Emergo (board game)

Emergo is an abstract strategy game created by Christian Freeling and Ed van Zon in 1986.

[2] The name comes from the motto of the Dutch province of Zeeland: Luctor et emergo meaning: "I wrestle and emerge".

Emergo, and all column checkers, differ from most draughts variants because of their unique method of capture.

White moves first and enters a man on any vacant dark square on the checkerboard, then turns alternate until all the pieces have been placed on the board.

Freeling had been vaguely familiar with Stapeldammen, although he knew it by the name of "Indian draughts", but had never been particularly interested in the concept.

[6] Stapeldammen is a column checkers game, alongside Bashni and Lasca, adapted to a 10×10 board and utilizes many familiar concepts from International draughts.

When a man reaches the other side of the board, because pieces are not promoted, it is forced to stay there unless it has a backwards capture available to it.

He eventually decided that the problem was not the lack of promotion, but the concept of an initial position and forward direction.

Freeling suggested an "entering phase" to van Zon and they played around with concept creating what they would later call an "all kings lasca".

Soon Ed had sneakily managed an anchorman waiting to capture a particular piece that he started feeding[a] around the board.

He eventually liberated a column of ten or thereabouts, and I was still stuck with a similar pile of men in hand – what later would be coined the 'shadowpiece'.

[6] R. Wayne Schmittberger praised Emergo in a book on variant rules for board games.