Tigers & Goats

Test your strategic thinking with this ancient board game from India. The game is a Marathi variant of the Bagh-Chal game from Nepal and is played with two players - one player controls tigers and the other controls goats. The goats objective is to advance slowly but surely to trap all tigers and the tigers aim is to prevent this by making it difficult for goats to advance. Goats always move first when the game begins and they can move one square in any direction. A goat may not jump over other goats or over tigers. Tigers move somewhat like a rook in chess - any number of places horizontally or vertically. They can even jump over a single goat if there is an empty square behind the goat. When this happens, the goat is killed and removed from the game. Tigers cannot move diagonally or jump over two goats. The game ends when tigers kill 4 goats (tigers win!) or when goats advance and trap all tigers (goats win!). Players alternate playing goats and tigers.