Place nine pieces, line three of them up, and take one of your opponent's off the board. Get them down to two and you have won.
An old game with a short learning curve and a surprising amount of trapping in it.
The game has three phases. First you take turns placing your nine pieces on empty points.
Then you move, one piece along one line to an empty neighbouring point, for as long as you have more than three pieces left.
Any time you make a mill, which is three of your pieces in a row along a marked line, you take one of your opponent's pieces off the board.
When a player is down to three pieces they can fly, moving to any empty point on the board. Down to two and they have lost.
Three of your pieces along one of the board's marked lines. Making one lets you remove an enemy piece immediately.
Any piece that is not part of a mill, unless every enemy piece is in one, in which case anything is fair game.
When you are reduced to three pieces you can move any of them to any empty point rather than along a line. It gives the losing side a chance to break a mill.
Two mills sharing a piece, so moving that piece back and forth opens one and closes the other. It takes a piece every turn and usually wins the game.
Boards for this game have been found carved into roof tiles in ancient Egypt and into cathedral benches in medieval England, which makes it one of the most widely played games in history.
The whole game is the placing phase. Points that sit on several lines at once are worth far more than they look, and a lost opening is very hard to recover from.
The thing to aim for is a double mill. Once one is running, your opponent loses a piece every single turn.