Setting Up a Round: Tiles, Hands and the Engine

Before anybody plays a tile there are three things to settle: how many dominoes each person gets, which double the round is built around, and who goes first. All three change with the size of your group and the length of game you want.

How many dominoes each player gets

Mexican Train uses a double-12 set: 91 dominoes, from 0-0 up to 12-12. How many you deal depends on how many are playing.

Players	Dominoes each	Dealt in total	Left in the boneyard
2	15	30	60
3	15	45	45
4	15	60	30
5	11	55	35
6	11	66	24
7	8	56	34
8	8	64	26

Those numbers are the common convention rather than a law, and you will find families who deal differently. What matters is that everybody has the same number and there are enough left over to draw from.

The leftovers are the boneyard — also called the pot. It is not decoration: with two players it is sixty tiles deep and you will nearly always be able to draw, while with six it is thin enough that rounds genuinely block.

The engine

Each round is built around one double placed in the middle of the table. That tile is the engine, and every train has to start from its number.

The first round uses the 12-12. The next uses the 11-11, then the 10-10, and so on down. A full game finishes on the 0-0, which is thirteen rounds.

The engine is set aside before dealing, so nobody has it in their hand and nobody has to hunt for it. In the first round, every train you start must begin with a tile showing a 12 — a 12-8, a 12-3, and so on.

Shorter games

Thirteen rounds is a long game. Starting further down the set is the standard way to shorten it, and nothing else about the rules changes.

Start at	Rounds	Roughly
12-12	13	An afternoon
9-9	10	A long evening
6-6	7	An evening
3-3	4	About an hour

Who goes first

Traditionally the player holding the engine double starts — but since the engine is set aside here, that does not apply. The two common conventions are that the winner of the previous round leads the next one, or that it is chosen at random each round.

For the very first round of a game, somebody has to be picked. Online it is either the person who created the game or a random player, depending on the setting.

What if you cannot start your train?

You need a tile matching the engine number to start your own train, and sometimes you simply do not have one. In that case you draw until you get one. It is the least interesting part of the game, and online it happens for you automatically at the start of the round rather than eating your first few turns.

Everything after setup is covered in how to play Mexican Train.

Keep reading

• How to play Mexican Train — the whole game
• What the Mexican Train actually is
• How scoring works
• Glossary of Mexican Train terms