In this lesson
- Name all seven groups of tiles
- Understand what the card is and how to read its colors and letters
- Build the wall, break it and deal
- Play turns: draw, then discard
The goal
Every player tries to be first to build a hand of 14 tiles that exactly matches one line on the card. The card is printed each spring by the National Mah Jongg League and lists every hand you are allowed to build that year. Everything else in the game, from passing tiles to calling discards, is a way of getting to one of those lines faster.
The tiles
An American set has 152 tiles in seven groups. You do not need to memorize them all today, only to recognize the groups:
- Three suits: Craks, Dots and Bams, each numbered 1 to 9, four of each. Read the number in the corner. The 1 Bam is a bird.
- Winds: North, East, West and South, four of each.
- Dragons: Red, Green and White, four of each. The White Dragon is called Soap. Each Dragon goes with a suit: Red with Craks, Green with Bams, Soap with Dots.
- Flowers: eight, and they all count as the same tile.
- Jokers: eight. They can stand in for a tile, but only in a group of three or more.
See every tile explained whenever you want the full picture.
The card in five minutes
- Colors mean how many suits, not which ones. One color means one suit throughout; three colors means three different suits. You choose which suit is which.
- Letters: N, E, W, S are Winds, D is a Dragon, F is a Flower, and 0 is Soap.
- Spacing shows groups: two alike is a pair, three a pung, four a kong, five a quint.
- X or C: X means you may call other players’ discards to build it; C means you build it concealed, on your own.
That is enough to start. How to read the card goes further.
Setting up
- Wash and build.
Everyone mixes the tiles face down, then builds a wall 19 stacks long and two tiles high in front of their rack.
- Roll and break.
East, the dealer, rolls two dice, counts that many stacks from the right-hand end of East’s own wall, and breaks it there.
- Deal.
Starting with East and going to the right, each player takes four tiles at a time, three times around, then East takes two more and everyone else one. East ends with 14 tiles; everyone else has 13.
The table setup guide has a diagram of the wall.
A turn
East starts by discarding one tile. Play then moves to the right, counterclockwise. On your turn you take the next tile from the wall, decide what you no longer need, and discard one tile face up in the middle, saying its name out loud. A discard is final once it touches the table or you have named it. That rhythm, draw and discard, is the whole game until someone completes a hand. Lesson 3 adds calling other players’ discards.
Try it
Play the Tile Trainer until you can name tiles without thinking, then switch to Dragons mode to learn which Dragon goes with each suit.
Check yourself
Answer in your head, then open each one to check.
How many tiles are in an American Mahjong set?
152, including 8 Jokers and 8 Flowers.
What do the colors on the card tell you?
How many different suits a hand uses. They never tell you which suit.
Which Dragon goes with Bams?
The Green Dragon. Red goes with Craks, and Soap goes with Dots.
Whose wall is broken for the deal?
East’s own wall, counted from its right-hand end.
How many tiles do you hold after drawing?
14. You then discard back to 13.