh means tiger and chal means move, so the name reads as the moving tigers.
The tigers try to jump over goats and eat them, while the goats move as a herd and try to surround the tigers until none of them can take a single step. The two sides have different numbers of pieces, different moves and different ways to win, so the same board feels like two separate games depending on which side you take. In Nepal the board is often scratched into stone in village squares and temple courtyards and played with pebbles, and similar hunt games are known across India and Southeast Asia. Fox and Geese from Europe belongs to the same family. Here you can pick goats or tigers and play the computer on easy, normal or hard, or play a friend on one screen.
What are the rules?
Goats move first and the two sides alternate one move at a time. The lines on the board are every row and column plus the diagonals that pass through the center and the four corners. Pieces only move along these lines.
| Side | Pieces | What it can do | How it wins |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tigers | 4, starting on the corners | Step to an adjacent empty point, or jump straight over an adjacent goat to the empty point beyond and capture it | Capture 5 goats |
| Goats | 20, all in hand at the start | Place one goat on any empty point until all twenty are on the board, then step one point along a line | Leave all four tigers with no legal move |
A tiger captures only one goat per turn and cannot chain jumps. Goats never jump and never capture. The most unusual rule is that goats on the board cannot move while goats are still being placed. If the goats have no move left the tigers win, and the game is a draw if no goat is captured for 80 moves or the same position appears three times.
How do you win as the goats?
The first rule for goats is fill the edges and corners first. A goat in a corner can never be captured because there is no point behind it, and a goat on the edge can only be jumped along the edge line, so it is far safer.
- Edges first. Early in the placing phase, fill edge points away from the tigers to build a solid wall. When a tiger leaves its corner, take that corner too.
- Never leave the back open. Before you place a goat next to a tiger, check that the point behind it is blocked. If it is empty, that goat is lost next turn.
- Move in double rows. Goats that back each other up leave no landing points for the tigers. A lonely goat is prey.
- Lose nothing while placing. If two or three goats fall before all twenty are on the board, you will run short of goats to close the trap.
- Trap the tigers one at a time. Shut in the tiger pushed into a corner first, and the others lose room as well. A trapped tiger shows a blue dashed ring.
What are the tips for the tigers?
The tigers want to hold the points crossed by diagonals and create double threats that attack two goats at once.
Points on a diagonal have eight neighbours, so they offer the most steps and the most jumps. If all four tigers bunch up on one side the goats can wall them in easily, so keep them spread across the board. Goats can only cover one hole per turn, so if you open the backs of two different goats at the same time one of them will fall. Corners and edge pockets are where tigers get trapped, so stay out of them when you can.
How do the computer levels differ?
Easy looks two moves ahead and sometimes plays a careless move, normal reads four moves ahead in 0.3 seconds, and hard reads more than ten moves ahead within one second.
Hard uses iterative deepening alpha-beta search and even counts the threefold repetition rule, steering for a draw when it is losing. If you are new to the goats, learn the edge plan on easy, then move up to hard once you beat normal. Computer analysis has shown that Bagh-Chal is a draw with perfect play from both sides, so a draw against hard is already a fine result. Your wins are counted for each level on the title screen.
Controls
- Placing goats: tap a sparkling empty point and a goat flies from your hand onto it. Your name card shows how many goats are left in hand.
- Moving: tap your piece, then a sparkling point, or drag the piece and drop it on a point. If only one piece can reach a point, tapping the point is enough.
- Capturing: on the tigers' turn, every goat that can be captured right now blinks with a red ring. Pick a tiger and tap the orange point beyond the goat to jump it.
- Keyboard: choose a point with the arrow keys or WASD, then place, select or move with Enter or Space. Undo with Ctrl+Z or U, and drop a selected piece with Esc.
Against the computer, switch your side to tigers and the computer goats move first. Your wins and sound setting are saved only in this browser and are never sent to a server.