Pirate Mills - Game Rules

To play this variant of Nine Men's Morris, you can use the print-&-play form you'll find at the end of this post or use any standard Nine Men's board and pieces. As in the classic game, the goal is simply to reduce your opponent to two pieces, at which point the game is over and the winner declared. There is no 'placement phase' in Pirate Mills, so just set up the board in this fixed starting position (photo below). This is a carefully curated and play-tested opening setup to optimize strategy for two players.

T H E - R U L E S - F O R - P I R A T E - M I L L S

1. Black moves first, a privilege of pirates! Any black piece can be moved along a marked line to an adjacent spot. Then White moves one piece to an open spot. Players alternate moves in this manner. Any unoccupied point (formed by a line intersection) is a legal spot for a move. This is the 'movement phase' of the game.

2. If Black makes three-in-a-row along a line segment (this is called 'closing a mill') then Black removes any white piece from the board. If White 'closes a mill' then a black piece is removed.

3. When players are reduced to only three pieces, they switch to the 'jumpers phase' of the game and can then choose to leap to any open spot on the board. If they are reduced to two pieces, they lose and the other player is the winner.

4. Black Pirate special move: On any turn during 'movement phase', Black can choose to invoke a 'pirate jump' and leap to any open spot on the board. This can only be used once in a game.

Pirate Mills features asymmetric yet balanced play and a re-imagined theme for this classic game. It's a fresh new take on an ancient pastime-- Nine Men's Morris has been played for over 3000 years. Read the post that follows this one for additional Strategy information, or simply click and download this LETTER-SIZE PRINTABLE FILE to enjoy it.

Pirate Mills - Strategy

Here's a little back-story on this interesting variant of 9 Men's Morris which goes by the name Pirate Mills. In it, the traditional 'placement phase' of 9MM is not played, but the design of the opening board setup follows a rationale that it had. Therefore, because White has a mill along M-N-O, it reasons that Black lost a stone and has only 8 pieces in the starting configuration.

In the illustration below, you see not only this starting config. (from which players begin, in lieu of placing stones by their own choice) but also the board notation system using alphabetized positions: A-to-X, left-to-right, top-down. The opening setup can also be expressed as Black: A, B, I, K, L, P, Q, S; and White: C, F, H, J, M, N, O, R, V.

A study of this opening shows that Black can 'close a mill' (form a three-in-a-row along a marked line) in just two turns by first moving B›E or L›G. White would find the same circumstance by moving N›U or V›W or O›X. Assuming that both players 'close a mill' on their respective second turns, the stone count would then be 7 vs. 8 and there would be ample room on the board for movement, with a bounty of strategic options.

This fixed setup differs from ones that players build out of self-interest in the 'placement phase' of Nine Men's Morris. For instance, it would be unlikely that Black would allow White to place stones at F-M-N-O-C without trying to block them in, to effectively clog the lanes or trap pieces, which does have strategic value even though it impedes movement options and is a reason often cited by detractors of 9MM who feel frustrated by how this aspect of the game traditionally unfolds.

Players invariably use more mill-defenses in Nine Men's Morris (during 'placement phase') than occurs in this designed arrangement for Pirate Mills. This setup creates a new game experience with more groupings and less constricted byways. And it balances the game in interesting ways: Black may be down by a piece at the start, but has the option to use its 'pirate jump': on any one turn, Black may jump a stone anywhere.

Arimaa Part 1

Chess in the movies is always played sharp, and this has particular meaning among elite competitors as the bold and tactical moves of an aggressive player. Sharp is also the name of a very successful chessbot, yet the game that it plays is not quite chess, but a variant called Arimaa.

On the same weekend last month that Ex Machina was ramping into theaters, Sharp won a contest known as the Arimaa Challenge, pitting it against three selected human minds. This award has gone uncollected in twelve years of annual competition. No one until April 2015 had been able to design an AI that could outwit the humans.

To understand the origin of Arimaa, one must recount the defeat of Russian grandmaster Garry Kasparov by Deep Blue in 1997. At that moment, the mantle of the world’s greatest chess player went from a person to a computer. The event was an international sensation, sparking debates and headlining the news everywhere.

In response to that humbling defeat, a computer engineer named Omar Syed was inspired to create a new game. It used the same board and pieces as chess, but its design was informed by his understanding of how an AI actually calculates moves, with a brute force search of all solutions. To counter this algorithmic approach, Syed made a game whose rules would intentionally be difficult for a computer to play, yet was no harder than chess for an average person.

The rules were rigged in our favor by giving many more possible choices on each turn, making it more intuitive and less linear. If chess presents roughly 30 moves on a turn, then by contrast Arimaa offers 17,000. The ingenuity behind this game was the opportunity to turn back the clock to a time before Deep Blue, before humans had been so humbled.

In fact, the Twitter description for Arimaa states that it is "designed to show that humans are still ahead of computers." Well, just like in Ex Machina, those days might be numbered for us bi-peds, but it remains a fascinating game. Feel free to check out further details on Arimaa.com

Arimaa Part 2

Chess is an age-old game, so it arrives as a digital immigrant into our modern era, but Arimaa is something new, an arena built precisely to give every seeming advantage back to 'the people'. Games are hosted on a dedicated server for Arimaa competition which is accessed by both humans and their bots. Omar Syed maintains the server and continues to manage events relating to his creation, including a cash prize of over $10,000 to the maker of the first Challenge-winning AI.

Different programs with names like Jumbo and Clueless competed to win the 2015 computer championship. When the one called Sharp prevailed, it then faced a panel of three strong human players who were winners of a separate contest. Not since the founding of the annual tournament in 2004 had the humans ever lost the final challenge. Yet on April 18th, it was Sharp that won 7-2.

At least it ranks as a singular human achievement. Sharp was not built by a secret team of corporate engineers with vast resources a la IBM's Deep Blue, but instead was the result of a multi-year effort by the programmer David Wu, a Harvard graduate whose senior thesis was titled “Move Ranking and Evaluation in the Game of Arimaa.”

However, on a public forum, Wu had engaged in a side bet with one of Sharp’s human challengers. To most, the relatively small bet looked like a way to juice up their friendly rivalry. That is still how people view it, but when Syed was made aware of the bet, he invalidated the tournament results on the grounds that it was “influenced in ways that were not intended.”

Although the breakthrough victory by an AI appeared to have happened, it might otherwise have been saddled with a question mark or an asterisk, so Sharp will have to wait for its accolades. On account of this technicality, humans remain undefeated. The Arimaa Challenge will continue next year in its thirteenth annual installment. The question is, to humans, will we up our game in 2016, or is defeat now inevitable?

IndieCade

Thanks to everyone who had the chance to come by the IndieCade "Game Tasting" in Culver City, California, right there in the shadow of the former M-G-M Studio. It was great getting the word out and especially getting feedback on Pirate Ring. IndieCade is an amazing independent games showcase and it was a pleasure to meet lots of like-minded developers, trading insights and information about our projects. It's held every year in early October. I'll certainly return to the festival next year, and I'll be bringing' the Ring again! Put it in your calendar and find me there. Below, here's a photo of me (center) with (left) Al Gonzalez, the creator of Cantankerous Cats and (right) Brian Handy, a games programmer at Disney. Cheers to everyone, thanks for your support.

Catchup: abstract strategy game

A look at the new realities of boardgame distribution: the game company Days of Wonder sells more than 75% of the copies of "Ticket to Ride" as an iPad app compared to its classic boxed set. It makes one wonder if traditional game companies shouldn't just all be reclassified as makers of videogames.

And, it changes the equation of indie game designers. Why indulge in the effort to make intricate sets with lots of pieces when one can far more readily distribute an app of your game. Naturally, that's what I faced with Pirate Ring, which kicked around for a few years in prototype version before Patrick and I set out to make it an iOS game.

I love the feel of a real game, but the economies of distribution and retail/online sales are daunting.  Which makes this an exciting time to look at the rising possibilities of abstract strategy games, which hold a special place for me as a gamer. And I've been quite interested in a new game just released for iOS called Catchup.

This is a very intriguing simple game with some deep strategy. It's only $2.99 on the AppStore, definitely worth a look. I've followed the game's designer Nick on his blog (see my sidebar) and the app is a real achievement and a bellweather for what I hope is an ever-growing interest in abstracts altogether.

I really like the elegance of the approach on Catchup. Just tap to place your pieces and to pool your claimed territory together, while navigating the subtle mechanism of having less pieces to place if you move ahead of your opponent. I like the speed of play and the casual ease of it, and I'm a fan of the slow-scaling A.I. that grows slowly harder and harder. Cheers from the Pirate Ringdom to this well-designed game, a notable addition to the world of abstracts.

And, with last week's release of the iPhone 6 and the 6-Plus (MUCH bigger screens) I'm very curious to see what this does for the smartphone as an even more potent platform for games. There's potential for even more good stuff to follow, much the way the iPad brought such a revolution in touch-boardgaming.

Nine Man Morris/ Mühle

One of the biggest influences on Pirate Ring has been Nine Man Morris. I was introduced to it under its German name Mühle when I visited the North Sea region of Germany at the age of sixteen. Alex Schmitz-Neuber challenged me to a match and I was instantly hooked by its fast gameplay and the dynamics of its compact board. How did three concentric squares pack in so much strategy?

Mühle, or Mills, or Merels, or any one of its many names, derives from a game that was played in Egypt three thousand years ago. It's likely a testament to a game needing to conform to existing constraints. In this case, think of ancient Egyptians working for a pharaoh. Let's say they were granted a short reprieve from hard labor, what could they do? In a modern context, I see them all dropping those thick ropes hauling 3-ton quarrystones and checking their mobile devices.

But seriously, the equivalent for an ancient people with very little leisure time might have been to draw three squares in the banks of the Nile. One opponent picks up nine dark stones off the ground and the other picks out nine lighter stones. In just a minute, they can be playing a game.

I marvel at the ease with with Mills can be played. You can imagine just about any environment on Earth supporting the basic requirements for a match-up.  If you can scratch that pattern in the ground and gather some loose objects from the immediate surroundings then you can play. And remnants in Egypt show that it existed in much more durable forms, etched in clay and stone. It was one of the first casual games-- key to its success was its fastplay. Before the foreman cracked the whip for everyone to return to work, someone had already prevailed as the winner.

But just as important to the fun of Mühle is its endgame format. When one player gets down to three stones, he now may move a piece anywhere instead of just adjacent points. Suddenly the presumed loser is allowed to "level up"; it's nearly a boss-battle for the leading player. The great dynamic of suddenly setting the playing field more even (a final challenge!) makes for an often-thrilling finish.

And I sometimes wonder how the playtesting went. I imagine the game designer trying to convince friends of its merits but they complain that once he takes the lead that he just slides inevitably toward his own assured victory. They pretend to enjoy the rest of the game even when they already know they will lose, so wide is his lead. Until...

Maybe this is when another player makes a suggestion: "Why don't you change the rules and let the person with three stones now move anywhere?" she says, and eureka! suddenly his game is saved from ruin. With a simple tweak, it has endured as long as the pyramids.

Nine Man Morris is a game that I've been playing on-and-off for years, and it continues to retain significant popularity, especially in Europe. Though we now enjoy far more leisure time than ancient civilizations ever could, I nonetheless like it when strategy can be served up quickly. And I have long admired Nine Man's twist-ending, a perfect adjustment that's probably kept it relevant and compelling for three millennia.