How to Play Mexican Train Dominoes

The Short Version

Mexican Train is a domino game about getting rid of your tiles before everyone else. Every player builds a personal line of dominoes — their train — out from one big double in the centre of the table, and a second shared line, the Mexican train, runs alongside. On your turn you add one matching domino to your train, to the Mexican train, or to any train whose owner got stuck and marked it open. If you can’t play, you draw from the boneyard, and if you’re still stuck your train opens up to the whole table. Rounds run from the double-12 down to the double-blank, and the pips stranded in your hand each round count against you. Lowest score after the last round wins.

What You Need

A double-12 domino set: 91 tiles, running from double-blank up to double-12, suiting 2 to 8 players. For a smaller group (roughly 2 to 5), a double-9 set of 55 tiles plays the same game in less time. You also need one marker per player — a coin, a poker chip, or the little train tokens many sets include — to flag a train as open, plus paper and pencil for the running score.

Set Up

Shuffle all the dominoes face down in the middle of the table. Each player draws a hand: with a double-12 set, draw 15 tiles each for 2 to 4 players, 12 each for 5 or 6 players, and 10 each for 7 or 8 players. Everything left over stays face down as the boneyard, the draw pile. (Published draw counts vary slightly between sets; what matters is that everyone starts equal and a healthy boneyard remains.)

Find the highest double in round one — the double-12 — and set it crosswise in the centre. This is the engine. In round two the engine is the double-11, then the double-10, down to the double-blank in round thirteen. If nobody holds the round’s starting double, players draw from the boneyard in turn until it turns up. Trains grow outward from the engine like spokes; the player who set the engine takes the first turn, and play passes clockwise.

How to Play

On your turn, play one domino whose end matches the open end of a line you are allowed to play on. You may always play on your own train and, once it exists, on the Mexican train. You may play on another player’s train only while it is marked open. A domino matches when one of its ends carries the same number of pips as the open end it touches; doubles are laid crosswise (perpendicular) rather than lengthwise.

The Mexican train is started by any player who, on their turn, plays a matching domino on the engine’s unused side instead of on their own train. From that moment it is a shared public line: anyone may play on it for the rest of the round. Starting it early is a genuine decision — it gives the whole table one more place to unload tiles.

If you cannot make any legal play, draw one domino from the boneyard. If the drawn tile plays, you may play it immediately. If it doesn’t play — or the boneyard has run out — your turn ends, and you place your marker on your train: it is now open, and anyone may play on it until you manage to play on it yourself, which closes it again (take your marker back the turn you play on your own train).

One more rule matters: when a double is played crosswise, the train pauses at the double. Both of its open sides must be played on — satisfied — before any tile can be added beyond it. A fresh crosswise double is always the next place that line must grow.

The round ends in one of two ways: a player plays their very last domino, or play grinds to a halt with the boneyard empty and every train blocked. Either way, hands are scored where they lie.

Scoring

Scoring is simple and slightly cruel: when a round ends, count the pips on every domino still in your hand and add that total to your score. Points are bad — this is golf scoring. The player who went out scores zero. In a blocked round everyone counts what they’re holding, and the lowest pip total is simply the least punished. Keep a running total across all rounds.

Winning

A full game with a double-12 set is 13 rounds, engines running double-12 down to double-blank. Shorter games are fine — many tables play down from the double-9, or agree a round count in advance. When the final round is scored, the player with the lowest total wins. For a tie, the tied player who scored lowest in the final round is a fair, common tiebreaker; plenty of tables just share the win and reshuffle.

Variations Worth Knowing

Chickenfoot gets confused with Mexican Train constantly because it uses the same domino sets, so to be clear: it is a different game, not a variant. In Chickenfoot, play builds a branching tree, and every crosswise double must be completed into a three-pronged ‘chickenfoot’ before the line can grow anywhere else. Don’t bolt its branching rule onto a train game.

Double-9 short game: with a double-9 set, play 10 rounds (double-9 down to double-blank) and draw 10 tiles each for 2 to 4 players. Everything else is identical, and the game lands in about half the time.

Permanent Mexican train: some groups start the Mexican train automatically — the engine’s fourth side is simply live from the first turn, no one has to spend a turn starting it. It speeds the game up and blocks less often. Agree it before round one if your table likes it.