Classic Board Games

The board game Mahjong can be played with a set of Mahjong tiles, or a set of Mahjong playing cards. Many Mahjong sets will feature a set of chips or bone tiles for scoring, and indicators to point out the dealer and the Prevailing Wind of the round. Other sets may include racks to hold tiles or chips; however the dealers rack will be different.

A set of Mahjong tiles may vary depending on the type of Mahjong set, it will usually have at least 136 tiles, but 144 is common, although sets coming from America or Japan may have more tile. Mahjong tiles are divided into the categories of: suits, honor and flowers.

Suits
Dots: named as each tile consists of a number of circles. Each circle is said to represent copper coins with a square hole in the middle.

Honor
Wind tiles: East, South, West, and North.

Dragon tiles: red, green, and white.

Flower
Flower tiles: The last category and typically optional components to a set of Mahjong tiles, these tiles often contain artwork on them and represent plum, orchid, chrysanthemum, and bamboo.

There are tiles that represent spring, summer, autumn, and winter.

The suits of the tiles are money-based. In ancient China, the copper coins had a square hole in the center. The Chinese passed a rope through the holes to tie coins into strings.
In the Mahjong suits, the coppers represent the coins; the ropes are actually strings of 100 coins; and the character myriad represents 10,000 coins or 100 strings.

The variety offered in Mahjong game sets are as varied as the game is complex. Sets are offered in materials such as marble, ivory, bone, and wood. The look and feel of each material is very unique.

The tiles in a full set for the game are in three separate categories. The first sets of tiles are the suit tiles which consist of symbols such as dots, lines, and characters, depicting a suit just like you would see in a deck of cards. Each set of these suit tiles in a mahjong set consists of four sets of nine dot tiles, four sets of nine line tiles, and four sets of nine character tiles.

Another set that exists are referred to as the honor tiles. These are made up of four sets of three dragon tiles, a red dragon, a white dragon, and green dragon. In some sets the white dragon is simply a blank tile. Included in the honor set are directional wind tiles. The wind tiles represent east, west, north and south or more simply put the direction the wind will blow.

The bonus tiles are like a windfall. If you choose a bonus tile, you would put it aside, to be played later, and draw another tile. The bonus tiles are commonly depicted with the image of a flower and include a number from on to four. There are two sets of these bonus tiles, eight in total.

In some of the Mahjong game sets you may also have a set of tiles that depict the winter, spring, fall, and of course summer. Each set does vary slightly in what can be included but in general there are a minimum of one hundred and thirty six tiles and could be up to one hundred and forty four tiles. If in time you decide not to play the game, two sets should also work to redo a shower stall or a small backsplash, Yikes!

If you don't have the upper body strength to haul out the tiles (certainly we're kidding, it's not that heavy!) you will also find mahjong game sets that are decks of cards. The die hard players prefer tiles as it is all part of the look and feel of the game, not to mention the sound of the tiles make when they hit each other. All part of the Mahjong experience.

The game of mahjong is a complicated game, which dates back four thousand years, to a time when only royalty played the game. It has been passed on through the generations and there are now several versions of the game. Included in these versions, are the Chinese version, American version, Taiwan version, Vietnamese and Japanese versions.

In every version of the mahjong game sets the accessories can vary but the game remains complicated no matter what! It was a game that came into being over four thousand years ago when only royalty played. Passed on through many generations there are today some modification on how to play based on its heritage.