🪙 Nine Men's Morris
🎲 Board · 0 playsNine Men's Morris
Set down nine men, close a line of three, and take a rival piece off the board.
About Nine Men's Morris
A two-player strategy game of considerable age, cut into Roman roof tiles and the stone benches of medieval cloisters. Play falls into two stages: each side sets out nine men across the board's twenty-four points, then moves them one step at a time along the marked lines. Three of your men in a line forms a mill and entitles you to remove one of your opponent's. The game turns on double mills — an arrangement where a single man opens one line as it closes another, taking a piece every turn — so the placing stage is really about building towards that shape rather than blocking whatever the opponent tried last.
How to Play
Stage one: take turns setting a man down on any vacant point until all nine are out. Stage two: slide a man along a line to an adjacent point. Three in a line is a mill — remove one enemy man. Reduced to three men, you may jump to any free point. Win by cutting your opponent to two men, or by leaving them no legal move.
💡 Tips & Strategy
The whole game is about mills you can open and close repeatedly. Two pieces arranged so that moving one back and forth forms a mill every second turn — a running mill — removes an opponent piece every time, and nothing else compares.
During placement, take the intersections that belong to two lines. Those points contribute to twice as many potential mills and are the most contested squares on the board.
Mobility beats material in the middle game. A player with more pieces but no legal moves loses, so blocking your opponent's movement is as valuable as removing a piece.
When removing a piece, take the one that is about to complete a mill or that unblocks your own line. Taking whichever piece looks loose is the common error — the right removal is usually the one that changes what happens next turn.