Talk:Nine Men's Morris

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[edit] Merging other Morris games here

The rules of Three Men's Morris, Six Men's Morris, Nine Men's Morris, Morabaraba and Shax are identical except for four minor things:

  1. Different numbers of pieces are used: 3, 6, 9, 12 and 12.
  2. Different boards are used.
  3. Some rules are different in Shax: mills formed during piece placement do not result in pieces being removed until all pieces are placed; if any mills have been formed at that point, each player removes an opposing piece, starting with the first player to form a mill, and it's then the turn of whoever placed the first piece; if no mills are formed in placement, the second player to place a piece is the first to move. Also, a player with no legal moves does not lose; their opponent is required to move to give them an open space, and if they form a mill in doing so they cannot remove one of the trapped player's pieces.
  4. "Flying" isn't allowed in 3MM (as far as I can tell).

These differences are too slight to warrant the existence of five separate articles. Since 9MM is apparently the most popular game (there are 2,910 hits on Google for "Three Men's Morris", 903 for "Six Men's Morris", 75,300 for "Nine Men's Morris", 757 for Morabaraba, and 15,200 for Shax game), it makes sense to merge the other articles here as sections. The article could then be moved to Morris games. — Elembis 02:29, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

Since Shax has different rules, not just a different board and a different number of pieces, I no longer think it should be merged. — Elembis 02:11, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Cultural Distinctiveness of Morabaraba and Shax

The point about the ruleset similarity is largely correct, although there are a few additional differences worth mentioning. There are variations of Morabaraba (eg Sesotho Morabaraba) which are played on a different board layout. Also, if I understand it correctly, Shax has some differences around who plays first after the initial placement of the pieces, as well as when pieces which have been captured are removed after the first phase of the game. To capture these variations completely would probably bulk up the Nine Men's Morris article considerably, and make it more difficult to obtain clarity on the precise rules for each game. In addition, Morabaraba and Shax have completely different cultural heritages from the Morris games, and from each other - Shax, for example, is viewed by the Somali as part of their cultural heritage, while Morabaraba has long been used to teach Southern African herdboys tactical thinking. There is no place for this type of background in the Nine Men's Morris article, whereas the respective Morabaraba and Shax articles could (and should!) easily be expanded to take it into account. My recommendation, therefore, would be that at least Morabaraba and Shax be retained separately, and expanded to cover some of the cultural background (which is mostly not well-documented elsewhere on the Internet). I can see no reason not to merge the articles for 3 Men's Morris, 6 Men's Morris and 12 Men's Morris, but other people may have cogent arguments. If Morabaraba and Shax are retained as separate articles, it may be desirable to create a separate category for "mill games" (or "alignment games" as the folks over at DMOZ call it). Adamoell 12:07, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

I really appreciate your comment. I understand that Morabaraba and Shax have cultural impacts quite different from the Morris games; unfortunately, Shax doesn't mention its heritage much, and Morabaraba doesn't discuss its at all. This is probably because "Written references to shax are few and hard to find"[1], and while your page is excellent, reliable sources for Morabaraba may be similarly scarce. Since the rules of Morabaraba are identical to those of Nine Men's Morris (aside from the board variation you mentioned), and since I don't think Morabaraba currently contains any unique information aside from the game's names and the fact that pieces are referred to as "cows", I recommend that we merge Morabaraba and discuss it as much as we can in Nine Men's Morris#History; when we accumulate enough encyclopedic content on the game's cultural and historical differences, we can split it into its own article once again. I would suggest treating Shax in the same way, but I now think the rules of Shax are different enough that it would be awkward to continue to include it in Nine Men's Morris#Variants, so I say we leave it unmerged and simply list it in Nine Men's Morris#Related Games as before. Thanks for responding! — Elembis 02:07, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
Three Men's Morris and Six Men's Morris have been merged, while Morabaraba and Shax have retained their own pages. Thanks for the feedback! — Elembis 03:19, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Inactivating pieces?

The following paragraph was recently added to the article:

===Making a 'Mill' and inactivating pieces===
When 3 pieces are used to make a mill, they become inactive and are required to move before being used in any new mill. This rule would negate the example given above. Two ways exist for tracking the 'inactive' pieces. Flip them over if using coins (recommended), or remember them (advanced play).

I'm positive this rule is not always used (I've never seen it before). It contradicts the shuttle thing mentioned in the Strategy section. I've removed it from the article; if any sources can be found documenting this rule, it should be included in the article as an optional rule.--Niels Ø (noe) 07:02, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] German-same game, different name

This game is known as Mühle in Germany. Any good place to include this? Supermood00d (talk) 19:07, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

It's there, as it should be, in the form of an interwiki link to the german wikipedia article (in the left column under "languages"). This is not a dictionnary; we do not need a list of names in other languages. However, the game is called something meaning "mill" in several languages; this could be mentioned, esp. if we have an sourced explanation for those names.--Noe (talk) 09:55, 20 April 2008 (UTC)