Nine Men's Morris

Nine Men's Morris is a two-player strategy board game in which players place and move pieces to form rows of three, capturing an opponent’s pieces.

Placement phase: The opening phase in which players alternately place their pieces on vacant board points. Each placement can complete a mill or prepare pieces for later movement.
Graph theory: The mathematical study of structures made from vertices connected by edges. The board can be modeled as points joined by legal movement paths.
Roman board games: Games played on boards in the Roman world, known from texts, artifacts, and marked surfaces. Roman examples provide early evidence for games related to Morris.
Solved game: A game whose outcome under perfect play is known from every legal starting position. Computer analysis established the result of Nine Men's Morris with perfect play.
Three Men's Morris: A smaller Morris-family game in which each player has three pieces and places and moves them on a compact board. Its reduced board and piece count create a much shorter game.
Movement phase: The phase in which players move pieces along board lines to adjacent vacant points. After all pieces are placed, movement replaces placement as the main way to form mills.
Game state: A complete description of a game's position and other information needed to determine legal moves. Piece locations and the phase together determine legal moves in Nine Men's Morris.
Medieval Europe: The period and societies of Europe between antiquity and the early modern era. Morris boards appeared in medieval settings, including carved church surfaces.
Retrograde analysis: A method that determines positions by reasoning backward from known terminal outcomes. Researchers used backward analysis to classify endgame positions.
Twelve Men's Morris: A Morris-family variant in which each player has twelve pieces and uses a larger board. The extra pieces and board lines produce a different tactical density.

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