#Yall may tell that I am resurfacing a phase I had | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

isatumbles · 1 year

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OKAY

NOW THE PROMISED RAMBLE

So uh I have weird obsessions every now and then and I thought why not ramble about em here bc Twitter is scary and idfk I wanna see other people get into new stuff

Topic of the day: Mahjong

When I was taking a plane back home after visiting with family, I saw that the plane had a game called Mahjong. I thought "Huh, like Solitaire Mahjong?", but nope, it was a completely different game to what I was normally accustumed to. So as usual, after the plane ride was over, I decided to research the game and found myself a really fun game to spend time on!

So Mahjong is a really popular and old game that originates in China. It is a four-player strategic game often played with marble/wood tiles that are used to create hands to win the game. This game has sO many variations around asia, hell even America made their own mahjong variation (Which I personally dislike bc it makes it wayyy too close to poker). The main premise of the game is similar across the variations, so its not hard to get into different types of mahjong if you started off with something different. The one I got into was Riichi Mahjong, which is the Japanese variation of mahjong. (Note: Imma delve into the basics of the Jp variation of Mahjong bc I think it is the most readily available to play online and is the most popular)

So how does one play this game? The game has several tiles and your goal is to make a complete hand of 14 tiles having four sets of Chi/Pon/Kan (Will explain in a bit) and a pair of the same tile. The game has three suits, all numbered from 1-9. They are known as:

Pin/Dots: Use little circles that go from 1-9

Sou/Bamboo: Use bamboo that go from 1-9, the 1 is unique in which it is often represented as a bird such as a peacock or a sparrow.

Man/Characters: Use the chinese/japanese symbols for the numbers 1-9 (一、二、三、四、五、六、七、八、九) and the symbol for 10,000 (萬)

Along with these suits are the honor tiles:

Winds: Use the chinese/japanese characters for the cardinal East, South, West, and North directions (東、南、西、北)

Dragons: Arent denoted by their character, but instead by their color. So they are simply known as the white, green, and red dragons.

In other variations, there may be flower tiles and season tiles, which represent the four seasons in a year (Winter, Spring, Summer, Fall), they serve as bonus tiles if they are drawn and can grant bonus points.

So now that we are familiar with the tiles, our goal is to now make that 14 tile hand that we mentioned. This is achieved by drawing a tile when it is your turn and discarding one you dont need. As you do this, you start forming a pile in the center that consists of all of your and your opponents discards. These discards are very important bc you can actually take your opponents discards to gain a hand! This is known as Chi/Pon/Kan!

A Chi is a set of three tiles of the same suit that go in a sequential order (So like a 1-2-3, 5-6-7, etc.), note that only the suits can do this, you cant do this with honor tiles! A Pon is a triplet of the same tile, and a Kan is a quad of the same tile! Kans are harder to get bc each tile has four copies of its own, meaning you have to be really lucky to draw all four during a match!

When you see a peice that has been discarded but can complete a Chi/Pon/Kan, you can call the piece and take it as your own! For Chi, you can only call to the discards of the player to the left of you (The turns are played counter-clockwise), but for Pon/Kan, you can call whichever player who discards it.

Here is an example of a player who called Pon on the 9 Sou and a Chi on the 2-3-4 Pin. The tiles are tilted on which player they got it from, so the Pon was called from the player to their right and the Chi has to be from the left so the left is tilted.

This makes the game really exciting and strategic, making you think about what tiles you discard while making your own hand.

Now how does one win a match? There are two ways to win, and these are either by Tsumo or Ron.

Tsumo is when you finally get the last tile you needed by drawing it, this one is pretty tough to get imo. Then theres Ron, where the piece you needed is discarded by a player and you call on their discard to win. This one I think is not only easier to get, but also more brutal since Tsumo makes everyone lose points depending on the hand, and Ron instead takes a BUNCH of points from the person who discarded it.

Heres an example of someone winning by Tsumo, they drew the 5 Sou to complete their hand!

SO UH

Imma wrap this up bc I realized theres so many more rules to go off about but I kidna wanna keep this short so if you want to get into this, you can do some research on other details such as Riichi, Yaku, Dora, etc.

I do wanna end this with how cool some of the Mahjonf equipment is. There are these tables that are fully automated and can help start the game with a simple push of a button!

I MEAN LOOK AT THIS THIS IS SO COOL

I also own a physical set myself, but due to image limitations I might have to show that in a sep post lmfoa

So yahoo thats me going nuts about a game I like. Will I do more of these? Possibly, I might do Yugioh or Chess if Im in the mood.

For now Imma detonate into confetti bc this took half an hour or more so sæyAA

#mahjong #riichi mahjong #riichi #ramble #rambling #talking #going nuts #Yall may tell that I am resurfacing a phase I had #how to play #POV: You listen to Isa go off on a tangent about funny chinese blocks #game #games #board game #chinese #japanese #tiles

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