Jenn’s Corner #23: Variety
My favorite thing about Reach Mahjong is definitely the variety of rules. Many players that like variety will go to other games like the Chinese Official rules or American rules. These games are fun, but I can get my fix for every kind of play just with Reach Mahjong. I’ve been fortunate enough to travel around playing with different rules and in different venues lately.
Crazy Aggressive Online – The game that Garthe and I love to play on Konami’s Mahjong Fight Club is 3-player. Three players means more opportunities to win since you’re only against 2 opponents. Usually most of the cracks are taken out of the deck and the rules are, go Go GO! Go for the biggest hands, go for Reach and go for broke! Almost all winning hands will be worth more than 8,000 points. You’ll end up discarding a lot of winners, but aggression will pay off in the end and that makes the game fast, exciting and way more fun than normal brick and mortar Mahjong. Playing at home you can add lots of Lucky Tiles (dora) and the scores will be bigger and bigger.
Casino-Style – Sunday this week, Garthe and I visited our buddy Kamimura again over at Sen-ten-bou in Takadanobaba. The tournament is short, just 4 games, but so fun. The key here is also aggression. I started the first game in 4th place, but won and won and won in the 2nd game to bring myself up to 4th place going into the 3rd game. Going down below zero in the East round, it was aggression that brought me up and kept me alive in the South round. Any tournaments, like this, that use the First-Turn Win and Hidden Lucky Tiles (dora), Reach is going to become best friends with your Ready hand, so go, Go, GO!
JPML League Tournament – The simplest, least “lucky” version of Mahjong used in Japan. No First-Turn Wins, no Hidden Lucky Tiles, no Quad Lucky Tiles and 5 whole days of 4 games each spread over 5 months. Defense, patience and picking spots is the key to the game. I can’t count how many times I picked the wrong spot for offense and then came back with a big hand. If only I’d defended earlier!! Reading the board and utilizing the Hand Points will keep you on top in this game.
Weekly Meet-ups – Every week on Ron2, I get to meet with the readers and play or review games in my native language. Everyone’s ready to learn, everyone’s trying to win and we’re all in different countries. This is one of my favorite times of the week and I hope more players will come join us in the upcoming meet-ups.
Playing Mahjong every single day can get dull and repetitive, but changing just a few rules rekindles my passion every single day. I’m lucky to have so many different stages for my games. How do you keep interest in the games you play over and over?
