Hello all, it's almost year's end and I wish everyone here a very happy 2009. I want to thank Richard in particular for a great site, and for implementing Havannah. Now my friend Ed van Zon and I have another suggestion: Emergo.
Just to tentatively probe the idea, I've published the about down here:
We I did not invent Emergo, we discovered it.
Quintessential
Quintessential games lead a basic principle of placement and capture to its logical conclusion - one can only follow and see where it leads, whether illustrious like Go or modest like Checkers. Emergo is the quintessential implementation of a mechanism of movement and capture called 'column checkers'. Its name is derived from the Latin 'Luctor et Emergo', the motto of the Dutch province of Zeeland, and meaning 'I wrestle and emerge'.
Its origin is a really bad game called Bashne, invented some two centuries ago in Russia. The great Emanuel Lasker improved on it with his game Lasca. But Lasker made a classic mistake: he left a great idea where he found it. It has affected the game's reputation in a negative way.
To the lobbyists Lasca was 'obviously superior to Checkers' - they ignored its contamination. To the skeptics it was too erratic to be taken seriously - they ignored it altogether. As a result the potential of the concept has been grossly neglected.
Column checkers - for dire want of a better name - suffers from a 'weird checkers' image. As it turns out, Emergo is so wide that Chess, Draughts and Go simultaneously drown in it in terms of the number of possible positions. Yet it has less material than any of them. Its inner logic is as flawless as one would expect. Its strategy is basically simple but its tactics are fabulous, both in variety and depth.
However, the small player base for 3-dimensional games doesn't work in its favor.
The game is a joint effort with Ed van Zon, who got me interested in Lasca's way of capture in the first place.
A hexagonal variant, eventually turned out to be intrinsically flawed, ironically due to the very properties that make the square version such a great game. It is featured in R. Wayne Schmittberger's 'New Rules for Classic Games' (John Wiley & Sons, Inc. New York - ISBN 0-471-53621-0) and in Games Magazine (February 1986).
Of course Emergo can be played at MindSports, as indeed Havannah and many other games - we noticed however how much more 'player friendly' Little Golem has been styled. This, as much as the game's initial 'treshold', may have caused the relatively small player base. Havannah for instance is played rather massively here too, compared to MindSports :)
Cheers,
christian freeling
| 2008 February EinStein würfelt nicht! monthly cup is finished Winner: FatPhil Chess * Go * DVONN * StreetSoccer * ... and other board games |
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