Image credits: BoardGameGeek

 

As you all know, the initial intention when this website was created is to cater for Mahjong addicts and narrowing down to the ones who are into Mahjong tables, such as the discussion on automatic Mahjong tables or the other different types of Mahjong tables, and how to build a Mahjong table.

 

In this article, I will share briefly about the 2 things you must know about Mahjong sets. Well actually there are certainly a lot more things to know, but it will be good to start with the basics first and hence I will be revealing only t things. And I will subsequently elaborate them further in separate articles, so read on to have a rough summary on the 2 things that I think you really should know pertaining to Mahjong sets.

 

 

Typically, when you purchase a Mahjong set (less the Mahjong table), you will buy a brief-case like that contains a set of Mahjong tiles, Mahjong game chips, dice, wind block.

 

The Mahjong tiles consists of 3 types of tiles – suit tiles, honor tiles and bonus tiles.

 

The suit tiles are tiles that have writings on them, making of chinese characters (wan), dots (tong) and lines (shuo). They are matched up together (kind of like a poker game card deck), consisting of 4 sets of nine ‘tong’ tiles, 4 sets of nine ‘shuo’ tiles and 4 sets of nine ‘wan’ tiles.

 

Now the honor tiles consist of four sets of three dragon tiles, a red dragon, a green dragon, and a white dragon. Most of the time, the white dragon tile is looked upon as a blank tile. The directional wind tiles are also a part of the honor tiles set. There are four sets of four wind tiles, each depicting a direction the wind blows, in other words, east (dong), west (xi), north (bei), and south (nan).

 

The last set of tiles is the bonus tiles. If you have drawn a bonus tile, you put it aside, reveal the tile to the players and draw another tile. The bonus tiles usually are played as flowers which has a number attached, starts from one to four; In total, there are eight of these tiles, two sets of four.

 

 

A common question that is often asked is where we can buy them from, and what is the price range for them. Since Mahjong originated from the chinese, you can go to the china towns of your country, chances are you will find them there. There are also many websites such as ebay or amazon where you can purchase them.

 

Closing Up

 

As you have seen, we talked about the 2 basic things of Mahjong sets. Of course, there are a lot more things about them but I do not want you to be overwhelmed. Look around as we continue to post more articles about them.