Jezz's Chinese Mahjong Variations

Two dice are used to determine starting oya.

Oya throws two dice, which then determines who throws the two dice again (ie a 4 would mean that North throws), which then determines which wall to break (counting from the new thrower). The total sum of the two dice also determines where from the right to break the wall. The oya throws the dice again to determine which tile to turn face up from the far end of the wall.

Players take their tiles as normal. Before play starts, players reveal any season tiles (NOT the flower tiles) that they have, and take replacement for them from the end of the wall, in seat order.

When making your hand, no runs are allowed!!! (ie it must consist of sets that are all three-of-a-kind, or kungs, plus the pair). The tiles that are the same as the revealed tile, and the tiles directly one above and below it are all wild (so there are 11 jokers in the game) - ie if a 4 of bamboos is revealed, then 3, 4 and 5 of bamboos are all wild.

For this game, the flower tiles act as dragons and come after 'white' in the order. If a season tile is revealed, then it is it's equivalent wind (plus the one above and below) are the ones that become the wild tiles (E = Spring, S = Summer, W = Autumn, and N = Winter) - so that in this case there will be 12 jokers.

If you pick up a Season tile, you lay it down immediately, and take a replacement from the wall end. No 'chis' are allowed because there are no runs in a hand, but Pons and Kungs are, as long as they are natural (ie not including wild tiles).

You must score at least 7 fans to go out - although in the course of a game, you are only allowed to score just 7 fans once (after that first time, you must score at least 8 fans).

You play through the whole wall. When you reach the revealed tile (either through normal play, or from behind - as it were - due to replacement tiles for kungs and flowers), it isn't used, but picked up, and placed on top of the wall near the end.

If there is no winner at the end of all the tiles being used (only happened once last night), there is no replacement, and oya remains oya.

A winning oya remains oya.

The Verdict The game sounds complicated, but is quite simple, and I think much more based on luck than the simple game previously described (and not just because I lost a lot at this game, whilst I won a lot on the simple version ;-). The reason why I say this, is because the tactics are straight forward. To go out, you can only really have one suit and honours (plus the wild tiles), and so the first thing you do is clear out two suits, whilst ponning and kunging anything that comes your way. When you get down to one suit plus honours and jokers, you look to see what has already been played, and throw out the same - plus your non-scoring winds. Then it is down to throwing out whatever singletons you have to win. As the play is all quite obvious, it is played very fast (especially at the start of the game, when the players are all clearing out their two suits), which to the unknowing makes it look as if everybody is very skillfull ;-)

To win this game, it mostly seems that you need to collect at least 3 jokers, because your opportunities to end are vastly increased, and so luck is a massive factor.

Final comment (for now):- A fun game, with a lot of jokers making it quite exciting, but ultimately less skill required than for other games.

And I think that that is all the rules in a nutshell.

After playing this game a second time, I think it is a good version. There are enough complications to make it interesting, and very exciting for when you're waiting for your final tile to turn up, but is straight forward enough for a reasonably intelligent beginner to pick up fairly quickly, without losing too much money whilst learning (due to the high amount of luck involved, and the fairly logical way for discarding), but there is just enough skill required to allow the experienced player to win more often overall.