Game on: dominoes

When I say dominoes, I really don’t mean little old men in cafes in warm countries, facing off against each other.

I mean a set of little wooden tiles that you can do pretty much anything with.  A further train journey item. (Lest it be thought that we spend all our time on trains – we really don’t. But one journey, even of an hour, can use a few games.)

Dominoes: building with them

Junior Player’s main interest in dominoes has been to build with them. Houses, walls, piles of tiles, you name it, it’s been built. I think some of the fascination is in the clink of the dominoes as you put them together.

Playing on a train can sometimes wreak havoc with the best-laid structure, if there’s too much swaying from side to side.  At least it’s usually soon remedied – rebuilt or modified.

Sometimes you need to watch for the tiles going off the table and under the seats.  Our main set is two dominoes down because of this kind of situation.  But if you are playing for building, that is less of a hardship – you still have plenty of tiles.

Dominoes: building in the box

When you want a change (or you’ve had enough of the tiles going off the table), you can always use the box to build in as well – whether it’s lining the box all the way round with tiles, balancing the box on piles of tiles…or whatever strikes Junior Player as a good idea.

Separately, it can also be a way of seeing how to get all the tiles back in the box.  (However, you may sometimes find Junior Player has a difference of opinion about how to stack them, even when presented with the evidence.)

Dominoes: knocking them down

You can of course build small domino runs, if you want, particularly if you have a larger train table to yourselves.

Junior players may find it harder to gauge how close to put the bricks together to make a domino run for themselves.  But they sure know what to do if Daddy has built one and they get half a chance to knock it down…

Dominoes: matching the colours

Your travelling companion may or may not want to play the game as it’s conventionally played.  But you can usually get away with a bit of colour matching of tiles (even if there is scrupulous avoidance of any counting).

You could also play this a bit like a matching game: take it in turns to turn over two tiles. If you can get them to match (ie same colours), you keep the pair; otherwise, you put them back.  Winner is the one with the most tiles.

Dominoes: will last a whole journey

This may depend on the junior player you’re travelling with, but I have known a whole hour-long train journey to be spent with the box of dominoes. And given that At No Time is the game played conventionally, I tend to think that’s pretty good.

We have pulled back a bit from dominoes, given the rise of interest in TopTrumps, but perhaps it’s a good time to try actually playing the game…

Dominoes: the real deal

I have memories of playing dominoes with my granny (mum’s mum).  I liked the way you could line up your tiles and stare across at your opponent – at least, we would tend to do this bit.

I suspect she knew a lot more about how to play it tactically, and was making it easier for me on occasion, but still, it was fun to play.

Equally, I always liked the bit where you couldn’t go, with the tiles you had, and had to knock on the table to show that.

I also liked the point where you decided to change the run of the tiles, and made them go round a corner, or when you had a double tile to play, and laid it cross-ways.

Perhaps it’s time to try again with introducing the game – and see whether missing two pieces hinders us or not. But perhaps it’s best to start that at home, and see how we get on.