Learning the game by stages – 3

Stage 3 – Introducing Flowers, Seasons, kongs and the kong box

We now start with the full complement of 144 tiles. At this point we can learn how to build the walls correctly and how to determine where a break should be made before the dealing begins.

The Flower and Season tiles are known as bonus tiles and give the game its largest element of luck. They can make a significant difference to the score. A kong is a set of 4 identical tiles and scores four times the pung equivalent.

The acquisition of a kong or a bonus tile depletes the number of tiles available to form further sets. This is rectified by taking a tile from the kong box created at the end of the live wall.

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The aim of the game

The winner is the player with the most points after one or more sessions.

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Preparing to play

• Add the 4 Season tiles and the 4 Flower tiles
• Shuffle the tiles and build the walls
• Break into one wall and create the kong box
• Deal out the tiles
• Select out any Flower or Season tiles

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Playing the game

Kongs and bonus tiles introduce some complications to the play, but bring us much closer to the full form of the game. For an explanation of these rules click on the links.

• Collecting sets
• Obtaining a new tile
• Claiming the discarded tile
• Flower and Season tiles
• Concealed sets
• Converting a pung to a kong
• One for Mah-Jong
• Robbing the kong
• Finishing the game

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Scoring

Calculating the basic score now needs to take account of kongs and bonus tiles. They are scored as follows:

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Kongs

The scores for kings are four times the pung equivalent.

	Exposed	Concealed
Minor tiles	8  points	16  points
Major tiles	16  points	32  points

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Flowers and Seasons

4 points for each Flower or Season.

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More doubles

There are also some more doubles:

Having your own Flower
(1 = East Wind, 2 = South Wind, 3 = West Wind, 4 = North Wind)

Having your own Season
(1 = East Wind, 2 = South Wind, 3 = West Wind, 4 = North Wind)

Holding a complete set of Flowers (a bouquet)
(double twice – includes own Flower double)

Holding a complete set of Seasons
(double twice – includes own Season double)

Original call – when a player is fishing after his first discard (and does not alter his hand)

Next ⇒

 

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