Playing With a Big Group

Mexican Train is at its best with a crowd — more trains, more places to play, more people groaning when somebody opens theirs. Online you can have up to eight players in one game. Here is what changes as the table grows, and how to keep a big game moving.

How many can play

Two to eight. The tiles each person gets shrinks as the group grows, because a double-12 set only has 91 dominoes to go round.

Players	Dominoes each	Trains on the table
2	15	3
3-4	15	4 or 5
5-6	11	6 or 7
7-8	8	8 or 9

The trains column is the interesting one — one per player, plus the Mexican Train. With eight players there are nine places a tile might go, so you can nearly always play something. Big games flow; small games grind.

How long a full game takes

Be realistic about this before you start one. A full game runs the engine from 12-12 down to the double blank: thirteen rounds. With eight players, each round is eight people taking turns, and doubles pause things while they get covered.

A thirteen-round game with eight players is an afternoon, not an hour. That is fine if it is a holiday and everyone is settled in. It is not fine on a weeknight.

Shorten it by starting lower

The fix is the starting double. The game does not have to begin at 12-12.

Start at	Rounds	Suits
12-12	13	A holiday afternoon with the whole family
9-9	10	A long evening
6-6	7	A comfortable evening — the usual choice
3-3	4	An hour, or a club session

Whoever creates the game picks this, and it applies to everybody. It is the single most useful setting for a big group.

Keeping a big table moving

• Put one call on for everybody. Eight people in four separate conversations is chaos; one shared call keeps it a single game rather than four.
• Nobody has to wait at their screen. There is no turn timer, so a slow player holds nothing up in the sense of being penalised — but with eight people the wait between your turns is real. Groups that play across a day rather than in one sitting handle this better.
• Watch for doubles stalling things. With the default rules, an unsatisfied double pauses normal play while people try to cover it. With eight players that can go round the table. If your group finds it tedious, the host can turn off "must satisfy doubles during the game".
• Branching helps. Leaving train branching on gives more open ends, which matters more with a crowd.

Family reunions, holidays and clubs

The common uses are a family spread over several households at a holiday, and clubs or activity groups who used to meet in person. For a group larger than eight, run two games side by side — there is nothing stopping one person being in both, though we would not recommend trying to think about both at once.

Everyone needs their own free account and their own device; it is not built for one shared screen passed around. If your group includes people who are wary of the technology, the page for older players covers the same ground more slowly.

If some of the group has never played, how to play Mexican Train explains the game itself, and the board refuses illegal moves anyway — beginners cannot break anything.

Keep reading

• How to play Mexican Train — the whole game
• Playing with friends and family
• For seniors and senior groups
• Setting up a round: tiles, hands and the engine