Nine Men's Morris — 2 Player

About Nine Men's Morris — 2 Player

Play Nine Men’s Morris with a friend on the same screen: take turns placing and moving blue and white pieces, make mills to remove each other’s pieces, and see who is left standing. A rematch swaps who goes first.

Nine Men’s Morris is a strategy game that is well over two thousand years old. Each player has nine pieces and a board of three nested squares. Line up three of your pieces on one line to make a <strong>mill</strong>, and you get to remove one of your opponent’s pieces. Get them down to two pieces, or leave them with no move, and you win.

Also called: mill game, merels, morris.

How to play Nine Men's Morris

1. Blue moves first. Against the computer, choose 1st to play blue or 2nd to play white, and pick Easy, Medium or Hard.
2. Placing: take turns putting one piece on any empty point (a dot where lines meet) until each of you has placed all nine. The pieces waiting to be placed are shown above the board.
3. Moving: once all eighteen are placed, a turn is sliding one of your pieces along a line to a neighbouring empty point. Tap a piece to pick it up (its possible destinations get yellow dots), then tap where it should go.
4. Mills: whenever a move makes three of your pieces in a straight line, you have made a mill. The mill is marked in yellow and you remove one of your opponent’s pieces: tap one of the wobbling pieces.
5. Flying: a player down to three pieces may move a piece to any empty point, not just a neighbouring one. You can turn this off in the toolbar.
6. You lose when you have only two pieces left, or when it is your turn and none of your pieces can move.

Rules

• A mill is three pieces on one of the sixteen lines of three: the sides of each square and the four short lines joining the squares at their midpoints. Corners on different squares are not connected.
• You may not remove a piece that is part of a mill, unless every one of your opponent’s pieces is in a mill; then any piece may go.
• Making two mills with one move still removes only one piece.
• Opening a mill (moving a piece out of it) and closing it again on a later turn counts as a new mill every time.
• The game is a draw if the same position (same pieces, same player to move) comes up for the third time, or after 50 moves in a row (both players together) without a mill.
• Undo against the computer takes back your move and its reply; with a friend it takes back one move. A rematch swaps who goes first.

Nine Men's Morris tips and strategy

• Don’t rush to make mills while placing. Pieces on the middle square’s midpoints have four neighbours and can join the most lines; corner points have only two.
• Keep your pieces able to move. A player who places everything in clumps can be blocked in completely as soon as the moving phase starts, and a blocked player loses.
• Watch for your opponent’s two in a line with an empty third point, and block it, especially while placing, when any empty point can be filled.
• The strongest shape is a running mill (a “double mill”): a piece that slides back and forth between two mills, closing one each turn and removing a piece every move.
• With three pieces and flying on, you are dangerous: you can close a mill anywhere. Against a flier, never leave two open lines of two at the same time.