Mhing - a mahjong-based card game
Posted: Thu May 15, 2014 10:14 pm
Mhing is a boxed card-game from the 80's (my set's copyrighted 1982 at least).
(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.
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)
- mhing1.jpg (33.79 KiB) Viewed 5356 times
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 (28.05 KiB) Viewed 5356 times
- 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)