Tuesday, February 21, 2012

February 21, 2012 - Bagh chal

Bagh chal is the national board game of Nepal. “Bagh” means tiger and “chal” means to move; so the name of the board game literally means “moving tigers.” The name is quite fitting. I learned how to play the game by a very nice salesman while we were at the Monkey Temple a couple of weeks ago.

Of course, I felt obligated to buy the game afterwards. Katie, Phil, Krista, and I had the adventure of learning how to play it this afternoon.

While the concept initially seemed quite easy, it actually turned out to be a bit more complicated and complex than we originally imagined.

The game is composed of a five-by-five point grid of interlocking lines to make twenty-five points of intersection. One player is assigned as the “tigers” and given four bronze tigers; the other play is assigned as the “goats” and given twenty bronze goats.

The tigers are initially placed in the four corners of the game board. The goats player then places each one of the goats strategically on the game board one-at-a-time, alternating with the tigers player moving their pieces around the board.

The goal of the tigers is to kill all of the goats by jumping them (similar to checkers), while the goal of the goats is to defensively encircle the tigers, giving them nowhere to move.

Katie and I started out as the goats team, while Krista and Phil started out as the tigers team. Needless to say, the tigers were no match for our powerful goats.

Phil and Krista only managed to kill one of our goats while we surrounded their weakling tigers.

The rematch didn’t go so well, especially after Phil and Krista did some scheming of their own and came up with a much more efficient strategy for their second attempt.

Ailia cheered us on the entire way.

But despite our best efforts, the goats were slaughtered – literally. It was ugly to watch…

So we left the game with one win for each team – overall a success for everyone involved. And the best part was that we all had a great time. Looks like we have another game to add to our list of favorites!

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