An ancient classic for two players: place your pieces on the 24 points of the board and try to line up three in a row to form a mill. Every mill lets you remove one of your opponent's pieces, until they are down to two pieces or cannot move. Easy to learn, full of traps to discover.
Goal: Form mills — three of your pieces in a row along a line of the board — to remove your opponent's pieces, until they are down to two pieces or cannot move.
The board has 24 points where lines meet: three squares, one inside the other, joined by four lines through the middle of their sides. Two points are adjacent when they are neighbours on the same line.
Each player has 9 pieces (12 in the twelve-piece variant). White moves first. Any three consecutive points on one line can form a mill; the board has 16 such lines.
Players take turns placing one of their pieces on an empty point. While pieces are being placed, the ones already on the board do not move. When both players have placed all their pieces, the moving phase begins, again with White to move.
Players take turns sliding one of their pieces one step along a line to an adjacent empty point. You cannot jump over other pieces, and you can only move along the drawn lines.
Whenever you line up three of your pieces on one line — by placing or by moving a piece — you have formed a mill and immediately remove one of your opponent's pieces of your choice from the board. This works in every phase of the game.
Pieces that belong to one of your opponent's mills are protected: you may only take one if all of your opponent's pieces are in mills. If a single move closes two mills at once, you still remove only one piece.
In the moving phase you can open one of your own mills by moving a piece away and close it again on your next turn; each time you close it you remove another piece. The most feared set-up is the “double mill”: two mills arranged so that a single piece swinging back and forth closes one of them on every move, capturing a piece every turn.
When a player is down to exactly 3 pieces (and has none left to place), their pieces may “fly”: on each turn they can move one of them to any empty point of the board, however far away. Flying can be switched off in the options.
You win by reducing your opponent to 2 pieces (pieces still waiting to be placed count as well) or by leaving them without a move: a player who cannot move any piece on their turn loses — even right after the last piece has been placed.
The game is a draw if the same position, with the same player to move, occurs for the third time, or if 50 moves by each player pass in the moving phase without anyone closing a mill.
Pieces: with 12 pieces each (“Twelve Men's Morris”, also known as Morabaraba) the board also has four diagonal lines joining the corners of the squares. You can slide along them and form mills on them as well (20 possible mills). If all 24 points are occupied at the end of the placing phase and nobody has captured anything, no one can move and the game is a draw.
Flying with 3 pieces: if switched off, a player with 3 pieces still moves only one step along the lines.
While placing, don't rush to form a mill: take the junctions with 3 or 4 lines so that your pieces stay free to move, and watch your opponent's pairs. When moving, mobility is everything: blocked pieces are useless, and a player who cannot move loses.