A double-12 set comes with 91 tiles, and a double-9 set comes with 55 tiles. If you need to buy a dominoes set, you can find one here.
Because each game of dominoes involves playing several hands, trade off who shuffles at the beginning of each hand so everyone gets a turn.
Play on a hard surface if you can, as that will make it easier to stand the dominoes on edge in front of you.
For example, if you lay down a tile with 3 pips on one side and 1 pip on the other but don’t have any other tiles with 3 or 1 pips on a side, you wouldn’t be able to take a turn unless someone else lays down a tile you can match.
If you lay down a tile with a blank side, it can only be matched with another tile that also has a blank side. In some games, people choose to make the blanks “wild,” meaning you can ascribe any value to it. You can choose whichever option you like best!
In this way, you can end up with way more than 7 tiles in your hand during any given game.
Though you may have won the round, that doesn’t mean you’ve won the game! You’ll have several hands to play before the entire game is finished.
Because you have to get to 100 points before the game ends, there are multiple chances for every player to win rounds and ultimately come out victorious at the end!
In Mexican Train, the game starts with the highest double-sided tile in the middle of the table. Each hand after that starts with the double-sided tile that is one number less than the one preceding it: the first hand starts with the double-12, the second hand starts with the double-11, the third hand starts with the double-10, and so on.
Because there are so many rounds played in Mexican Train, have players take turns flipping and shuffling the tiles.
Double-12: 2 to 3 players take 16 tiles each; 4 players take 15 tiles each; 5 players take 14 tiles each; 6 players take 12 tiles each; 7 players take 10 tiles each; 8 players take 9 tiles each. Double-9: 2 players take 15 tiles each; 3 players take 13 tiles each; 4 players take 10 tiles each.
The “train yard” is also sometimes called the “bone pile. ” Keep the tiles in the train yard face down.
This starter tile is often referred to as the “engine tile. ” Everyone can play off of the engine tile, though each person’s personal train coming off of that engine tile isn’t fair game to other players unless there is a marker on it, which appears when a player isn’t able to take their turn.
The exception to the 1-tile per turn rule is if you lay down a double tile, meaning that the pips on each side of the tile are the same. If you lay down a double tile, take a second turn immediately and lay down an additional tile.
A set of double-12 dominoes will have 13 rounds, and a set of double-9 dominoes will have 10 rounds. The only other way a round can end is if the entire train yard has been depleted and no one can make a move. In that case, everyone tallies up the pips left in their hand and those figures get added to the score sheet.
The already-used double tiles just get mixed back in with the other tiles when you shuffle between rounds.
