Aadu Puli Attam — goats against tigers
Three tigers hunt fifteen goats. Tigers capture by jumping; goats cannot capture at all, but together they can hem the tigers in. The two sides play by different rules for different goals.
From Aadu Puli Attam, a goats-and-tigers game from Tamil Nadu.
What it shows a designer
Two sides with different pieces, different moves and different goals. It shows asymmetric design: balance comes from tuning numbers such as goats needed and capture counts, not from giving both sides the same thing.
Credits
- Made by
- Traditional, Tamil Nadu and South India
- This version
- Tigers win on five captures; some sources say they must take all fifteen
- Sources
- xchess.net/en/aadupuli/rules
threetigers.app/blog/how-to-play-aadu-puli-attam-rules
What you need
- paper with the 23-point board drawn: a triangle from one apex, crossed by four rows
- 3 tiger pieces and 15 goat pieces (coins or pebbles of two kinds)
How to play
- The board. Draw a point at the top. From it draw four lines fanning down. Cross them with four rows: three rows of six points (the two outer points of each row on side lines) and a bottom row of four. That makes 23 points.
- Set up. Put the tigers on the top point and the two points below it nearest the middle. The goats start off the board. Goats move first.
- Goats place. Until all 15 are on, a goat's turn is placing one goat on any empty point.
- Tigers. A tiger moves one point along a line, or jumps along a line over one goat to the empty point just beyond it, taking that goat. One jump per turn.
- Goats move. Once all goats are on, a goat's turn is sliding one goat one point along a line. Goats never jump.
- Win. Tigers win when they have taken 5 goats. Goats win when no tiger can move.
After playing, talk about
- Which side felt stronger at the start, and at the end?
- How did the goats protect each other?
- What would change if tigers needed only 3 goats?
Its blocks
How its blocks were checked against BoardGameGeek
- Aadu Puli Attam: partly checkable, nothing against it. direct confrontation: not checkable. mostly skill: not checkable. full information: not checkable. take turns: not checkable.
In boardgameBuilder, Open game puts its blocks on the canvas. Changed, the same file can come back here from Propose a game.