Manual of Mhing

Overview

Mhing is a card game, which is based on Mahjong. The goal is to play cards in combos and build sequences, triplets and pairs. If the first player finishes this the player who won gets credits based on his combos. These credits are converted to points and added to the player points value. After that a new round begins. The player who reaches 500 points first wins the game.

Cards

A mhing card set is build with 150 cards.

Bamboo 1-9 (green), each 4 times
Circle 1-9 (red), each 4 times
Character 1-9 (black), each 4 times
North, east, south and west wind, each 4 times
Green, white and red dragons, each 4 times
8 flower cards
6 mhing cards

The bamboo, circle and character cards are called suit cards. The winds and dragon cards are called honor cards.

How to play

For each new round the cards are shuffled and dealed. Each player get 13 cards. If a player got a flower card he put it in front of him and get a new card (this also applies during the game). They are counted only at the end of the round. The remains build the stack for drawing new cards.

If a player is on turn he draws a card from the stack. He may lay down a combo in front of him, as it is the whole goal to free the own hand with combos. It is recommend to play the combo only if necessary as played combo can not be removed or changed. Even the mhing cards in a combo (they are jokers) cannot be replaced. And the other players knows which cards aren't in the game anymore and may change their strategies.

A combo must be one of the following types.

Sequence

A sequence can only be build with suit cards. It is a 3 card combo of one kind (bamboo, circle or character) and, as the name suggest, it must be build a connected sequence between 1 and 9. A valid sequence is bamboo 1, bamboo 2, bamboo 3, but not bamboo 3, bamboo 4, bamboo 6. Without mhing cards its possible to play the same sequence 4 times as each suit cards exists 4 times.

Triplet

A triplet can be build with suit and honor cards. It is a 3 card combo of one kind and must be build with 3 equal cards. A valid triplet is red dragon, red dragon, red dragon but not bamboo 2, circle 2, character 2 as the type must be all the same (unlike rummy variants). Without mhing cards its possible to play onle 1 triplet of one type and value as each cards (excluding mhing and flower cards) exists only 4 times and 3 cards are used to play the combo.

Pair

A pair is similar to a triplet just with 2 cards. It can only be played at last (see below) and automatically ends the round, as the player finished his hand.

Nothing connects

A Nothing connects combo is a special combo. It is build with 14 cards. A valid nothing connects combo is build with suit and honor cards. Following conditions must be applied for the combo:

No card must be exists more than once.
The suit cards of one kind must be seperated at least by 2 units.

As an example the combo bamboo 1, bamboo 4, bamboo 8, circle 3, circle 9, character 2, character 6, character 9, red dragon, white dragon, north wind, south wind, west wind, east wind is a valid nothing connects combo as no card exists more than one and the suit cards got at least a margin of 2 (for bamboo its 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8). As you need 14 cards for this combo you can only play such a combo if you haven't play any combos yet.

The mhing cards are just jokers and are played as such. There are no restrictions how many mhing cards are used in combos and in which place. But the mhing cards which are used in combos cannot removed like replacing them with the matching card. So be wise when to use mhing cards.

The pair combo can only be played as the last combo with 2 remaining cards. As you start with 13+1 cards you can either win the round with a nothing connects combo or by playing 4 combos of sequences and triplets and one pair (3*4+2=14).

After a player played combos (or not) and still got cards on his hand the player choose one card for discard. This card is placed on a stack with the value shown. With this step the turn of the player ends. So all the time its getting a card, play or play not combos and discard a card. Depending on how many combos a player have played the player got either 13, 10, 7, 4 or 1 card or 14, 11, 8, 5 or 2 cards if the player is on turn.

If a player discard a card this card is free for calls. Every player can call this card for sequence, triplet and mhing. This mean the player wants to use this card to build a combo. If a player got two north wind cards and a player discard a north wind card the player can call this card for a triplet. The mhing call is a call which indicates the player will use this card to finish and win the round. If more than one player calls the card it depends on the seat position and the type of the call. The triplet call beats the sequence call and the mhing beats both other calls. If more than one player do the same call the one which comes first in play order get the card. If a player wins the card he must use this card in a combo he calls, as written above. For a mhing call its irrelevant which kind of combo he plays as he will win the round anyway. If a player calls and win a discard card he is now on turn. This also means that players which are before him in order are skipped. After the player played the combo he still do the same as he would be on turn normally. He may play other combos and must end his turn with a discard card.

If no player calls for the discard card the next player in row draws a new card from the stack like the first player. Then this player is on turn. If a flower card is drawn its played in front of the player and a new card is drawn.

These actions are taken until a player has no cards on the hand anymore and played either one (nothing connects) or five (four sequences/triplets and one pair) combos. At this time this player won the round. Now the credits calculation begins.

Depending on the played combos the player got credits for these combos and these credits are converted to points which are added to the players score table.

{TODO: Add table here, for now search the web or read the protocol/source code *g*}

The same scoreentry can be applied to other combos. If you got 3 identical sequences you got the scoreentry IDENTICAL DOUBLE SEQUENCE three times (for each pair of combo), which results in a total of 9 credits (3*3). After all credits are added together the points for the players are calculated. The resulting points can be checked with the following table.

Credits	Points
1	2
2	4
3	8
4	16
5-7	32
8-10	64
11-13	128
14-16	256
17-19	512
20-22	1024
23-25	2048
26-28	4096
29-31	8192
32-34	16364
35-37	32768
38-40	65536
41	131072

After the player got his points a new round begins. New rounds are played until one player reaches 500 points.