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Alrighty so a long time ago in a land far away I watched an anime called "Akagi" thinking it would be about the Imperial Japanese Navy aircraft carrier of the same name.
Turns out that in a bizarre twist that would define my choices in anime for years to come I was phenomenally wrong it is about Mahjong which for those who don't recognize it or do but in the wrong way it is basically the Chinese equivalent of Poker/Texas Holden but with tiles instead of cards and a lot more strategy involved that doesn't really exclusively on blind luck or mind games.
The game plays with 4 players around a square table picking up a single tile each turn from the "wall" of upside down tiles like a card player draws from their deck, however you need to come up with a "hand" of these tiles of 14 tiles but the catch is you can only have 13 at anyone time so you have to discard a tile each turn.
This is where the major startegy in the game comes from as the player next to you can declare "chi/chow" if it allows him to complete a straight of incremental tiles of a certain suit, or any player can declare pong/pon (deferring between Japanese "Riichi" Mahjong and Hong Kong Mahjong) if it completes a 3 of a kind essentially skipping the turn of the player(s) in between them.
What I like about the game is based on the discards which can range from conveniently placed infront of each player to haphazardly in a pool you can actually get an idea of your opponents hand based on his discards, which combined with what hands your aiming for when you call chi or pon also has a hand pardon the pun in determining the hands of the other players.
Anyways I judt http://mahjongtime.com a site that lets me play for free mahjong online, so far its just bots as I get some practice down and hopefully I can play against other players without needing a subscription, otherwise ill have to find another site. So far biggest beef although I could just be blind is that I dont think it shows the other players' discards which I consider a big must have.
On the other hand I would much rather play on the table with friends, family, stranger etc but I need to buy a mahjong set which are either expensive or the shipping is expensive or both or the set are those stupid mini portables that are thin.
When I play Majong I want to play with think tiles damnit so they make a satisfactory clicking noise when I declare mahjong or ron.
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