Nine Men's Morris

The basics

Placing: for the first nine turns, tap an empty point to put a piece down; forming a mill immediately asks you to remove an opponent piece. Tap one of the highlighted enemy pieces — a piece inside an enemy mill is protected while the AI still has a piece outside a mill. Moving: after all pieces are placed, tap one of your pieces and then a free point joined to it by a line. Flying: with exactly three pieces left you may move to any empty point. A mill is three of your pieces in a straight line on any of the three squares or the four spokes, and one point can belong to two mills. Undo steps back over one of your actions together with the AI's reply. Hint asks the hard AI for its move, highlights it and counts itself. The level chip changes the search depth (easy 2, medium 3, hard 4); the colour chip swaps sides, and playing black lets the AI open. Your win/loss/draw record and the move count stay in this browser only. Add ?level=easy, ?side=black or ?seed=7 to the URL to pin a game.

Objective:

Trap the AI. Both sides start with nine pieces. Three of your pieces on one line make a mill, and a mill lets you remove one opponent piece, so the aim is to keep forming mills while denying the AI the same. After the nine placing turns you slide one piece per turn along a line, and with exactly three pieces left you may fly to any empty point. You win when the AI has fewer than three pieces left or no legal move; you lose the same way. This build calls a draw after 50 actions without a capture.

Controls:

Tap or click a point: an empty point places a piece, your own piece selects it, and a highlighted point either moves there or removes that piece. Mouse and touch work the same way. Buttons: Undo, Hint, the level chip (Easy / Medium / Hard), the colour chip (White / Black), Restart and Rules. Keyboard: U undo, H hint, R restart, Esc closes the rules. Every button is at least 26 px tall and the board scales to the stage on both the 348x261 phone frame and the 894x670 desktop frame.