Nine Men's Morris
One of the oldest board games there is, also called Mill and Merrills. Each of you has nine men, and the whole game is making three in a row: every time you do, one of theirs comes off the board. The rules are short. A few of them surprise people the first time, and those are written out below.
The rules
- The board is three squares, one inside the next, joined at the middle of each side. Men stand where lines meet or turn, which makes twenty-four points.
- You each have nine men. White goes first. To begin with the board is empty, and you take turns placing one man at a time on any empty point.
- Three of your men in a row along a line is a mill. There are sixteen rows on the board that can be one. A row across the middle of the board, where there is no point, is not.
- The move that completes a mill takes one of your opponent's men off the board, and you choose which. It is part of the same move: place or slide your man, then press the man you are taking.
- When all eighteen men are down, a turn is sliding one of your men along a line to the next point, if that point is empty. A man cannot jump over another.
- You can open a mill by sliding a man out of it and close it again by sliding him back. Every time it closes, it takes a man.
The ones that surprise people
- A man in a mill is safe. While your opponent has any man standing outside a mill, you cannot take one that is in a mill, and the page will not let you press it. Only when every man they have is in a mill can you take one of those.
- One man that completes two mills at once still takes one man, not two.
- When you are down to three men, your men fly: on your turn you may move one to ANY empty point, not just the next one. The two of you are judged separately, so one side can be flying while the other is not.
How a game ends
- You win by leaving your opponent with two men. With two they can never make a mill again.
- You also win if it is their turn and not one of their men can move. That cannot happen to a side that is flying.
- If the same position comes round three times with the same side to move, the game is a draw.
- THIS SITE ALSO DRAWS A GAME THAT IS GOING NOWHERE. If one hundred and twenty moves pass, counting both sides, without anybody closing a mill, the game is a draw. That is a rule of this site: the rules of the game as they are usually printed have no draw at all, and two careful players could otherwise slide men back and forth for ever. The page warns you when you are half way there.
- A game also ends if somebody resigns, or if a move deadline passes without a move: the deadline is set when the game is made, and running out of time loses it.
Worth knowing before you start
- Where you place your men matters more than it looks. The four points in the middle of the sides of the middle square each touch four others, and the twelve corners touch only two.
- Two of your men in a row with the third point empty is a threat your opponent has to answer. Two such threats at once and they can only answer one.
- The strongest thing you can build is a man that slides between two rows, closing one mill as it leaves the other, so that every move you make takes a man.
The game is at least as old as the Roman Empire and is played under many names: Mill, Merrills, Merels, Muhle. Whether a side with three men may fly varies from one rulebook to the next; here it may.