This is the second entry in my "classic games" list. If you're interested, please check out the first review, of mancala, here. Thanks for your patience with the gap in entries, but the good news is that I plan to have several new reviews up on the site today, so look forward to lots of fun new board game content coming your way!
Nine men's morris is perhaps not as well known in the U.S. as mancala, but it also offers a very fun play experience. This is another old game – possibly ancient. The wikipedia article dedicated to the game explains that it is thought by some historians to date back to Ancient Rome, with a possible reference to the game in Ovid's Ars Armatoria (apparently as a go-to for meeting your soulmate!) but it is hard to pin to a single date. According to Parlett's History of Board Games by David Parlett (a delightfully nerdy book for those of you interested in learning about the worldwide development of games): "the game appears scratched in the stone of many English cathedrals and abbeys from the Norman conquest on" (p. 118).
A picture of my nine men's morris board. My copy was a Christmas gift and comes from an artist on Etsy,
but I've played it with various family copies – it's a very easy game to come by.
I should begin by mentioning that this game is a family tradition. My grandfather taught it to my father, who taught it to me. I, in turn, have often played it against my grandfather, and, more frequently than not, lost. My father and grandfather are German, and learned the game there, where it is called "Mühle", or "mill". This name comes from the objective of the game: to form three-piece sequences, called mills.
The game is a two-player game played in three phases. First, the setup phase. One of the fascinating aspects of this game comes from the fact that it begins even before you move your first piece; even the placement of your pieces is rich with strategy. You play a piece anywhere on the board, keeping in mind that when you form a row or column (not a diagonal set) of three pieces, you capture an opponent's piece. This phase is full of desperate placements as both players try to stop each other from forming mills. It's not uncommon for a passerby to hear the familiar "arghh!" when one player doesn't see another's mill-forming strategy until it's too late.
By playing this piece, I form a mill, and I get to capture a white piece.
Once this nail-biting first phase is over, it's on to the main course. In the second phase of the game, players slide their pieces along one space (or dot), attempting to deconstruct and close mills by sliding pieces in and out of formation. This continues until one player has only three stones left.
In my family, there is something of a household word associated with this phase, which I thought was just our thing, but according to its Parlett's History of Board Games entry, it turns out it's actually quite a common term in Germany. The word is "Zwickmühle" – which the book translates as "pinch mill" – and refers to a situation in which a player has two sets of two pieces and can move a fifth piece between them continuously, leaving the other player no room to move and capturing their pieces right, left, and center. It's a devastating setup, but very hard to pull off. Parlett explains that the word has actually gone on to refer more generally to a kind of "Catch-22" in the German language (p. 119). What's more, setups like this in this game have their own terms in Iceland and in Yorkshire (p. 119)!
A demonstration of a "Zwickmühle" in action.
When one player has only three stones left, the game reaches its third and final phase (which is actually optional and doesn't exist in many versions): they can "fly". This enables them to leap to any unoccupied space and essentially means that they're not out of the game until the very end. It means that the game can shift dramatically near its conclusion. Just another example of this game's fascinating strategic possibilities. But like each of the games I've reviewed, it's very easy to learn. You simply play all your pieces, then move them one space at a time until you've stopped the other player from forming mills.
It should be easy to find this game either in a collection of classic board games or on its own. You can buy all kinds of editions, including a nice little portable travel edition, which you can find at Target. But this game has been carved into surfaces for at least hundreds of years, so you can easily draw the board on a piece of paper and use playing pieces (distinct poker pieces, coins, rocks, sticks, or anything you can divide into two sets of nine) yourself. Definitely give it a go! You can have a game on Board Game Arena here. If you want to play it the way I described, turn on "Wild/flying on final stone".
I hope this review was helpful and interesting! I've been starting to get recommendations for other reviews, which is fantastic! The games requested are coming soon, but please keep the recommendations coming in the comments below.
Thank you all and happy board gaming!
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