Project 8x8 & 48 - #2 Dameo

In the coming weeks I’ll offer a few short reviews of what I see as the best games to be played on an 8x8 checkerboard with the added constraint you have only two sets of 24 pieces – basically you buy two matching common checker sets.

This is #2.

Dameo is a modern game which is most certainly related to checkers although this one from designer Christian Freeling uses linear movement which makes it a rather fresh approach even if it came out in 2000.

Dameo is of course played on an 8×8 checkerboard to fit this list with 18 pieces per player.

Each player's pieces are arranged so that the bottom three rows, from the perspective of the player, are filled eight in row one, six in the next, and four in the third, forming a distinctive trapezoid shape.

Pieces can only move forward, either straight ahead or diagonally.

Where this one diverges from typical checkers a line of men can advance as a group straight or diagonally forward.

This creates huge options each move, and adds a depth not achievable in traditional checker games.

Kings move like a queen in Chess, which again adds a fresh feel to Dameo, and long range capture potential.

That said there is a limitation. In Dameo men and kings capture orthogonally only, but Kings can capture at long range.

Capturing involves jumping over enemy pieces and removing them from the board. All captures in Dameo are orthogonal only. A man may capture an adjacent enemy piece, forwards, backwards, or sideways, by a jump to an empty square directly beyond the captured piece. 

Maximum capture is enforced.

In terms of checker family games Dameo is perhaps an illegitimate cousin of a sort, but it is also an amazing game, which flirts with being in the top-10 abstract strategy game created this millennium – a list I admit I waffle on rather regularly – but Dameo is always in the mix of thoughts.

Checker fans have to try this, and it is different enough even those not being a fan of Checkers should give Dameo a try – you might find a new favourite.