Strategy & Tactics

[The Entering Stage]
[Basic Tactics]

Cornerstone of all Emergo strategy is getting a few strong pieces rather than a lot of weak ones. Now ironically you cannot do that yourself: only your opponent can stack up your men, and he does so by capturing them. Having your men captured is great! The more the better! But .... you must be sure to liberate them afterwards. To put it simple, and disregarding the entering stage for a moment, Emergo strategy is:

Feed, Decapitate, Bury!

Feed as many men as you possibly can to an opponent's weak piece, preferably one that already holds prisoners. But always make sure that you can decapitate it, liberating a very strong piece. Now you start to bury the opponent's men under this piece, using your tactical ingenuity to get it done.

There's a certain moment in which a piece becomes a liability. Its easy to see that six under six means a win in virtually any situation: you can't remove the cap with what's left. But how about five under two? This would depend, if not on tactics, on the nature of the position. Can the piece retreat while others wear down would be attackers? Then its a nice catch that may even play an offensive role in a small caps endgame. But if the piece gets drawn into a combination, this usually means that more prisoners are liberated than the number you tried to tuck away in the first place, because the piece is fed in the process of its decapitation. Things may look safe, but tactics are diabolical!


The Entering Stage.

[Top]
[Basic Tactics]

If neither attacks in this stage, the moving stage starts flat and with white to move. White now is the first player in a position to unconditionally start a feeding combination. And with a board full of weak pieces a good player may find ways to shuffle eight or nine of his men under a doomed guard, and suddenly black finds himself facing Godzilla. A good player may even go so far as to simultaneously sacrifice the one or two stray weak pieces he still might have, to prevent black from using them likewise. This is called 'cleaning up'. Next the giant black involuntary created may start ravaging among his men very much like a vacuum cleaner.

This is not what black would seek.

There are three strategies for black to alter the above scenario:

The first two are mutually exclusive. [1] implies a series of captures in which white captures more often than black. But since black must realize this scenario by attacking white first, he is at a disadvantage to begin with.
[2] is easier to realize, though by no means easy. It implies a series of captures in which black captures more often (not necessarily more men) than white. This is more in the line of a strategy in which black attacks.
[3] is basically a 'flat', that is non-attacking, strategy. There are 36 cells available for entering 2x12 men. This may seem sufficient, but since a player who is not being attacked may not create a position in which the opponent must capture, things can get pretty crowded towards the end of the entering stage. A nice example can be seen in game 6 of a match between Ed van Zon and Christiaan Freeling, in which white (CF) disregarded this possibility because several captures had already occured, creating 'enough room'. Big mistake! In this game Ed clearly illustrates that [2] and [3] are not mutually exclusive.
Having noted that, it will be clear that they point in different strategic directions nonetheless, and with [1] being even more difficult to realize, black faces a strategic dilemma.

In 'over the board' play, the value of a white initiative after black has entered the shadowpiece, is limited by the sheer length and complexity of Emego combinations. Not so in correspondence play, where combinations can be scrutinized to the bone. In these games white's supremacy is problematic. See also Why is e-mail Emergo usually won by white? and Ron Jacobsen's comments.

Basically a black attack should have one of the following consequences:

You can see attacks to create a shadowpiece succeed in game 1 and game 2, fail in game 4. Eventually it didn't matter one way or the other: black lost each game to an unworldly combination, typical for e-mail Emergo, right after his shadowpiece was entered.


Basic Tactics.

[Top]
[The Entering Stage]

All tactics revolve around the basic strategy formulated at the top. Special attention should be given to:

[1] [2] [3] [4]

[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10]

[1] [2]

[1] [2] [3]


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