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Emergo Rules: Object & Capture
If there's mention of men and pieces, a man is single,
while a piece consists of a number of stacked men. If the difference doesn't matter,
a man may also be referred to as a piece, for instance 'the number of pieces on the board'.
Object
If a player has no piece left he loses the game.
The board is initially empty
- There are two players, black and white. Each initially has twelve men 'in hand'
- A 'piece' is a column of one or more men, composed in one of the
following ways:
- All white
- White with black prisoner(s)
- All black
- Black with white prisoner(s)
- The top man of a column determines its owner. The top men together are called
'the cap'
- Players move, and must move, in turn. White moves first.
A move may be:
- Entering a man
- Entering the shadowpiece
- Moving a piece
- Capturing one or more men
-
There are two phases: the entering phase and the
movement phase
- Capture is obligatory and has precedence in both phases
- A player captures the top man of an opponent's
piece on an adjacent square, by jumping the piece with his own piece, taking the top man along under it, and
landing on the square beyond, which must exist and be vacant for the capture to take place
- Majority capture precedes: if the capturing piece can
continue its course in a similar fashion in any direction except a 180 degrees turn,
it must do so, taking care beforehand to establish the route that brings the maximum number
of captured men. If there are more ways than one to meet this criterion, the player
is free to choose
- In a multiple capture the capturing piece may visit a square more than once as well as
jump a piece more than once!
The capture of a single man reduces the number of pieces on the board by one.
Since there is no mechanism to increase the number of pieces, a game of Emergo is
always 'climbing upward', that is, the number of pieces steadily decreases while their
size increases.
The next sequence is only to illustrate mechanics. It is not a game position because then white
would have to enter a man. White moves fe4 and black must take the majority capture hd4x
after which white, also under the obligation of majority capture, must capture clockwise.
Anti-clockwise capture would end on the square of origin and bring only four men.
As it is the move ends on c4: white liberates a piece of two and captures five men under a cap of three.
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