Rimau is a two-player abstract strategy board game from Malaysia. It is a hunt game, and specifically a tiger hunt game (or tiger game) since it uses an expanded alquerque board. One tiger is being hunted by 24 men. The tiger attempts to eat the men, and the men attempt to trap the tiger. Unique to rimau (and the two-tiger variant rimau-rimau), the tiger can capture a line of men in a single leap. There must be an odd number of men in the line, and they must be adjacent to one another. In most hunt games, the tiger, leopard, or fox is only able to capture one prey in a leap.
Origins.
"Rimau" in Malay means "tiger". The men are called "orang-orang", the plural of "orang" which means "man".
Rimau is played on the same board as the game rimau-rimau, which has two tigers and 22 or 24 men. Both games share similar rules.
Rimau is a hunt game, specifically a tiger hunt game (or tiger game); this family of hunt games uses an alquerque board or a variant thereof, including games like rimau-rimau, bagh-chal ("tigers and goats" in Nepali), and main tapal empat. In contrast, leopard hunt games use a more triangular board and not an alquerque-based board. Similarly, fox games are also hunt games, but use a cross-shaped board.
Goal.
The men win if they block and immobilize the tiger's movements.
The tiger wins if they capture all the men, or capture enough men so that the men cannot effectively block and immobilize its movements. This usually happens when there are only 10 or 11 men left on the board.
Equipment.
The game uses an expanded alquerque board, supplemented by two triangular mountains ("gunung" in Malay) with their apexes touching the middle of opposing sides of the square alquerque board. There are 25 nodes on the central alquerque square where pieces can be played, and 7 nodes on each "gunung", although the apex of each "gunung" is shared with a node on the alquerque square, making 37 nodes on the rimau board in total.
There is 1 black "rimau" piece controlled by the player taking the side of the tiger, and 24 white "orang" pieces controlled by the opposing player who takes the side of the men.
Game play and rules.
Endgame.
If the man player has been reduced to 10 or 11 remaining "orang" pieces, the man player will usually resign as there is not enough "orang" pieces left to effectively immobilize the "rimau".
Asymmetry.
Like all hunt games, Rimau is an asymmetric game in that the pieces controlled by one player are different from the pieces controlled by the other player. A tiger can capture whereas men can only simply block the tigers. Furthermore, the number of pieces is different for each player. The tiger player controls one tiger piece, and the man player controls the 24 man pieces. Lastly, the goals of each player are different. The goal of the tiger is to eliminate as many men as possible which would prevent the men from blocking its movements. However, the goal of the men is to block the movement of the tiger.