Editing Mahjong (section)

===The Set and what to do with it===

The entire set consists of 144 tiles. That's including the flowers and seasons. Here's the suits:

*'''Characters 1-9x4''': "Money tiles", outside the people's republic, or "man-tiles" These tiles have a chinese number on the top part and a red symbol on the bottom. Western sets have western numbers carved into the upper right to help out; but is it that hard to memorize 9 numbers?

*'''Circles 1-9x4''': "Pin-tiles" They look like colourful plates. The amount of circles on the tile corresponds its number.

*'''Bamboos 1-9x4''': "Bams"! There's a special hand involving these tiles and the green dragon. Known in Japanese as "Sou" tiles.

*'''Dragons R, B, Gx4''': Think of them as the picture cards in the ol' 52. They can only be melded in pungs or kongs (3 or 4 of the same). The term "dragon" comes out of western influence. They're supposed to be like "flesh, nature and spirit". "Chun", "Hatsu" and "Haku" in Nipponese.

*'''Winds N,E,W,Sx4''': And their oriental counterparts. Like dragons, they can only be melded in pungs or kongs. You get bonus points for claiming your own wind or the main wind (East in most cases).

*'''Seasons and Flowers''': There's only four flowers and seasons in the whole set. You can be smart and not use these at all. In gameplay, you can announce your flower/season tiles and trade them for normal tiles. So literally: Playing with them is like playing without them

The basic game requires four players. So get four of your friends or just azn people (they cannot resist a game of mahjong) and sit around a small square table that has a lip. Take out your $50 tile box and remove the flower and season tiles, because no-one uses those.
Done that? Okay. Now shuffle the cards around, gradually turning them backside up. Make sure to make a lot of noise; it's a part of the tradition of Mahjong. Arrange the tiles in rows of 17 and stacks of two. Be sure to use the lip to straighten the stacks. This makes four walls with 34 tiles each. 

Determine the dealer (East), thus the other wind directions. East throws two dice and counts counter clockwise East being one. The player the dice indicate will throw the dice again and cut his/her wall by the indicated number. From that number of tiles from right to left, count 7  (14 tiles) These are the "dead tiles" or "wang tiles", if you prefer. They will not be used in the game in this variation.

Starting from East, take turns grabbing four tiles per player left from the dead wall until you all have 12 in front of you. Now east takes two and the rest take one. East will now have 14 tiles in front of him/her, the rest have 13. East puts one of his/her tiles in the middle of the walls. You can view this tile as "I will not use this tile to win the round" for that specific player. The turn passes to the right, he/she takes a tile from the wall counter-clockwise and puts one tile in the middle. Now you know the plot.

Like mentioned earlier, you don't have to keep your hand concealed; you may call all your combinations from the discards. These combinations will be set aside to indicate your calls. If you called 3 of a kind and pull the fourth one from the wall, you may turn it into a kong/kan (four of a kind). You may also do this if someone discards the fourth tile. If all players declare a kan, the game ends in a draw, but we'll get to that later. Two players called on the same tile? chii<Pon<kan<win. After claiming a kan, take a replacement tile from the wall.

You can also declare a win even if your hand isn't ready and face the penalty, otherwise known as Chombo. This is considered a tried and true tactic if you aren't sure of the safety of your discards, therefore being afraid of paying a hefty sum to a player whose hand you suspect is more expensive than the penalty (usually 8000 points). Bear in mind, people will get wind of you if you do it too often and will consider you a dick.

[[image:Mahjong_table.png|thumb|One can't simply buy a regular table and glue wooden lips, because real Mahjong tables are [[Serious_Business|fucking srs bzns]].]]

You can determine the payment on different hands by looking up the standardized competition rules.