We have been preparing for this night for a very long time. Tom has always had an intense interest in Mahjong, especially in the Japanese variant, Riichi Mahjong. He’s got books and books about it. Lots of apps. A vast collection of Vita and Super Famicom versions.
Once while I was visiting him when he still lived in Ohio, he pulled out this beautiful, heavy, set, and we sat down and he taught me how to play. It’s just like the card game Rummy, he said, and it is… except that the Japanese, bless their hearts, decided that would be too easy, and so they added a bunch of win conditions you needed to also keep in mind if you wanted to build a winning hand.
There are three suits in Mahjong — pin (circles/coins), man (numbers), and sou (bamboo). They each run from 1-9, and there are four copies. There are also four copies of each of the winds, north, south, east and west. Lastly, there are four copies of each of the three dragons, green, red and white.
A ready hand typically consists of four melds and a pair. A meld is either three of the same tile, or a sequence of three within the same suit. To turn a ready hand into a winning hand, the player must also have one or more yaku, which are the winning conditions. Yaku can be gained and lost over the course of a hand. Every player starts with one yaku, a closed hand, which goes away if they open the hand by taking discarded pieces from other players.
There is a whole long list of yaku. You want as many as you can get, to score points. I can’t get into it here because I still don’t know all of them.
Tom’s Mahjong set is an American version, not a Riichi Mahjong set. We were looking on eBay for a nicer set, and saw that whoever runs World of Warcraft for Blizzard in Japan had come out with a WoW-themed Mahjong set that was sold briefly in the States at a Blizzcon. The prices were stratospheric.
We resolved that if we ever saw a decent fun set for any other game come up, we’d get one. When we heard about a Final Fantasy XIV-based set, that was it. It was timed to come out at the same time as their Mahjong game at the Gold Saucer casino in game.
It wasn’t for sale in the US, but a Japanese seller was happy to take our money and buy it for us when it was released. Which he did. And just about then, the pandemic hit and our Mahjong set was trapped on a boat in Japan for months. They eventually got the all clear, and the set we ordered in December (I believe) finally hit our doorstep in July.
It’s just been sitting there, waiting for the right time. The right time was tonight.
Tom had printed a sheet of yaku for each of us to refer to while playing. Remember, having a ready hand is not having a winning hand. You have to have at least one yaku, and since we usually opened our hands pretty early, everyone was trying for everything they could get.
I believe Drew had the first win, with repeating non-terminal sequences. I won next with three white dragons, and Ally next with a kan — four of a kind — of red dragons. Tom rounded off the night’s winning hands with the yaku of a closed hand, plus extra points for calling riichi (one tile from winning with a closed hand) and having three dora (special tiles that are worth extra points).
Strategy books will tell you to keep things close to the vest and to not open your hand too soon unless you have another yaku. And Tom did follow that strategy for the best hand. But it’s exciting, playing on the edge.
This was the first time any of us had played with three other people. The scheming and guessing, the physicality and sounds of the tiles, all of it was wonderful. Mahjong is a great contender for best new board game of 2020. Here’s hoping it catches on.
Next game night: back to Jaws of the Lion. My Jaws of the Lion playmat made its first appearance tonight as one of the pair needed to keep the Mahjong tiles safe while shuffling and playing.
