The background of Nine Mens Morris

The Latin word merellus means 'gamepiece', which may have been corrupted in English to 'morris' while miles is Latin for soldier.

Nine Men's Morris is an old English game that goes back to least to the Roman Empire. Evidence has been found for the game in ancient Rome and possibly Ancient Egypt. More recently, references by Shakespeare have given it an image of the archetypal medieval board game.  Like most of the best games, the rules are simple, the objective being to capture opposing pieces by forming lines of 3 (called a mill). It is an under-rated game of skill that is easy to learn but sometimes requiring deep thought - a bit like grown-up noughts and crosses.

Preparation and Objective

The basic aim is to make "mills" - vertical or horizontal lines of three in a row along a line. Every time this is achieved, an opponent's piece is removed, the overall objective being to reduce the number of your opponent's pieces to less than three or to render the opponent unable to play. Begin on an empty board. 

Basic Play

Player's toss a coin to decide who will play white - white moves first and has a slight advantage as a result. Play is in two phases. To begin with, players take turns to play a piece of their own colour on any unoccupied point until all eighteen pieces have been played. After that, play continues alternately but each turn consists of a player moving one piece along a line to an adjacent point (no jumping and no diagonals). During both of these phases, whenever a player achieves a mill, that player immediately removes from the board one piece belonging to the opponent that does not form part of a mill. If all the opponents’ pieces form mills then an exception is made and the player is allowed to remove any piece. It is only upon the formation of a mill that a piece is captured but a player will often break a mill by moving a piece out of it and then, in a subsequent turn, play the piece back again, thus forming a new mill and capturing another piece.

Captured pieces are never replayed onto the board and remain captured for the remainder of the game. The game is finished when a player loses either by being reduced to two pieces or by being unable to move.

DIY Project

Firstly you need to complete the finishing of the playing board and the player pieces. You could sandpaper the board ready to receive your chosen finish - stain, varnish, or wax. Then If you have a steady hand you could use a fine fibre tipped pen to mark around the lines. BE SURE NOT TO LINE IN ANY DIAGONALS. It is not important to mark these lines if you prefer not to, as they are clear to see. Now you need to turn your attention to the player pieces. You need 9 in one colour and 9 in another, usually black and white, but it is not important. Colouring these pieces is an ideal job for the junior partner in this project. You will notice that the ‘dowel’ for the playing pieces if standard ‘jointing dowel’. We are using these as it means there is no cutting required. One possible issue with them though is that they are designed to ‘swell up’ when they come in contact with water (actually glue) so it might be best to seal them with varnish before using any water paints to colour them. You will notice there are a couple of extra dowels in case you misplace one.

Tags 

Geometric Shapes Puzzle,  Wooden puzzle,  Plywood puzzle,  MDF puzzle, Martin Reid,  BespokeWoodSolutions,  Bespoke Wood Solutions,  DIY Home Project Range,  Wooden Toys, Kids Puzzle, Childrens Puzzle