Baghchalबाघचाल

The board

The board has 25 points in five rows of five. Pieces stand on the points, where lines meet, never in the squares between them.

Lines run across and down between every pair of neighbouring points. Diagonal lines run only through every other point (the centre, the corners and the points in between them). So a point away from the edge has eight lines leaving it, or four; a point on the edge has five or three; and a corner has three.

A piece may only travel along a drawn line.

Setting up

Put one tiger on each corner. The twenty goats wait off the board.

The goats always make the first move. Before the game you can choose which side the first player takes, so you can play the tigers against the computer if you like.

Placing the goats

For the first twenty goat turns, the goat player places one goat on any empty point. Goats already on the board cannot move until every goat has been placed.

The tigers are not waiting: on every tiger turn a tiger moves, and it may eat a goat even while goats are still being placed.

Moving

A tiger moves in one of two ways:

• Step: along a line to the next point, if it is empty.
• Jump: over a goat on the next point of a line, landing on the empty point straight beyond it on the same line. The goat is eaten and leaves the board.

Once all twenty goats are on the board, a goat turn is a step along a line to the next empty point. Goats never jump and can never take a tiger.

Nobody may pass. If it is your turn, you must move.

Eating goats

• A tiger eats only one goat per turn. Even if another jump is open after landing, the turn is over.
• Eating is never compulsory. A tiger with a jump in front of it may step instead.
• A tiger cannot jump over another tiger, over two goats, or over an empty point, and the landing point must be empty.
• A jump must go in a straight line. A tiger on a point without diagonals cannot jump diagonally.
• A goat on a corner can never be eaten, because there is no point beyond it.

How the game ends

• The tigers win as soon as they have eaten five goats (four or six if you chose that before the game).
• The goats win when it is the tigers' turn and no tiger can move: every tiger is boxed in.
• If it is the goats' turn and no goat can move, the tigers win. This is rare.
• Once all twenty goats are on the board, the game is a draw if the same position comes up for the third time, with the same pieces on the same points and the same side to move.
• It is also a draw if 50 moves each (100 turns) pass after the last goat is placed without a goat being eaten. Every capture starts that count again.

The screen shows how many goats have been eaten, how many tigers are stuck, and a warning when the current position has already appeared twice.

Where these rules come from

Bagh-Chal has no rulebook, so this table follows the rules most Nepali sources agree on:

• Goats move first, tigers start on the corners, and a tiger eats one goat per jump without having to: Wikipedia's Bagh-chal article and the Programiz Bagh Chal write-up from Kathmandu.
• Five goats for the tigers to win is the usual count (Wikipedia, Spiralogics, Baghchal.net). The Nepal Med rules sheet plays to four, so four and six are offered as options.
• No chain jumps: Nepal Med and Wikipedia both say a tiger takes only one goat per turn.
• Goats with no move lose: Baghchal.net and Programiz say the tigers win in that rare case. Spiralogics calls it a draw instead.
• The draw by threefold repetition follows the Spiralogics and Programiz apps. Some older tables instead forbid any move that repeats an earlier position, which can leave a player with no sensible move, so it is not used here.
• The limit of 50 moves each without a capture is this table's own safety rule, so that a game between two careful players always ends.

Four or six goats to win

Before the game you can set how many goats the tigers must eat: four makes life harder for the goats, six makes it easier. Five is the usual count in Nepal.

Play the tigers

The first player takes the goats unless you choose the tigers. The goats always move first, whoever holds them.