Mahjong Mornings group?

Yo 3-seat Mahjong is kinda lit! It really forces you to get instinctive about your picks and the pace zooms by. The only minor downside is that I only meet people there well above my rank, but I've been holding my own.

Don't overlook 3-player mode, if you want to test your level of perception. I like it more than I thought I would.

@daavpuke: I've done that once or twice also. Is there any notification when you are being watched? Just curious.

I've only gotten 13 Orphans once in an event match.

Statistically, you should go for 13 Ophans if you have 10 orphans in your starting hand, since the number of tiles to reach a ready hand is 3 (aka "3-shanten"). The average shanten of a starting hand is somewhere between 3 and 4. At 9 orphans ("4-shanten"), you could go for it, but it's a bit worse than your average starting hand. Anything below that is statistically unlikely to happen. Despite knowing that, I will occasionally go for a desperate 13 Orphans with 8, which usually never ends well for me.

If you are aiming for 13 Orphans, you should always consider pivoting to the yaku - chanta and half flush (honitsu) - especially by mid-round if no progress has been made, or if a terminal/honor becomes dead.

Happy mahjong-ing!

Someone flipped the table with a 5 called Kan and then dealt into a Yakuman. I love Mahjong.

@redwing42: I don't think so? I don't think the client is that elaborate, since when you're watching, you get the same call prompts as if you're playing, without the ability to actually call, of course. It just spoofs you as the player. Would be neat tho, especially if you could cheer people on.

@bagelsbagels: Do you have any tips on dealing with a starting hand that's really far from a ready hand? My guts tells me I should switch to defense during mid game if I couldn't drastically improve my hand before then. I'm always worried that I'm playing a bit too defensively. Or is it a case where knowing more Yaku help mitigates the number of bad starting hands?

@iceangel: Yeah, sometimes, you just get bad hands. And you are right that you should play somewhat defensively. The best option here is to aim for the easiest yaku, especially yakuhai or all simples. If you have a few honor tiles that can be used as yakuhai, keep all of them, hope for a good draw, so you can Pon one of them later. If it doesn't happen, keep them around for defensive tiles. Throw out isolated 1,9's first since they don't make good "waits".

Still, you don't necessarily want to fold completely until you perceive a risk. The rule of thumb that I used in early ranked matches - consider folding when someone calls riichi, or when someone pon/chii/kan 3 times (2 times is tricky), and your hand sucks (low scoring or far away from ready). Of course, this is super situational and is going to depend on a lot of other factors. In my opinion, this push/fold decision is the most interesting (and difficult!) part of riichi mahjong.

Yeah I'm just starting to give better consideration on when to fold entirely, my rank suffers a lot because I'm a terrible Just Go For It! player.

But sometimes though.. I mean I watched Akagi I can make this bad tile pass if I will hard enough.

Take that AI!

I have almost clawed my way out of Novice, but I keep going one step forward two steps back. My ID is 86875882.

Yeah. I keep getting very close to Adept 1 and then just get a string of bad games and worse luck. I just want to play in the silver rooms.

Are you proud of that Tanyao?

I mutter angrily at the end of most games.

I should probably try to play for tanyao more often, but pride does get in the way sometimes.

Yesterday my table got blown up by a 9-dora (!!!!) sanbaiman - at least it was tsumo, so it didn't end the game instantly. (I still got second!). Also, I ended a game prematurely for the first time. This was East 2 after two haneman in a row against the same poor person:

I have dealt into a 12 dora counted Yakuman which is literally a plot point in fuckin' Akagi and was instantly annihilated.

Hard to even be mad about it, to be honest.

Sometimes you just gotta give another player all of your blood.

The demons who govern Mahjong are real and no one can ever convince me otherwise.

I started playing 3 days ago and im really liking it. Yesterday i felt ready enough to go online for the first time too and eventually got a win! my id is 81336938 if anyone wants to play sometime

I haven't played long enough to see any events so I'm curious how it'll work after maint. is done. Given that the Gacha is mean, and the item grind is mean, I'm not suuuuper optimistic but... if it's just play a lot of Mahjong during a time window then hey I got you covered.

Gotta say, getting tsumo-ed just after declaring riichi twice in a row ain't felling great.

@efesell: This game rarely gives out freebies. This past summer, they gave out a free character after completing a bunch of missions, but it doesn't happen often. Usually, events matches are casual games with a fun gimmick where you can win gifts to level your characters. I remember one where all 4 dora were revealed at the beginning of each round. Every round was a higher than mangan hand! Fun times!

I had a rough day, but then I got a joint Ron that was kind of a game changer. I'll definitely take it.

EDIT: Well it's been real. A good reminder to cut your losses.

Learned about "Robbing a kan" (Chankan) today, which is calling a ron on a tile upgrading an open triplet into a kan. Which now make me question if I should upgrade to a kan in late game? But I guess that would be a bad move anyway since doing so would add possible dora into your opponents hand. Unless you're Tenpai yourself of course.

I love calling Kans, I'm never going to open my hand for it unless it's already Dora 3 but closed Kans? Hell yeah roll them bones.

@retroshaft: Generally, closed kan's are fine when you are 1-away from tenpai or better, ideally with a good wait. In most cases, an open kan will lower your hand value and not worth it. It's also risky to call kan against someone who has riichi'd. Not only would they get a chance for a second dora, but also for an additional ura dora!

Before calling a closed kan, make sure if that fourth tile can be used in a new meld. For example, if you have 3333 in your hand, you can treat a 3 as a possible start of a new sequence (123, 234, or 345) + a triplet. If you have 4 of any honor tile and you need to fold, it'll buy you 4 turns of safe discards.

Kan's are also good when you are badly in last place. You've got nothing to lose, so might as well take the gamble. Sometimes, the extra dora/ura dora and extra fu can push you into third place.

Also, don't do this, but occasionally, if I'm in the lead, I'll kan if I have if I have 4 dora tiles even if my hand is completely terrible. It's a real power move, and in higher levels, sometimes people will immediately fold.

That's a pretty cool hustle and I can respect that!

Rise and grind, gamers. Mahjong Soul started an event of some sort. All I know is that you need to play a bunch of ranked. Every aspect of this app is very labyrinthine to me, for some reason. Anyway, I better go play some games.

@daavpuke: Was just getting ready to post the same thing. It makes me feel really old that the only thing I can tell is that it basically costs $15 for a sexy Christmas skin. I don't even know how the points work because I played one match and got trounced so badly that I may be starting off in the negative.

I’ve pulled a few characters before this and not a one of them has an outfit.

@redwing42: yeah, I'm having an old moment too on this one. I just can't seem to figure out how this game's economy works.

They also added achievements. Though I have no idea what the rewards could be.

I claimed some music apparently but didn’t have enough time to see what it applied to or if it was just something you could listen to.

Would be nice to have a different match theme.

A bit of clever writing in some of the achievements, like "I have no idea what tile I need" for a full flush and "It was meant to be seven pairs" for a pure double sequence.

@redwing42: Dreadfully accurate.

Ok, here's what I got so far (and I apologize is this is pic spam)

So, there seems to be a limit to your daily points (1.1) and I believe the next unlock isn't until Christmas? Also, some of the rewards seem to be tiny blind boxes? (2.1, 2.2) Anyone know if these are even worth opening? I don't really understand what that gift system does here, outside of the usual VN stuff.

PS: You eventually collect loot boxes in Silver rooms? (1.2) I got two common beer mugs lol

The gift system mostly unlocks new voice clips and such. If you've seen a character say the Yaku out loud in their victory screen that's from getting 5 hearts.

More importantly gifts can be donated for Stardust which is the only other currency that you can use to get Summons. Keep purple gifts though because getting a Bond with a character at 5 hearts requires a number of them, amongst other things.

Also getting 5 hearts unlocks the character's alternate costume and additional emotes. You can go to Dorm > click on character > View > click on the Shirt icon on the portrait to view the alternate costumes. Scroll down on that page to also view the unlockable emotes. As far as I know, aside from the one alternative outfit for each character, there is no other way of unlocking costumes other than spending money.

@bagelsbagels: Well getting 5 hearts unlocks the Bond which requires a lot of items and the bond unlocks the new outfit and such.

Getting all the items for the Bond without spending a ton of money will take a LOT of mahjong.

I knew this game client was kinda horny, but this event seems really horny. OTOH, I've already doubled my copper count (not that I know what it's used for, really) and have gotten my first gift. Which I gave to one of the two starter characters, no idea if that was the best use.

I'm basically just here for the mahjong itself, so I don't care about the rest. The one thing I really would like to unlock though is a change in background music, but I don't even know if that's a thing.

I also got a 16,000 point hand which is new record for me against real players. So that was fun. I don't really understand the scoring at all; except that an open hand with a dragon triplet and nothing else isn't worth much. Also, I managed to get a 7 pairs hand, which I was impressed by, but it didn't give me nearly the amount of points I expected.

Every event costume I've seen pop up in games has trended Very Horny which feels like most Gacha events.

Anyway in lieu of steam sale I chose to be Part of The Problem and did manage to get the rate up char on a 10 pull. So all in all a favorable transaction, I suppose.

I got the bunny shrine maiden gal... Also got my first Yakuman (against the AI), 4 concealed triples!

And yeah the holiday event is extremely horny. Wowowowowow

Anyone want to try and schedule a playing time? It'd be nice to get out of ranked for a bit and do some friendlies with y'all.

Tomorrow (23rd), I'll be available from about 5:00PM to 7:00PM Pacific, if anyone is interested.

I went ahead and got the fortune charm. I don't mind putting in $5, as the mahjong has been good. I know that won't get me to 10 pulls before the event is over, so I'm debating on getting the first time bonus as well. The mahjong will have to be really good for that, though.

@redwing42: You might get more than you'd thing. There will be multiple purple gifts to redeem which are 25 dust each if you donate them. 50 dust gets you a scroll to pull once.

Looks like there are also 2-3 scrolls scattered throughout the event as well. The points come really fast too I maxed out what you can get so far just this afternoon.

This event seems kinda generous and the achievements are neat too....probably most people already unlocked a new "main screen" song which you can set in the options.

Of course that's how gacha games always do it: make it seem like they're generous but really they're just roping you in.

I would, but unfortunately will likely be busy. Should be free over the weekend though.

@relkin: I'd be up for it! I was looking up the tournament structure in the game. It would be nice if we could set up a weekly (or bi-weekly) community tournament. That's given the management side of things isn't too complicated.

Man every time mahjong is brought up anywhere, I think I could try to get back into it, but with my (bad) luck there should be like a eight more rooms of lower rank below bronze in Mahjong Soul for me to never end up in 3rd or 4th.

@relkin: I'd be interested in playing some games!

I have achieved mahjong balance.