What is "rimau"

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. The one tiger is being hunted by 24 men. The tiger attempts to eat the men, and the men attempt to trap the tiger. An interesting feature in this game is that 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.

Rimau in Malay means "tiger". The men are called orang-orang. Orang-orang is the plural of orang which means "man".

Rimau is the single tiger version of the game Rimau-rimau which has two tigers. Both games have very similar rules.

As mentioned earlier, Rimau is specifically part of the tiger hunt game (or tiger game) family as it uses an expanded Alquerque board. This family includes games like Rimau-rimau, Bagha-Chall, and Main Tapal Empat. In contrast, Leopard games are also hunt games, but use a more triangular board and not an Alquerque-based board. Similarly, Fox games are also hunt games, but use more of a cross patterned board.