Bagh chal

How to play Bagh chal

Not from the book. Bagh chal, «tigers moving», is the board game of Nepal; the rules follow the common account (Wikipedia, read 7 November 2026, and the printed rules that come with the brass boards), with the gaps filled as marked.

From the sources

• «The game is played on a 5×5 point grid», the pieces on the points, joined by the lines of the alquerque board: every point to its neighbours along and across, and every other point along the diagonals too.
• One player has four tigers, the other up to twenty goats. The tigers start on the four corners; no goats are on the board at the start.
• The goat player moves first, placing one goat a turn on an empty point. «Goats cannot move until all of them are on the board.»
• A tiger moves to an adjacent empty point along a line, or captures by jumping over a goat to the empty point beyond it. «They can capture only one goat at a time.» Capturing is not compulsory, and a tiger cannot jump another tiger.
• Once all are placed, a goat moves one point along a line, like a tiger; goats never jump.
• The tigers win by capturing five goats. The goats win by blocking every tiger's move.
• After the placing, «no move may return the board to a situation that has already occurred during the game».

My choices

• Tigers may capture from the first turn, while the goats are still being placed — the sources say capturing can happen on any move.
• A goat player with no legal move (every goat hemmed in, or every move barred by the repetition rule) has lost, as the tigers have when they cannot move.
• The machine looks several moves ahead: goats taken first, then the tigers' room to move and the jumps on offer.

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