Welcome to Leyden!

Leyden is an exciting game that connects dominos. It’s a game for two players where the objective is to outlast your opponent and avoid scoring over 100 points. Sounds fun, right?

Let’s Get Started

To set up the game, we shuffle all the dominos and each player is dealt 6 tiles. The remaining dominos are placed aside to create the boneyard. Are you ready?

Special Tiles

In Leyden, there are also special tiles called the Matador. These special tiles have pips equal to 7 or 0. We have [1-6], [2-5], [3-4], and [0-0] as our Matador tiles. Keep an eye out for these!

How to Play

The player with the lowest-ranked double, except for double 0, goes first. They will lead the round by placing their chosen double. In future rounds, the loser leads and must play a double that isn’t double 0.

If a player doesn’t have a double to play, they can draw a domino from the boneyard to get one. Easy peasy!

If you don’t want to be the first to play, the other player can take the lead. And if both players refuse, we’ll shuffle the dominoes and start over.

Once someone leads with a domino, it becomes the central piece, also known as the spinner. The first four dominoes played after that must be placed on each side of the spinner, creating the four arms of the game.

To add a domino to the end of an arm or create a new arm, the two touching sides of the domino must add up to 7.

When you have a double domino, it doesn’t have any special rules. You just place it in line with the other dominoes, not across.

The special matador tiles can be played on any arm or next to the spinner, regardless of their sum. You can place them in line or across. If you play them in line, you have one extension where you can place another domino. If you play them across, the next player can choose which side of the tile to play off.

If you play the [0-0] domino on an arm, you can only add another domino of the same suit.

When it’s your turn, you can choose to draw as many tiles as you like from the boneyard as long as there are at least two tiles left. If you can’t play a tile, you must keep drawing from the boneyard until you have a playable tile or until there are only two tiles left. Those last two tiles will remain in the boneyard and no one can draw them.

The round ends when someone dominoes and has no more tiles in hand, or when all the arms are blocked and no more tiles can be played.

SCORING

At the end of the round, each player adds up the total number of pips left in their hand and adds that to their score.

END OF GAME

The game ends when you or I reach or exceed 100 points at the end of a round. You will be the loser. If both of us reach 100 or more, the one with the lower score wins. If we both tie, neither of us wins.

I’m Amber (They/Them), an Austin writer and gaming enthusiast. I consider myself a gaming expert and I have a real passion for dogs, plants, and D&D.

I’m Amber (They/Them), an Austin writer and gaming enthusiast. I consider myself a gaming expert and I have a real passion for dogs, plants, and D&D.