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Nine men's morris against the computer

Nine men's morris – known in Swedish as Kvarn – is a classic strategy game for two. Place your nine pieces, move them along the lines and form mills of three in a row to remove the computer's pieces. Choose a level, decide who starts and play right in your browser.

How to play

Nine men's morris is played on a board of three squares, one inside the other, joined by lines through the middle of each side. That gives 24 points where pieces can stand. Each player has nine pieces; you play the light ones and the computer the dark ones. The game has two phases. First you take turns placing one piece at a time on any empty point – the small dots next to the board show how many pieces each player still has in hand. When all eighteen pieces have been placed, you instead move one piece at a time along a line to a neighbouring empty point. Tap a piece to select it and tap one of the marked points to move it.

Three of your own pieces in a row along the same line form a mill. Whenever you place or move a piece so that it completes a mill, you remove one of the opponent's pieces – the pieces you may take are marked with a red ring. A piece that is part of a mill may not be taken, unless all of the opponent's pieces are in mills. A strong tactic is to open a mill by moving one piece out of it and close it again on a later move, because each time it closes you get to remove another piece.

When a player has only three pieces left, they may fly: move a piece to any empty point on the board, not just a neighbouring one. You can switch this rule off. You lose if you are reduced to two pieces or cannot make a legal move. The game is drawn if the same position occurs three times, or if both players make 50 moves each without anyone forming a mill. Easy plays loosely, Medium looks a few moves ahead and Hard searches for about one second per move. You can undo your last move, and your wins, losses and draws are saved per level in your browser.

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