Mexican Train Rules — How to Play and Keep Score
Mexican Train is a shedding game played with a large domino set. Every player builds a personal train from a shared starting double, and there is one communal train anybody may play on. Getting rid of tiles is the whole game, because what you are still holding when someone goes out is what you get charged for.
Score a game of Mexican Train →
Overview
Mexican Train is a shedding game played with a large domino set. Every player builds a personal train from a shared starting double, and there is one communal train anybody may play on. Getting rid of tiles is the whole game, because what you are still holding when someone goes out is what you get charged for.
Setup
Use a double-twelve set (91 tiles) for the full thirteen-round game. Find the double-twelve and place it in the centre — that is the engine everyone builds from. Deal from the shuffled remainder: 15 tiles each for two to four players, 12 each for five or six, 10 each for seven or eight. The rest form the boneyard. Each following round starts one double lower, so round two opens with the double-eleven and the last round with the double-blank.
How to play
Starting from the central double, each player extends their own train with a matching tile. A train is open to everyone if its owner could not play and had to draw, or if they have not yet started it; otherwise only its owner may add to it. There is also one Mexican train, open to all, which anybody can start with a tile matching the engine. If you cannot play, draw one tile from the boneyard and play it if it fits; if it does not, your train opens up. When a double is played, the next player must cover it before making any other play, and if nobody can cover it, that double stays exposed and the layout stalls around it.
Scoring
A round ends when one player plays their last tile, or when nobody can move and the boneyard is empty. Everyone else counts the pips on the tiles still in their hand and writes that number down. A hand holding the 6-4, the 3-3 and the 5-blank scores 10 + 6 + 5 = 21.
- The player who went out scores 0, or −10 if the winner bonus is on.
- Blanks are worth 0 pips, and by default so is the double-blank. Set it to 50 and that one tile alone costs 50.
- If a doubles penalty is set, add it once for each double still in hand, on top of the pips. Holding the 6-6 with a 50 penalty costs 12 + 50 = 62.
- A stalled round scores everyone's remaining pips with no zero — nobody went out.
Totals accumulate across all rounds and the lowest wins.
Ending the game
After the last round — the double-blank round — the lowest cumulative total wins. Tied totals share the win. There is no target score and no elimination.
Common variations
Chicken Foot demands three branches off every double. Cuban Train branches doubles instead of covering them. Some groups allow more than one communal train, or let a player start their own train only in the first turn of the round.
Scoring at a glance
| Who wins | Lowest score |
|---|---|
| Rounds | 13 fixed |
| Score sheet | One number per player per round, with a running total |
| Typical round score | 0 – 100 |
| Negative scores | Possible |
| Worth knowing | One number per player per round — the pips left in hand. The player who went out enters 0. A double-twelve set holds 1092 pips in total, so a bad hand late in a round can easily be over 100. |
Mexican Train — score sheet
House rules and settings
Every table plays Mexican Train a little differently. These are the 6 rules groups argue about. Each one is a setting in the app — and changing it recalculates a match that is already in progress, which is the thing no other score keeper does.
Rounds to play: what are the options in Mexican Train?
Each round starts from one lower double, ending with the double-blank. Thirteen rounds with a double-twelve set is the full game and takes a couple of hours; ten or seven rounds is an evening.
Default: 13 rounds (double-twelve set). Three options:
In the app: “Rounds to play”.
Double-blank is worth: what are the options in Mexican Train?
A double-blank shows no pips, so by the letter of the rules it costs nothing to be caught with. Many groups charge 50 for it instead so it is not a free tile to hold.
Default: 0 pips. Two options:
In the app: “Double-blank is worth”.
Penalty per unplayed double: what is the default in Mexican Train?
An extra charge on top of the pips for every double still in your hand when the round ends. Fifty is the usual figure where this rule is used. Leave it at 0 to charge only the pips.
Default: 0. Adjustable from 0 to 100 in steps of 5.
In the app: “Penalty per unplayed double”.
Doubles must be covered: on or off in Mexican Train?
When someone plays a double, the next play must satisfy it before anything else can happen. Switch it off and doubles are just ordinary tiles.
Default: on.
In the app: “Doubles must be covered”.
The player who goes out scores: what are the options in Mexican Train?
Going out normally just means avoiding a score. Some groups pay the winner a bonus of minus ten, which rewards emptying your hand rather than merely dumping your heavy tiles.
Default: 0. Two options:
In the app: “The player who goes out scores”.
Draw before passing: on or off in Mexican Train?
A player with no legal play draws one tile from the boneyard and plays it if they can. Without this rule they simply pass, and hands never grow.
Default: on.
In the app: “Draw before passing”.
Variants of Mexican Train
Chicken Foot
A double must be branched three ways before normal play resumes, giving the layout its footprint shape. Scored identically.
Cuban Train
Doubles are branched rather than covered, so the layout spreads sideways and rounds run longer.
No public train
The communal Mexican train is removed, so every tile must go on your own train or on an open one.
Mexican Train is also known as
Mexican Train Dominoes, Chicken Foot (related), Train Dominoes. These are the same game — the rules and the score sheet above apply to all of them.
Keep score offline
The sheet above works in your browser. Cardzo for iPhone remembers your players, survives a closed tab, and works in a field with no signal.
Coming to the App Store.