Bagh-Chal

Bagh-Chal is an asymmetric hunt on a 5×5 board of 25 points. You play the 20 goats; the AI plays the 4 tigers, which begin on the four corners. Goats move first.

1. Placement phase: on each of your turns, tap an empty point to place one goat. You place all 20 goats before any goat may move — and goats cannot move during this phase.
2. Tigers hunt throughout. On a tiger's turn it either steps to an adjacent empty point, or captures by jumping a single adjacent goat in a straight line to the empty point just beyond it. The jumped goat is removed.
3. Capturing is not forced — a tiger may choose to step instead. Tigers take only one goat per turn (no chain jumps). Goats never jump.
4. Movement phase: once all 20 goats are placed, move a goat one step along a line to an adjacent empty point.
5. Diagonals exist only at the "strong" points — those where the diagonal lines cross. Other points connect only up, down, left, and right.
6. Tigers win by capturing 5 goats. Goats win when no tiger can move or jump — every tiger is trapped. If 30 moves pass with no capture, the game is a draw.

Full rules guide & cultural history →

Bagh-Chal (बाघचाल, bāgh cāl — "moving tigers"; in Newar, धुँ कासा dhun kasa) is widely regarded as Nepal's national board game. Centuries old and passed down largely by oral tradition, it is an asymmetric predator-versus-prey contest: four powerful tigers (बाघ bāgh) hunt by leaping, while twenty weak but numerous goats (बाख्रा bākhrā) win only through collective encirclement — cluttering the board until the tigers can no longer move.

The game is widely thought to be shaped by Nepal's pastoral, herding life, where herders guarded their flocks from tigers. It was traditionally played in community rest-houses (paatis) and parks, and at its simplest it needs nothing more than lines scratched into the dirt and a handful of pebbles — four for the tigers, twenty for the goats. Its theme is often summed up as "few-but-strong versus many-but-weak."

Authentic sets are handcrafted in brass-on-wood in Kathmandu and Patan, the playing lines etched into the board. Today Bagh-Chal is considered endangered as a living tradition, kept alive mostly by older players.