pimanrules

@zor: There's no apparent reason to buy the new dock, though (unless you want another dock). You gain an ethernet jack but lose a USB port, so you might as well just buy an ethernet adapter.

@thepotatoman: Yeah, the gacha is terrible. The fortune charm is a much better value ($5 for 11 summons + some other perks) but it requires you log in everyday to claim your currency.

The other items can be given to characters to level up their bond. This doesn't do anything useful until you max it at which point you unlock new voice lines. You can also cash them in for more summons (two purple for a summon IIRC).

That's what I thought at first, but that doesn't really jibe with him retracting the question and saying, "oh, I see."

For sure. I think it would be helpful if they played more hands co-op, or maybe played with people on voice with open hands (open hand mahjong of course not being a particularly fun game, but I bet it'd be helpful instructionally).

My weeks feel incomplete without Mahjong Mornings, glad to see it return after the break. Your weekly Mahjong Q&A:

“I didn’t get a character!”

(spoiler tag since this is gonna be high in the comments)

Each summon is a 5% chance of getting a character. 10x summons have one guaranteed purple item, leaving 9 chances for a character, or a 37% chance.

“It’s auto-playing for me”

Once you’ve declared riichi, your hand is locked in—the game will auto-play for you until you can call ron, tsumo, or (closed) kan.

“Where to put the honor tiles?”

I have no idea what Ben was trying to ask here, lol. He had a west, north, white, green, and red at the time, if anyone wants to try to parse that.

“What are the seat and round wind?”

The seat wind is the one you’re seated at, the four small letters in the middle of the table. The round wind is the written-out wind in the very middle of the table (usually East in an East-round game). The other two winds are valueless honors. If your seat wind matches the round wind, it counts for double.

East is just highlighted because east is the dealer seat. “Opposite winds” don’t count for anything.

"Can I do this and this, this and this...?"

I believe Jan was asking if he could go for Seven Pairs? If so, the answer was “no” because he had already called pon—that triplet was then locked in, and there’s no undo.

“Why can’t I throw these down?”

That’s the rule of kuikae. Basically, if you call to form a meld, you can’t discard any tiles that would have also completed that meld. For example, if you have 456 in your hand, and call chii on a 7, you won’t be able to discard the 4. The thing to watch out for is, again suppose you have 456, and you try to call chii on a red five for bonus points, it won’t let you discard the leftover 5, and you might be forced to ruin some other part of your hand.

In this case, there were three tiles caught by kuikae—Jan called chii on a 7 to form 567, so the game wouldn’t let him discard either of his fours (which could form 456) or the 7 that was already in his hand.

“When does a game of Mahjong end?”

I went over this in the “Game length/flow” section of my last Mahjong treatise, but to summarize: The game ends after everyone has lost as dealer once (twice in a south round game), so long as someone has 30,000 points (Mahjong Soul will also end the game if the dealer wins in all-last while they're ahead with the requisite 30,000). The game also ends early as soon as someone ends up negative. As you discovered, when the dealer wins, they get to be dealer again which can lead to arbitrarily long games.

“How did the AI win? (in East 3)”

I think you figured this out, but their hand was 234566778m33355s. They didn’t have any terminals (1 or 9) or honors (winds or dragons), so they had tanyao—all simples. Their melds were 234m 567m 678m 333s, and their pair was 55s.

Not that you need to care about scoring, but for completion’s sake—they got 1 han for the tanyao, 20 fu for winning, 2 fu for tsumo, and 4 fu for the closed triplet a total of 26 fu which rounds up to 30. That made their basic points 30 (fu) * 2 ^ (1 (han) + 2) or 240. There were two honba on the table (one for exhaustive draw in East 2, one for Jan winning as dealer in East 3) worth an extra 200 points per player. The dealer pays 2*the basic points + the honba bonus or 680, rounded up to 700. Everyone else pays 1*basic points + honba or 440, rounded up to 500.

In summary, don’t worry about scoring any time soon.

“What is furiten/no yaku”

I think you figured out the bit with the winds, but this is a good example of what happens if you don’t have a yaku—you end up with a completed hand but can’t call tsumo so you’re forced to discard one of your tiles. That puts you back in tenpai with a wait on the tile you just discarded, instantly putting you into furiten (again, furiten happens when a tile you need to win is in your discard pile, even if it wouldn't form a yaku).

@aera: I don't know how well it would go since I've never tried it, but I think it would be worth trying at least once playing with open hands and having someone walking them through just to get a feel for the thought process. The caveat of course being that mahjong with open hands is a very different game, but still.

Haha, since I did a bit of an info dump last week, my plan this time around was to do a Q&A of their unanswered questions, but I guess a side effect of having knowledgeable guests is that there were no unanswered questions.

That being said, a lot of my last comment is still pertinent, particularly the list of versatile yaku/one-page yaku chart (the one in Mahjong Soul isn’t super easy to navigate), and the part on the dead wall/ura dora (since Brin got a bit confused there—it’s not super important though since it’s just for bonus points).

I don’t want to comment too much on strategy since a lot of the fun when you’re starting out is intuiting basic strategy on your own, but I will say that Jan is calling too eagerly—it’s generally a bad idea to call in the hopes that your hand will “figure itself out” unless you have a specific yaku in mind that you’re going for. The primary exception being if it’s the end of the game and you’re calling just to get into a no-yaku tenpai for pity points.

Also, the least consequential correction imaginable, but honba, the bonus points after a dealer keep/draw, count for whoever wins, not just the dealer.

@ratamero: Yep, with the slight caveat that they wouldn't have actually won with the 3 since it wouldn't have formed a yaku, but it still would have completed a hand so it counts for furiten. In fact, it looks like they drew the 3 on their last turn and were forced to discard into furiten.

Not applicable in this situation, but worth noting that called tiles still count as part of your discard for the purposes of furiten--something to watch out for.

@peezmachine: You were in furiten. From what I can tell, you had three melds and pairs of 3-sou and north winds, so you were in tenpai with waits on 3 and N, but the 3 wouldn't have formed a yaku. But you also had a 3 in your discard pile, which puts you in furiten, meaning you could have only have won by tsumo. You could recover the hand from this position by abandoning your pair and forming another.

Furiten sucks, but like I say above, it encourages you to plan ahead carefully (it's also a critical aspect of defensive play, and, for better or worse, serves to prevent you from targeting specific players to ron). If you were playing physically I imagine most people would ignore furiten for a beginner, but video games are not so forgiving .

Exactly. Her final hand was 2333444556778-sou, and she called ron on the 6-sou. You can work backwards to figure out what the hand should have been--the lone 8 would have to be part of a 678 sequence. this leaves a lone 7 that would have to be part of a 567. Then a lone 5 that would be 345. That leaves 23344--you get a 234 out of that and you're left with 3 and 4, like you said.

In actuality, she was waiting on the 7 (used the tenhou calculator to figure that one out). Then she'd have 234 345 345 678 77--worth 6 han for the flush, one for tanyao, and one for 345345 (iipeikou), a total of 8 han for baiman. So yeah, flush hands are flashy, but definitely not beginner friendly, especially when you're playing with a timer. Mahjong Soul's hints help a lot, of course, and it's impossible to chombo, but it's very easy to end up in furiten when you don't know what you'll be waiting on.

Honestly? It's like Ben said--there are a ton of obtuse and hard to learn rules, but once you've figured it out it's actually pretty chill to play. A lot of the strategy is also self-evident after having played for a while, so even having played just a few months it's easy to seem like an expert. For me personally, I love learning about all the weird rules and stuff so it's fun trying to explain them all.

I credit the increased interest in Yakuza for at least triggering the increased interest in the game (I've never played it, but got introduced to it by a friend who did and got us all hooked), but that's just my guess.

@thepotatoman: That's a good way to put it. I didn't want to inundate them with too many strategy tips since they seem to be picking up strategy pretty well on their own, but I did think it was important to dispel any bad advice that might lead them astray.

It was really valuable to me when I was playing my first couple games and got to try and see what happens when you overenthusiastically call--I wouldn't want to try discouraging that sort of experimental play. What's important I think is understanding why things go wrong when they do rather than being surprised (which is why I so desperately want them to learn about furiten even though it's a more advanced rule).