The Morris Games Collection

Welcome to the Morris family of games, a set of ancient abstract strategy games that have been played for centuries. These games are simple to learn but offer deep strategic possibilities.

Pedagogical Goals

These games are excellent tools for developing critical thinking skills:

• Strategic Planning: Players must think several moves ahead, balancing offense (forming "mills" to capture opponent pieces) and defense (blocking the opponent). This teaches foresight and consequence analysis.
• Graph Theory Concepts: The game board is a simple graph, where the intersections are nodes and the lines are edges. The gameplay involves moving along these paths, providing a tangible introduction to graph theory.
• Phase-Based Logic: Both games have distinct phases (placing, moving, and sometimes "flying"). This teaches the concept of changing rules based on the state of the system, a fundamental idea in programming and algorithm design.
• Game Balancing & Fairness: The "Pie Rule" introduced in Three Men's Morris is a classic method for balancing a game that gives the first player an advantage. It's a perfect example to discuss fairness, game theory, and design.