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Mill
Board · Classics · plays in your browser, no download
Nine pieces each, twenty-four points, and one rule: get three in a line and you take one of his off the board. It is the oldest game here that still feels modern, and it is almost certainly the most widely carved game in history.
Where it comes from
Nobody sold this game. People cut it into whatever they were sitting on. Morris boards have been found scratched into the stone of Roman buildings, into the cloister seats and the steps of medieval cathedrals across Europe, into the decks of ships and the roofing slates of houses. A great many of them were made by people who were supposed to be working at the time, which is a pleasant thing to know about the Middle Ages.
The name in English is nine men’s morris, and the morris has nothing to do with dancing: it is probably from Latin merellus, a counter or a token. Italian calls it filetto, German Mühle, the mill — because a line of three that you can open and close again, taking a piece every time, grinds your opponent down exactly like one.
It was solved in the early nineties by Ralph Gasser, who worked out every position: played perfectly by both sides, nine men’s morris is a draw. For a game that has been played for something like two thousand years on four continents, that is a respectable verdict — it means nobody wasted their time.
How to play
The game has three phases, and most beginners lose in the first one without noticing.
| Placing | Take turns putting your nine pieces on empty points. |
|---|---|
| Moving | Once all are placed, slide one piece along a line to an adjacent empty point. |
| The mill | Three of yours in a line — a mill — and you remove one enemy piece. |
| Protected | You may not take a piece that is itself in a mill, unless every enemy piece is. |
| Flying | Down to three pieces and you may jump to any empty point. |
| Losing | Two pieces left, or no legal move. |
The double mill
The move that decides most games is the double mill: two lines that share a piece, arranged so that moving that one piece out of the first mill closes the second. Open, close, open, close — a piece a turn, every turn, and your opponent cannot stop it without an immediate threat of his own. Everything in the placing phase is really an argument about who gets to build one.
Three things that help
Take the four middle points of the sides. Each sits on more lines than a corner does, and in the moving phase it has more neighbours. Mobility, not mills, is what the placing phase is for.
Do not rush the first mill. A mill made early, in a place that cannot be reopened, buys you one piece and costs you three that can no longer move usefully.
Count his free squares. Losing by having no legal move is not a rare accident — against a good player it is the plan.