Playing Mexican Train Online

You can play a real game of Mexican Train with your own people, wherever they happen to live, in the browser you already have open. No app store, no download, no adverts. This page explains the mechanics — what you need, how a game gets started and shared, and what the site does for you that a physical set cannot.

What you need

• A browser. Safari, Chrome, Edge or Firefox, on a computer, tablet or phone. Nothing to install.
• A free account. Name, email, password — about a minute. It exists so your games are still there tomorrow.
• Some people. Between two and eight players, each with their own free account.

That is the whole list. There is no paid tier, no advert between rounds, and nothing held back until you subscribe.

How a game gets started

1. One person creates the game. It takes one click — the game names itself.
2. They get a six-letter invite code, something like fox-oak, and a link that carries the code for them.
3. They send it however they normally talk to those people: a text, an email, a group chat, or read out over the phone.
4. Everyone else signs in and enters the code, or just follows the link.
5. Once at least two of you are in, the person who made the game presses Start.

The person who creates the game also chooses the rules for it — how the double blank scores, whether trains branch, which double the game opens on. Those apply to everybody at that table and are fixed once play begins, so it is worth a look before you start.

What the site handles for you

This is the part that is hard to appreciate until you have played a round. A physical game asks four or five people to agree, continuously, about a lot of small things. Online, none of that is anybody’s job:

• Shuffling and dealing — instant, and genuinely random.
• The engine — the round’s starting double is placed in the middle for you. Nobody has to hunt for the 12-12.
• Legal moves only — you cannot accidentally play a tile that does not match. The board simply will not take it.
• Train markers — when your train opens up to everyone, that is tracked and shown, not remembered.
• Scoring — pips are counted the moment a round ends, and the running totals are always there to look at.
• Whose turn it is — marked clearly, so nobody has to ask.

What is left is the actual game: which tile to play, and when to open your train. If you want the rules themselves rather than the mechanics of playing online, read how to play Mexican Train.

How long a game takes

A full game runs from the 12-12 down to the double blank — thirteen rounds, and a genuinely long sitting with a big group. Most people do not play a full game in one go. You can start higher up: beginning at the 6-6 gives you seven rounds, and beginning at the 3-3 gives you four.

There is also no clock. The game does not hurry you, does not pass for you because you took too long, and does not end because everybody went to bed. A game left half-finished is still there in the morning.

Playing in your situation