What happens in a game of Baghchal?
Two players sit on opposite sides of a very lopsided fight. One controls four tigers that start on the corners and can capture. The other controls twenty goats that arrive one per turn and can never capture anything.
The tigers are hunting: they need five goats and the game ends. The goats are building a cage: they need every tiger to run out of legal moves at the same moment. Both are usually possible from the same position, which is why the game stays tense until the last few turns.
Which side should you play first?
Play the goats.
Goat play is more forgiving. You have twenty pieces and can afford to lose four of them, so an early mistake costs you material rather than the game, and you get twenty turns of practice at reading the board before you have to move anything. Tiger play punishes immediately — one careless tiger move in a crowded position and you are boxed in with no way out.
Once you have felt how goats suffocate a tiger, switch sides. Playing tigers afterwards makes far more sense, because you already know what the other player is trying to build.
Placing your first goats
Your first goat goes on the board while all four tigers are still in the corners. Nothing can be captured yet, so this is a free move — use it on the centre.
The centre point touches more lines than any other point on the board. A tiger sitting there has eight directions to work with; a goat sitting there denies all eight. It is the single most valuable square in the game and it is available on turn one.
After that, place goats where they support each other. Two goats in a row along a line are much harder to attack than two goats scattered, because jumping the first one requires the point behind it to be empty — and the second goat is standing on it.
Watching for the jump
Before you place or move any goat, do one check: draw a straight line through the point you are considering. If a tiger sits on one side of that line and the point on the other side is empty, the goat you are about to place is already lost.
That single habit — trace the line, look at the far side — prevents most beginner losses. It takes a few seconds and it is the difference between losing one goat by choice and losing five by accident.
When all twenty goats are down
The moment the twentieth goat is placed, the game changes character. Up to that point your goats have been arriving; from now on they have to move, one point at a time, along a line, into an empty space.
This is where crowded positions become a problem. If you have packed every goat tightly together, you may find you have very few legal moves and are forced to break your own wall. Leave yourself some breathing room during placement — a few empty points inside your formation are not wasted space, they are the moves you will need later.
How to tell who is winning
Count two things.
Captures. Tigers need five. At two, the tiger player is doing fine. At four, the goat player has one mistake left in the entire game.
Tiger mobility. Add up every legal move all four tigers have between them. If that number is falling turn after turn, the goats are winning, however many goats have been lost. A goat player who is four goats down but has the tigers down to three legal moves is in a much better position than the capture count suggests.
The goats win when that mobility number reaches zero.
Where to go next
Play a few games before reading any further — the strategy pages will land much better once you have lost a game in a way that annoyed you.
When you are ready: how to win as the goats covers placement order, safe formations, and closing the net. How to win as the tigers covers capture planning and the mobility trap that catches most tiger players. If you want to check a specific rule, the rule reference has it.