Morabaraba: Nine Men's Morris

Morabaraba (Mlabalaba) — the classic Southern African strategy game. One of Africa's oldest and most-loved board games, played for generations across Lesotho, South Africa and Botswana. Learn it in a minute, spend years getting good at it. PLAY ONLINE • Get matched with a real opponent, casual or ranked • Challenge a specific player, or host an open game anyone can join • Tournaments with a live bracket • A global leaderboard with ratings and country flags • Follow players, and see who is online • Chat rooms, direct messages and post-game discussion • Everyone plays in one pool, so there is always an opponent to meet PLAY OFFLINE • Seven levels of computer opponent, Easy through Master • Pass-and-play on one device • Watch two computer players fight it out • No connection needed — the whole single-player game works offline TWO RULE SETS • Traditional (South African) — the 24-point board, mills protected • Koti (Lesotho) — the 25-point board with the centre point and diagonals, plus the restrictive rules: you must form a mill when you can, you must block one when you can, a blocked player passes instead of losing, and no cow is safe inside a mill Or set the four rules yourself and play your house variant. THINGS TO COME BACK FOR • A new puzzle every day • Daily quests and a weekly challenge • Experience, levels, and a journey through every Southern African country, with a picture for every place • Achievements to collect MADE TO BE PLAYED • Move hints, threat warnings and confirm-before-you-move, all optional • Colour-blind mode that tells the herds apart by shape, not only colour • Seven sound themes, or none at all • Two piece sets: River Stones and Carved Bulls • Full statistics, and a replay of any finished game you can step through, scrub and share HOW TO PLAY Placing: take turns putting your twelve cows on the board, trying to line three up. Moving: once every cow is placed, slide one to a neighbouring point each turn. Flying: down to three cows, you can jump to any empty point. A mill is three of your cows in a line. Make one and you take one of theirs. Reduce your opponent to two cows, or leave them with nowhere to move, and you have won. MORE THAN A GAME Morabaraba is played on scratched boards and bottle tops across the region, and the vocabulary is part of it: your pieces are cows, a mill sends one of your opponent's to the kraal. The game carries its own history, and so does this app. Free. No adverts.