Nine Men’s Morris
Place and move pieces on a board of three nested squares; line up three in a row and you remove one of your opponent’s pieces. Reduce them to two pieces, or leave them unable to move, to win. Play the computer through all three stages: placing, moving and flying.
Tap an empty point to place a piece.
You are Black. On board: Black 0, White 0 In hand: Black 9, White 9
How to play
Black and white each have nine pieces. First you take turns placing them on empty points; once all are placed, you move one piece at a time along a line to an adjacent empty point. Put three of your pieces in a row along a line (a mill) and you remove one of your opponent’s pieces. You must take a piece that is not in a mill (if all their pieces are in mills, any may be taken). When you are down to three pieces, you can fly to any empty point. Reduce your opponent to two pieces, or leave them with no legal move, to win. The same position three times is a draw. When you form a mill, tap the piece to remove. "Hint" and "Auto-play" are available too.
Learn more
During placement, where you put a piece shapes the whole game. A point on many lines (which gives more mill chances) is strong, while a corner with only two lines is hard to move. In the moving phase, a mill you can open and close again to capture a piece every time is a powerful setup. At "Strong", the computer scores positions by piece count, mills, lines that are one piece short of a mill, and how many moves each side has, and looks ahead for as long as its time budget allows. "Normal" looks three moves ahead; "Easy" mostly chooses at random. Here the same position three times counts as a draw so that a game cannot go on forever.