Fortress Dominoes Rules

How To Play Fortress Dominoes

Number Of Players: 3 to 6
Domino Set Required: Double-Six or Double-Nine

Fortress is a variation on Block Dominoes. The main difference is that all doubles are spinners.

Setup

After shuffling the dominoes, each player draws tiles to make up their hand. The number of tiles drawn depends on the number of players and the size of the dominoes set:

Number of Players	Domino Set	Tiles Per Player	Notes
3	Double-Six	9	The player downing the double-six picks up the last tile from the boneyard.
4	Double-Six	7	No tiles left in the boneyard.
4	Double-Nine	13	The player downing the double-nine picks up one tile from the boneyard.
5	Double-Nine	11	No tiles left in the boneyard.
6	Double-Nine	9	The player downing the double-nine picks up the last tile from the boneyard.

Gameplay

The player with the highest double places the first domino (see notes above for special cases). Play proceeds to the left (clockwise). Each player adds a domino to an open end of the layout, if he can.

All doubles are spinners, and can be played off onto all four edges.

A player that cannot make a move must pass. The game ends when one player uses the last domino in his hand, or when no more plays can be made. If all players still have tiles in their hand, but can moke no moves, then the game is said to be "blocked".

Scoring

The player with the lightest hand (i.e. the number of dots on their dominoes) wins the number of sum total of points in all of his opponents hands, minus the points in his own hand.

Games are often played in a number of rounds, where the score in each individual round (or hand) is added to the score in the previous rounds. When one player's total score exceeds a pre-established "winning score" (100, for example), the game is over and the winner declared.

Other Sources of Fortress Domino Rules

Domino Plaza - Discusses Fortress with a Double-Six set
Puremco - Discusses Fortress with a Double-Nine set