Play Bagh-Chal, the traditional Nepali tigers-and-goats hunt game, free in your browser. Place your twenty goats to corner four tigers, or play the tigers and leap over goats to capture five. Asymmetric strategy vs AI. No download required.
Bagh-Chal is played on a board of twenty-five points arranged in a five-by-five grid and joined by horizontal, vertical and some diagonal lines. One player commands four tigers, which begin on the four corners, and the other commands twenty goats, which all start off the board. Goats move first. The goat player spends the opening of the game placing goats onto empty points, while the tiger player moves and hunts from the very first turn. A tiger captures a goat by jumping straight over it into the empty point beyond. Tigers win by taking five goats; goats win by trapping every tiger.
The goats play in two distinct phases, and learning the difference is the key to the game. During the placement phase the twenty goats are dropped onto the board one per turn, and crucially they cannot move yet — a freshly placed goat simply sits where it lands. Only after all twenty goats are on the board does the movement phase begin, in which a goat may slide one step to a neighbouring empty point along a drawn line. Because early goats are stuck in place, the goat player must place them where they support one another and deny the tigers the open lanes they need to leap.
Bagh-Chal is sharply asymmetric, so each side needs its own plan. The tigers want open space and straight lines: they look for a goat with an empty point directly behind it and pounce, and they try to stay mobile so they are never boxed in. The goats cannot capture at all, so they win through patience, building solid walls with no gaps for a tiger to jump into and slowly surrounding the hunters. A single careless goat left in front of an empty point is a free meal for a tiger, so the goat player must count every line before committing a piece.
Bagh-Chal comes from Nepal, where it has been played for centuries on boards scratched into wood, stone or the ground, with seeds, pebbles or carved pieces standing in for the tigers and goats. Its name means roughly "moving tigers" or "tiger's move," and it belongs to a worldwide family of hunt games in which a few strong pieces face many weak ones. The lopsided struggle between four powerful tigers and a determined herd of goats has made it a beloved pastime across the Himalayas. This browser version keeps the classic rules and adds a thinking computer opponent for either side.
Bagh-Chal is a traditional board game from Nepal whose name means "moving tigers." Four tigers hunt a herd of twenty goats on a 5×5 grid of lines, making it an asymmetric strategy game for two sides.
Goats play in two phases. First the goats are placed one at a time onto empty points until all twenty are on the board, and during this phase goats cannot move. Once every goat is placed, a goat may slide one step to an adjacent empty point along a line.
On its turn a tiger either steps to an adjacent empty point or jumps in a straight line over one adjacent goat into the empty point just beyond it, removing that goat. Tigers win as soon as they have captured five goats.
The goats never capture anything. Instead they win by hemming the tigers in: if every tiger is completely blocked, with no step and no jump available, the goats have trapped them and win the game.
Every point connects to its up, down, left and right neighbours. Points where the diagonals are drawn also connect to their diagonal neighbours, forming the board's X patterns. Tigers may only jump along a line that actually exists between the points.