Mhing - a mahjong-based card game

American, Filipino... Any other rule sets you may have heard of or come across!

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Barticle
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Mhing - a mahjong-based card game

Post by Barticle » Thu May 15, 2014 10:14 pm

Mhing is a boxed card-game from the 80's (my set's copyrighted 1982 at least).
mhing1.jpg
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(this is the smaller of two UK editions I've seen with the same box art)

The gameplay of Mhing is essentially a form of mahjong but you get sufficient cards to be able to play most forms of mahjong with them - suits of dots, bams and (literally) characters, dragons and winds plus the flowers of Chinese mahjong (two each of four designs), jokers, spare blanks and scoring tables. The cards are marked clearly in the corner and the suits are colour-coded so it's very easy to see what you're holding.
mhing2.jpg
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Here's a summary of the rules so you can see the similarities and differences to mahjong:

- two to six players

- each player holds 13 cards and they need to make a complete hand of four sets (sequences or triplets, no quads) and one pair

- play proceeds clockwise around the table

- players draw from the Well (draw pile) instead of the Wall!

- flowers are declared and replaced as in Chinese mahjong

- the six wildcard jokers can be used as any card (except flowers)

- you can call chow or pung to take any player's discard

- no round/seat winds, dealer bonus or continuances

- there are eighteen scoring combinations and these can be combined

- scoring combos are worth "credits" (like doubles) and these convert directly to points (1c = 2p, 2c = 4p, 3c = 8p, 4c = 16p, then 5-7c = 32p, 8-10c = 64p, etc)

- the hand winner gains points, no-one loses points; players start at zero and the game ends when someone breaks 500 pts

There is ample potential to modify the rules - you could remove the jokers/flowers, change the points target, apply a score minimum to prevent players going out with a junk hand, add/remove scoring combinations, use a counter-clockwise turn order, apply +/- scoring, etc - or you can simply use the cards to play mahjong.

(see previous discussion of Mhing cards and mahjong cards in this thread)

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Re: Mhing - a mahjong-based card game

Post by Ignatius » Fri May 16, 2014 2:18 pm

Looks interesting and fun to play.
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Re: Mhing - a mahjong-based card game

Post by Barticle » Tue May 20, 2014 10:50 am

In countries where Mhing was marketed it's a cheap option for buying second-hand cards for mahjong.

The numbered cards and simplified rule-set would be good for introducing someone to mahjong.

Experienced but lazy players can enjoy the lack of wall-building and the simplified scoring!

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