Merrills Journey

Sadly Nine Men's Morris is horrendously lacking in online material. For such a beautiful and complex game, this for me was the biggest disappointment when starting. For the only real active site on the game we have Rainer Rosenberger to thank at https://muehlespieler.de. This is quite an in depth dive into the game, from a strong player who is a regular on the tournament circuit. The site is in German, but these days easily translated with Google. Here you will find lots of information about the game, including computer players, information on the variants, tournaments, history of the game, and best of all exercises on how to play better. This is clearly the best part of the site and well worth downloading the free e book - or doing the exercises online. It should be noted though, that the material on the site is fairly old. Many of the programs no longer exists and it has not been updated in a while. Still, it is an excellent resource and a must read. The other place to go...

One of the big advantages of learning an abstract strategy game today as opposed to 20 years ago is that there are plenty of ways to play the game against a computer opponents. Just as in chess, checkers and backgmmon, there are no shortage of apps and computer challengers.  Having said that, one must be very careful. Quantity is definitely not quality in this case, and there are relatively few that are worthwhile playing any length of time. A good app or desktop program can gain you plenty of time in learning the game but the opposite is also true. Here, just like the post on online play I will cover just the basics. Where to start. The professional software and programs will come later. If you have a mobile device the place to start would be Mills by Lite Games. I will say right away, it is not the strongest of the bunch but, for beginners it is enough to get your teeth into. If you can regularly beat the very hard difficulty, then move on and get something else. The reason I cho...