Nine Mens Morris or Mills by Creative Crafthouse

Equipment: The game is played on a board consisting of three concentric squares connected by lines from the middle of each of the inner square's sides to the middle of the corresponding outer square's side. Pieces are played on the corner points and on the points where lines intersect so there are 24 playable points. There are 9 pieces each of two different colors

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

Basic Play: Player's toss a coin to decide who will play first. The first move has a slight advantage. Play is in two phases. To begin with, players take turns to play a piece of their own color 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. 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 opponent's 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. The game is finished when a player is reduced to two pieces or is unable to move.

Handmade by Creative Crafthouse in Hudson, Florida.

At Creative Crafthouse, we pride ourselves on offering high-quality, handcrafted wood mind-bender and brainteaser puzzles and games. We know that logic, reasoning, and analytical skills are all vital to cognitive development. The earlier your child or student can hone these skills, the better off he or she will be in life. No matter what your age developing problem solving skills,  patience, and determination are important qualities to cultivate.

We know that nearly all people enjoy an interesting challenge and will work at something for hours on end to find the answer. So we do our best to offer interesting, fun, sometimes magical and challenging puzzles with various degrees of difficulty and various types of challenges.  Many are our own design and some are historical designs that are unique to us.  Most are manufactured right here in our Hudson, Florida shop.  We have extensive laser skills along with CNC and traditional woodworking.  We are a small family business with 10 employees all striving for top quality and customer service.

Find more work from Creative Crafthouse here.