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.
- Pieces always start out at their strongest.
Involvement in the action means an increasing number of prisoners under a decreasing cap.
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!
[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:
- [1] Switch the colour of the shadowpiece.
- [2] Increase the size of his own shadowpiece.
- [3] Force white to attack in the entering stage.
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:
-
If white should block, and the blocking man does attack another black man,
then black can take the initiative because he is free to feed.
-
If white does not or cannot block, his entering will result in at least one capture.
If it stops at that, black's shadowpiece has increased by one man, which is good.
He also has at least one prisoner under a single cap. In a later stage that may be
more of a liability than an advantage.
If the attack results in a series of captures, black's advantage lies, if not in capturing
one time less, in capturing more often, rather than more
men. In fact: the less men are captured with each single capture, the better, because a
single cap piece is a liability and the more so if it carries more prisoners.
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.
[Top]
[The Entering Stage]
All tactics revolve around the basic strategy formulated at the top.
Special attention should be given to:
-
Leapfrogging in general: who captures
how many times and who has the move when capture comes to a standstill.
The absolute basics are illustrated in two-piece endgames
in which composition and opposition play the key roles.
With more pieces interacting, the complexity of capturing sequences soon becomes
too dazzling to allow specific advise, as can be seen in any of the
problems included in this tutor.
-
The seesaw: forcing the opponent to capture to and fro over a piece,
while arranging, if possible, his funeral. Here are some examples taken from the
problems:
[1]
[2]
[3]
[4]
-
Roundabout capture: arranging the opponent's pieces into a
triangle or any configuration allowing roundabout capture, and decapitating the whole in
a single sweep. Here are some examples taken from the problems:
[1]
[2]
[3]
[4]
[5]
[6]
[7]
[8]
[9]
[10]
-
Here are two more examples taken from the problems,
combining a seesaw and roundabout capture:
[1]
[2]
-
The boomerang a 3-piece round dance leading to the stunning
draw by 3-fold described in the rules.
Here are some examples taken from the problems:
[1]
[2]
[3]
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