Slosh

This is a four handed British member of the Trains family, played with the double six set. The games gets its name from the word "slosh", which refers to water or other liquids spilling over the edge of their container onto something or someone. Think of splashing someone with our beer while sitting at a bar and you will see why the game got this name.

Equipment

The game uses a double six domino set, some markers and four players.

The Deal

Each player gets a hand of six tiles, leaving a boneyard of four tiles that is not used in the round. The engine for the first round is the double four, then the following rounds use the double five, double six, double one, double two and finally double three.

The player who has the engine for the round has to place it first; if this tile is in the boneyard, the hand is re-dealt until someone has the engine for this round. Play then proceeds to the left.

The Play

The "engine" tile is placed in the centre of the table. Each player has his own train, a line of tiles extending from the engine towards the player. Traditionally, the four trains are built to extend diagonally from the four corners of the engine, not from the sides and ends.

In his turn, a player adds a tile to his own train if he can. If he cannot do so, the next player in turn may add a tile to the blocked player's train before adding a tile to his own train. Playing a tile on your right-hand opponent's train because he was unable to is called "sloshing". If the player before you was able to play on his train, you are only allowed to play on your own train.

Scoring

Scoring is done with poker chips, but you can use paper and pencil. The round is over when someone dominoes or the game is blocked. The hands are scored by counting the number of pips left in each hand. The player who dominoes has a score of zero. The lowest scoring player is paid the difference between his score and that of the other players.

Comments & Strategy

You can remember to start with the double four because there are four players in the game.

You need to watch your train and the one to your right because those are the only places to play. You need to slosh as much as you can to get rid of tiles and domino before anyone else.

The four dead tiles in the boneyard make this game trickier than you might think because you can never be sure what tiles are in play.

Defensive play is harder. The rest of the board is important because it tells you what tiles are not yet played. If you do not have a protected suit, then you would look at the table and count the tiles exposed in each suit, so you can end your train with the most played suit possible. This suit is less likely to appear in the hand of the player to your left, who can slosh you.

But if you are running out of plays on your own train, then you might want to invite a slosh to give yourself an opening. You would do this by getting the least exposed suit on the end of your train.