Jungle or Dou Shou Qi is a traditional Chinese board game. It is also known as Jungle Chess or Animal Chess. It is a two player, abstract strategy game

Abstract strategy game

An abstract strategy game is a strategy game, aiming to minimise luck, and without a theme. Almost all abstract strategy games will conform to the strictest definition of: a board or card game, in which there is no hidden information, no non-deterministic elements , in which two players or teams...

 played on a 7x9 board. The game has been cited to resemble the western game Stratego

Stratego

Stratego is a board game featuring a 10×10 square board and two players with 40 pieces each. Pieces represent individual officers and soldiers in an army. The objective of the game is to either find and capture the opponent's Flag or to capture so many of the opponent's pieces that he/she cannot...

  but Stratego actually has more in common with another Chinese board game known as Jun Qi

Luzhanqi

Luzhanqi is a two-player Chinese board game . There is also a version for four players. It bears many similarities to Dou Shou Qi, Game of the Generals and the Western board game Stratego...

 (Chinese: 軍棋) or "Army Game".

Objective

The goal of the game is either to move a piece onto a special square, the den, on the opponent's side of the board, or capture all of the opponent's pieces.

Board

The Jungle game board consists of seven columns and nine rows of squares. Pieces move on the square spaces as in international chess

Chess

Chess is a two-player board game played on a chessboard, a square-checkered board with 64 squares arranged in an eight-by-eight grid. It is one of the world's most popular games, played by millions of people worldwide at home, in clubs, online, by correspondence, and in tournaments.Each player...

, not on the lines as in xiangqi

Xiangqi

Xiangqi is a two-player Chinese board game in the same family as Western chess, chaturanga, shogi, Indian chess and janggi. The present-day form of Xiangqi originated in China and is therefore commonly called Chinese chess in English. Xiangqi is one of the most popular board games in China...

. Pictures of eight animals and their names appear on each side of the board to indicate initial placement of the game pieces. After initial setup, these animal spaces have no special meaning in gameplay.

There are several special squares and areas of the Jungle board:
The Den (獸穴; pinyin

Pinyin

Pinyin is the official system to transcribe Chinese characters into the Roman alphabet in China, Malaysia, Singapore and Taiwan. It is also often used to teach Mandarin Chinese and spell Chinese names in foreign publications and used as an input method to enter Chinese characters into...

: shòu xuè, "lair

Lair

Lair may refer to:*An animal's lair or home; see :Category:Shelters built or used by animals*Lair , a 2007 video game*In Scots language, lair refers to a burial-plot in a graveyard...

") is located in the center of the first row or rank of the board, and is labeled as such in Chinese

Chinese language

The Chinese language is a language or language family consisting of varieties which are mutually intelligible to varying degrees. Originally the indigenous languages spoken by the Han Chinese in China, it forms one of the branches of Sino-Tibetan family of languages...

. Traps (陷阱; pinyin

Pinyin

Pinyin is the official system to transcribe Chinese characters into the Roman alphabet in China, Malaysia, Singapore and Taiwan. It is also often used to teach Mandarin Chinese and spell Chinese names in foreign publications and used as an input method to enter Chinese characters into...

: xiàn jǐng, "snare") are located to each side and in front of the Den, and are also labeled in Chinese. Two water areas or Rivers (河川; pinyin

Pinyin

Pinyin is the official system to transcribe Chinese characters into the Roman alphabet in China, Malaysia, Singapore and Taiwan. It is also often used to teach Mandarin Chinese and spell Chinese names in foreign publications and used as an input method to enter Chinese characters into...

: hé chuān, "river

River

A river is a natural watercourse, usually freshwater, flowing towards an ocean, a lake, a sea, or another river. In a few cases, a river simply flows into the ground or dries up completely before reaching another body of water. Small rivers may also be called by several other names, including...

") are located in the center of the Jungle board. Each comprises six squares in a 2x3 rectangle, and labeled with the Chinese characters for "river". There are single columns or files of ordinary land squares on the edges of the board, and down the middle between the rivers.

Pieces

Each side has 8 pieces representing different animals, each with a different rank. Higher ranking pieces can capture all pieces of identical or weaker ranking. However, there is one exception: The elephant may not capture the rat while the rat may capture the elephant. The animal ranking, from strongest to weakest, is:

8 - Elephant

Elephant

Elephants are large land mammals in two extant genera of the family Elephantidae: Elephas and Loxodonta, with the third genus Mammuthus extinct...

7 - Lion

Lion

The lion is one of the four big cats in the genus Panthera, and a member of the family Felidae. With some males exceeding 250 kg in weight, it is the second-largest living cat after the tiger...

6 - Tiger

Tiger

The tiger is the largest cat species, reaching a total body length of up to and weighing up to . Their most recognizable feature is a pattern of dark vertical stripes on reddish-orange fur with lighter underparts...

5 - Leopard

Leopard

The leopard , Panthera pardus, is a member of the Felidae family and the smallest of the four "big cats" in the genus Panthera, the other three being the tiger, lion, and jaguar. The leopard was once distributed across eastern and southern Asia and Africa, from Siberia to South Africa, but its...

4 - Wolf

3 - Dog

Dog

The domestic dog is a domesticated form of the gray wolf, a member of the Canidae family of the order Carnivora. The term is used for both feral and pet varieties. The dog may have been the first animal to be domesticated, and has been the most widely kept working, hunting, and companion animal in...

2 - Cat

Cat

The cat , also known as the domestic cat or housecat to distinguish it from other felids and felines, is a small, usually furry, domesticated, carnivorous mammal that is valued by humans for its companionship and for its ability to hunt vermin and household pests...

1 - Rat

Rat

Rats are various medium-sized, long-tailed rodents of the superfamily Muroidea. "True rats" are members of the genus Rattus, the most important of which to humans are the black rat, Rattus rattus, and the brown rat, Rattus norvegicus...

Pieces are placed onto the corresponding pictures of the animals which are invariably shown on the Jungle board.

Movement

Players alternate moves with White moving first. During their turn, a player must move. Each piece moves one square horizontally or vertically (not diagonally). A piece may not move to its own den.

There are special rules related to the water squares:

• The Rat is the only animal that is allowed to go onto a water square. However, some players prefer Dog is also allowed to go onto a water square, which makes it easier to capture the opponent's Rat in the water.
• The Rat may not capture the Elephant or another Rat on land directly from a water square. Some players prefer Dog is also allowed to go onto a water square. In such case, the Dog may not capture the Rat on Land directly from a Water Square.
• The Rat may attack the opponent Rat in the water if both pieces are in the water. Some players prefer Dog is also allowed to go onto a water square, which makes it easier to capture the opponent's Rat in the water. The Dog may attack the opponent's Rat in the water if the Dog piece is in the water.
• A Rat on land may not attack a Rat in the water.
• The Lion and Tiger pieces may jump over a river by moving horizontally or vertically. They move from a square on one edge of the river to the next non-water square on the other side. Such a move is not allowed if there is a Rat(whether or not friendly or enemy) on any of the intervening water squares. Some players prefer Dog is also allowed to go onto a water square. The Dog(friendly or enemy) on any of the intervening Water Square may also prevent the Lion and the Tiger from jumping over the River. The Lion and Tiger are allowed to capture enemy pieces by such jumping moves.

Capturing

Animals capture the opponent pieces by "eating" them. A piece can capture any enemy piece which has the same or lower rank, with the following exceptions:

• The Rat may kill (capture) the Elephant. Many published versions of the game say this is done by the Rat crawling in the Elephant's ear and gnawing at his brains. As stated above, the Rat may not capture the Elephant from a water square. The powers of the Rat resemble those of the Spy in Stratego
  Stratego
  Stratego is a board game featuring a 10×10 square board and two players with 40 pieces each. Pieces represent individual officers and soldiers in an army. The objective of the game is to either find and capture the opponent's Flag or to capture so many of the opponent's pieces that he/she cannot...
  
  .
• The player may capture any enemy piece in one of the player's trap squares regardless of rank.

Variations

There are some commonly played variations to the rules official published by the board/pieces maker as follows:

• The Elephant may not kill the Rat under any circumstances. This is because a rat is able to dodge the attack of an elephant because of its size.

• Some play the game with the Lion and Tiger being equally strong, and they can kill each other. This is the more modern version.

• The Leopard may jump over the river horizontally but not vertically (due to its lesser strength than the Tiger or Lion). It cannot jump over a rat in the river though.

• All traps are universal. If an animal goes into a trap in its own region, an opponent animal is able to capture it regardless of rank difference if it is beside the trapped animal. The rules for being on one's own trap do vary.

• A variant has the Wolf replaced by the Fox, in which case the Dog is stronger than the Fox.

• There are variations in which the Lion is not able to jump across the river horizontally.

• The rules for the Rat to capture either the Elephant or Rat from or into the water do vary.

• There is a simplified version called Animal Checkers, which has no traps or rivers, and only the Rat, Dog, Tiger and Elephant.

• Amongst the many examples shown on boardgamegeek there is at least one where the pieces are designed so that they are no longer visible by the opponent (mounted as a card on a stand like Stratego pieces). This apparently minor change alters the game from one of stochastic 'full-knowledge' to one of partial-knowledge.

• There is a version of the game that limits which animals (levels 1 - 4) can move on to the trap squares.

• Some players prefer the Dog may also move onto a Water Square. This is because dogs are good swimmers.

External links

• "Shou Dou Qi: The Battle of Animals" from The Chess Variant Pages