Mill, nine mens morris

Mill, nine men's morris follows one of the oldest board games still played today: place and later slide your pieces around the board's intersections, and whenever three of them line up into a mill, remove one of your opponent's pieces from play. Timing when to close a mill matters more than rushing it, since breaking and reforming the same mill repeatedly can strip an opponent's pieces one by one if they cannot defend the right intersections in time. As pieces thin out on both sides, the board opens up and previously safe formations become vulnerable to a mill you did not see coming. Reducing your opponent to just two pieces, or locking them out of any legal move, wins the game outright. Its ancient ruleset rewards patient positional play far more than any fast aggressive rush.