Practise Mexican Train Before You Play Anyone

Reading the rules of Mexican Train tells you almost nothing. Playing one round tells you most of it. If you have been invited to a game and would rather not learn in front of four people who have played it for years, practise against the computer first — nobody is waiting, and nothing you do is embarrassing.

Why practising here works

The main reason is that the board will not let you make an illegal move. A tile that does not match simply will not go down, so the rule that beginners actually stumble on — what can go where — is enforced for you rather than remembered by you. You cannot accidentally cheat, and nobody has to correct you.

• Nobody is waiting. Take five minutes over a turn if you want to.
• Nothing is at stake. Lose badly, close the tab, start another.
• You see the whole board. Everyone’s trains, whose turn it is, and what the scores are, all on one screen.
• The scoring is done for you, so you can watch how it works instead of doing arithmetic.

A sensible first session

1. Start a game against two computer players. Three trains is enough to see how the board works and few enough to follow.
2. Set the starting double low — beginning at the 6-6 rather than the 12-12 gives you a shorter game to finish.
3. Play one round the whole way through, including the scoring at the end.
4. Then start another with four opponents and see how differently it plays.

If you want the rules alongside you while you do it, keep how to play Mexican Train open in another tab. It is written to be read a section at a time rather than all at once.

What the game does for you while you learn

Around a real table, a beginner is asked to keep track of a lot of small things at once, and that — not the rules — is what makes a first game hard. None of it is your job here:

• Shuffling and dealing — done, and genuinely random.
• The starting double — placed in the middle for you. Nobody has to hunt for the 12-12.
• Legal moves only — a tile that does not match will not go down, so you cannot get it wrong.
• Train markers — shown on the board rather than remembered, so you can see at a glance whose train is open.
• The scoring — counted the moment a round ends, with the running totals always there to look at.

What is left is the only part worth learning: which tile to play, and when to open your train.

The three things that confuse everyone

In our experience these are the ones worth deliberately trying out, rather than reading about:

• Train markers. When somebody cannot go, their train opens up and anybody may play on it. Play a couple of rounds and it becomes obvious; described in a paragraph it sounds fiddly.
• Doubles. Depending on the rules chosen, a double may have to be covered before anybody else can do anything. Watch it happen once — see the rules on doubles.
• The Mexican Train. The extra train that belongs to nobody, which everybody can use. Deciding when to start it is most of the strategy — there is a page on it.

It is genuinely easy

Worth saying, because “practise first” can make a game sound harder than it is. Mexican Train is easy to pick up and hard to get badly wrong — that is why it survives family gatherings with a wide range of ages at the table. Most people have it after one round. See how quickly it is picked up if you are still deciding whether to bother.

Then play some actual people

Once a round feels comfortable, the game you want is the one with people in it. Create a game, send the six-letter code to whoever you had in mind, and play — they can be anywhere. Playing with friends and family covers how that works when everyone lives somewhere different.

Keep reading

• How to play Mexican Train — the whole game
• Playing against the computer
• How quickly Mexican Train is picked up
• How to win at Mexican Train