Mühle Strategy: 7 Tips to Win More Games
Most people learn Mühle as kids, play it on holiday, and then lose to the same uncle for twenty years. The rules are easy. Winning is not.
The good news: a few simple ideas make a big difference. You don’t need to count moves like a chess player. You just need to know what to look for. Here are seven tips, from the first stone to the last.
New to the game? Mühle, called Nine Men’s Morris in English, has three stages: placing your 9 stones, moving them, and jumping when you have only 3 left. Three in a line is a mill, and a mill lets you take a stone. That’s all you need for this guide.
Tip 1: Start on the crossings
Look at the middle square. Its four middle points each touch four lines. Every other point touches only two or three.
The four gold rings are the crossings. A stone here has four ways to move.
A stone on a crossing is hard to trap and helps build mills in two directions. Try to get two of them early. The corners, on the other hand, have only two neighbours and are easy to block.
Tip 2: Don’t chase mills while placing
This sounds strange, but it is the most important tip. In the placing stage, a quick mill feels great. But if your stones end up stuck at the edges, you may lose them all later, one after the other.
So while placing, think about freedom. Ask yourself: after all 18 stones are on the board, can my stones still move? A player who can move has time. A player who can’t move loses on the spot.
Tip 3: Block first, build second
Before every move, look at your opponent’s lines. If they have two stones on a line and the third point is free, that’s a threat. Put your stone there.
It is boring, but it wins games. Most beginner games are lost to a mill that was easy to see one move earlier.
Tip 4: Never leave your stones without a way out
In the moving stage, count your free moves from time to time. If only one or two of your stones can move, you are in danger. Your opponent can close the last gaps, and you lose even with many stones on the board.
The reverse is a winning plan too: surround your opponent’s stones slowly, so they run out of moves.
Tip 5: Build a Zwickmühle
This is the famous trick. A Zwickmühle, or running mill, is two mills that share one moving stone. Look at the white stones below:
White moves the top-middle stone down: the middle row is a mill. Next turn it moves back up: the top row is a mill again.
With a Zwickmühle, you close a mill every single turn and take a stone every time. Your opponent can only stop it by blocking the empty point, and often they can’t reach it in time. If you manage to build one, you have usually won.
Tip 6: Take the right stone
When you close a mill, don’t just take any stone. Ask these questions, in this order:
- Is one of their stones about to close a mill? Take that one.
- Is one of their stones blocking my next mill? Take it and open the way.
- Is one of their stones free and flexible, like a crossing? Take it and leave them the stuck ones.
A stuck stone in the corner is almost harmless. Leave it where it is.
Tip 7: The endgame with jumping stones
With the jumping rule, a player with only 3 stones can fly to any empty point. That makes them dangerous, because they can block anything.
If you have more stones, the answer is a double threat: set up two lines that each need one more stone. The jumping player can block only one per turn, so you close the other. If you are the one with 3 stones, keep jumping into the spot your opponent needs most, and hope they make a mistake.
Practice tip: Play our game on Medium and press 💡 Hint when you are unsure. The hint shows a good move on the board, so you learn the idea behind it.
Why Mühle is good for your brain
Mühle makes you plan ahead, spot patterns and guess what the other person wants to do. That makes it good practice for focus and planning, and it is easy to play across generations. Grandparents and kids can play as equals.
We want to be fair: no board game is proven to raise IQ or stop memory loss. But thirty minutes of Mühle beats thirty minutes of scrolling.
Practise now
Play against the computer in three levels, or with a friend on one phone.