About Nine Men's Morris
Nine Men's Morris (also called Mills) is a classic two-player abstract strategy board game with three distinct phases: placing, moving, and flying.
Your goal is to form mills (three in a row) to remove your opponent’s pieces. Control key intersections, create double mills, and manage mobility to turn small advantages into a win.
Play Nine Men's Morris vs AI
Nine Men's Morris has three phases, placing, moving and flying, and each one needs a different plan. Against the computer you can practise all three: safe placements, strong formations, and turning one mill into a series of them.
A common mistake is spending the placing phase chasing mills. Pieces that can still move once the board is full are often worth more than an early capture.
How to play Nine Men's Morris
Nine Men's Morris rules are easy to learn: place pieces, form mills (three in a row), and remove an opponent piece each time you complete a mill.
After all pieces are placed, you slide to adjacent points. When you drop to three pieces, you can fly to any empty point. Reduce your opponent to two pieces or block all moves to win.
Improve by learning strategy
Good Nine Men's Morris strategy is about structure and tempo. Prioritize the high-mobility intersections, keep your pieces connected, and watch for double-mill threats.
In the midgame, aim to restrict your opponent’s movement while preserving your own mobility. In the endgame, flying creates tactics, calculate carefully and avoid forced losses.
Frequently Asked Questions
A mill is three of your pieces arranged in a straight line along one of the board's lines. When you form a mill, you can remove one of your opponent's pieces from the board. You cannot remove a piece that is part of an opponent's mill unless all their pieces are in mills.
When a player is reduced to exactly 3 pieces, they enter the Flying phase. In this phase, instead of moving to adjacent points only, they can move (fly) to any empty point on the board. This gives them increased mobility to survive.
Yes, you can move a piece out of a mill and back in on the next turn to form the same mill again. This is a powerful tactic called 'running the mill' and allows you to remove an opponent's piece each time.
In traditional play, the first player has a slight advantage, so players often alternate who goes first across multiple games.
Yes, Nine Men's Morris has been computationally solved. With perfect play from both sides, the game ends in a draw. However, the game tree is complex enough that human players rarely achieve perfect play, making it enjoyable and challenging.
Similar games you might like
If you enjoy Nine Men's Morris, you will probably like these other abstract strategy board games.
Learn, Play, and Have Fun!
Ready to play Nine Men's Morris online? Start a match against the computer now. No signup, no friction.