How to play
Nine Men's Morris
Also known as Mill, The Mill Game, Nine Man Morris, Merels, Merrills, Mühle, Ninepenny Marl, Cowboy Checkers
- 5M+ downloads
- On Google Play since 2017
- Free to play
What is Nine Men's Morris?
Nine Men's Morris is a two-player abstract strategy game played on a board of 24 points formed by three concentric squares joined by connecting lines. Each player commands nine pieces, called men, and scores by lining up three of them along a marked line to form a mill, which removes one of the opponent's men from the board. The game runs through three phases — placing, moving and, for a player reduced to three men, flying — and ends when one side can no longer form a mill or cannot move at all.
How to play Nine Men's Morris
Setting up the board
The board is three concentric squares connected by four short lines running through the midpoints of their sides, giving 24 playable points and 16 straight lines of three. Each player takes nine men of one colour and the board starts completely empty, with all men held in hand. Players decide who goes first and then alternate turns for the rest of the game.
The rules, step by step
- Phase 1 - placing: starting from an empty board, players alternate placing one man on any vacant point until all eighteen men are on the board.
- Forming a mill - three of your men on one of the board's marked lines of three - lets you immediately remove one of your opponent's men. This applies in every phase, and removed men are out of the game permanently.
- Removal convention: you may not take a man that is part of an opponent's mill unless every enemy man on the board is in a mill, in which case any of them may be taken.
- Phase 2 - moving: once all men are placed, a turn consists of sliding one man along a line to an adjacent empty point. There is no jumping, and no diagonal movement on the standard board.
- You may move a man out of a completed mill and later move it back to close the same mill again, taking another enemy man each time the mill closes. This is legal and is the engine behind most winning attacks.
- Phase 3 - flying: a player reduced to exactly three men may move a man from any point to any vacant point on the board. Flying is the standard rule, but some rulesets and digital versions let you switch it off.
How to win
You win in either of two ways: reduce your opponent to two men, since two men can never form a mill, or leave your opponent with no legal move on their turn because every one of their men is blocked. Draws are possible and normal - the game was solved by computer by Ralph Gasser in 1993, and perfect play by both sides ends in a draw.
Strategy tips
- Build a double mill, also called a running mill: two mills that share a point, so one man shuttles back and forth and closes a mill every single turn. An unanswered running mill simply wins.
- Take the four points at the middle of the middle square first. Each connects to four neighbours, while a corner point connects to only two, so those points give you the most mobility and the most mill options.
- Do not scatter your men during the placing phase. Men spread thinly look active but end up isolated and easy to block; prefer placements that threaten two different lines at once.
- Blocking is worth as much as building. Before you complete a mill, check whether your opponent has two men on a line with the third point empty.
- Mobility beats material more often than beginners expect. A player with more men can lose outright by having every man blocked, so keep empty points next to your own men.
Origin and history
Nine Men's Morris is genuinely ancient, and boards matching its pattern have been found cut into stone at sites across the Roman world, where researcher Friedrich Berger judges the game was probably well known.
A passage in Ovid's Ars Amatoria (c. 8 CE) describing a game in which each side has three pieces and the winner lines them up is often cited as an early reference to the morris family.
The frequently repeated claim that boards at the temple at Kurna in Egypt date to about 1400 BCE comes from R.C.
Bell, but it is disputed.
What is beyond doubt is the game's medieval popularity in England, where boards were carved into the cloister seats of cathedrals including Canterbury, Gloucester, Norwich and Salisbury, and where Shakespeare had Titania complain in A Midsummer Night's Dream that the nine men's morris is filled up with mud.
Frequently asked questions
A mill is three of your own men occupying one of the board's marked straight lines of three. The board has 16 such lines, and each point lies on exactly two of them. Every time you complete a mill you remove one enemy man from the board. Three men that merely look aligned but do not sit on a marked line are not a mill.
Nine each, which is where the name comes from - 18 men in total on a board of 24 points. Related games use different counts: Three Men's Morris uses three, Six Men's Morris six, Twelve Men's Morris twelve on a board with diagonals, and Lasker Morris ten.
Yes. Moving a man out of a mill and then moving it back to close the same mill again is legal under the standard rules, and each closure removes another enemy man. There is no limit on how many times the same mill may be opened and closed. A few house rulesets forbid immediately re-forming the mill you just broke.
Normally no. When you close a mill you must take a man that is not part of any opponent mill. The single exception is when every remaining enemy man sits in a mill - then you may take any of them.
When a player is reduced to exactly three men, that player may move a man from any point to any vacant point instead of only to an adjacent one. This is the standard rule and it applies only to the player who is down to three. It is also the most commonly disabled rule: many rulesets and digital versions offer a no-flying setting.
