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Tuesday, December 11, 2012

Rules to Play Cows and Leopards

Cows & Leopards, called as Hasu Chirate Ata in Kannada, is a hunt game played by 2 players. One player gets 2 leopards while the other controls the herd of 24 cows.


Winner:
* Leopards win if they take out a minimum of 12 cows.
* Cows win if they immobilise both leopards.

How to play:
1. Both leopards and cows should be placed only on intersections of lines (shown by dots in Fig. 1)
2. During a turn only one coin has to be played.
3. At the beginning cows are placed at eight points as depicted by ‘C’ in Fig. 2.






4. One leopard is placed on any open point on the board such that it can attack a cow.
5. Next one cow is placed on any open point.
6. All cows are introduced one by one on the board one each during its turn. (i.e., one cow is placed on a point, next one leopard moves, next one more cow is placed on a point, next a leopard moves, next one more cow is placed on a point and so on).
7. All cows have to be introduced on the board before any cow starts moving.
8. If a leopard ‘L’ encounters a lone cow ‘C’ with a open point just behind it, then the leopard jumps over the cow to the open point and takes out the cow from the board as shown in Fig. 3 below.


9. Leopard can jump over multiple cows during its turn provided it should always land on an empty junction before jumping over the next cow (this is similar to multiple-cutting option as in Checkers). See Fig. 4.
10. Leopard cannot jump over a cow if there is no open point behind the cow as shown below in Fig. 5 and Fig. 6.



11. A cow that has been taken out of the board by a leopard is permanently out of the game and cannot be reintroduced on the board during that game.
12. After all cows are introduced on the board, cows start moving.

13. Only one cow can be moved to its adjacent open point during its turn.
14. Cows cannot jump over anything.
15. Leopards cannot jump over another leopard.
16. Cows should avoid getting jumped over by leopards and try to surround leopards such that leopards cannot move as shown below in Fig. 7 and Fig. 8.



17. Leopards try to take out as many cows as possible and avoid getting tied down by cows.
18. Cows try to tie down all leopards rendering them immobile.
19. Lines denote the path of movement. Cows and leopards should always move along the lines. Movement of a pawn between adjacent points is possible only when the points are connected by a line. See Fig.9 and Fig. 10 given below for wrong and correct movements.



20. Game ends when either leopard takes out more than 12 cows or cows manage to immobilise both leopards.

Benefits: This helps develop strategy and concept of team work by teaching that even though weak, if united, one can vanquish the stronger enemy, working as a team.

1 comment:

kwbyk said...

Dear sirs,

I was given today a hand made game with a few directions on how to play but no comprehensive rules. Since the game mentioned cows and leopards, I googled it and found this page. My game, however, is a very different variant on 'Cows and leopards'. It has a rectangular board of 6x5 dots (actually holes, since the pieces are marbles), with no lines drawn in between them. The two leopards start at two diametrally opposed dots (A1 and F5) and the cows fill all the rest of the board except the two dots closest to each leopard (A2, B1, E5 and F4). There are no instructions as to how the pieces move, only the purpose of the game is explained, and it is almost the same as in C&L: the cows have to immobilise the leopards but these need to capture all the cows. Do you know this variant? Since it was bought at a medieval fair, I would guess the makers of this game didn't pay much attention to either detail or playability.

Anyway, I was very pleased to find this page: it explains thouroughly and in detail the rules of the 'original' game, with a few examples to make the rules clear. There was only a small detail I noticed where the rules are a bit inaccurate. At one place you wrote 'Leopards win if they take out a minimum of 12 cows', but further down it is written 'Game ends when either leopard takes out more than 12 cows'. Shouldn't it read 'take out 12 cows or more'?

Once again, congratulations for your work. Best regards,
Tiago Marques