Excited to Learn Mahjong - Hopefully not to hard

It’s important to us that our games are portable. While, like most people, we value nice components and quality construction, we feel that we shouldn’t have to sacrifice these features when ordering a travel friendly game. This Mahjong set is a good example of what we look for.For us, size is important and even more so with Mahjong where each set contains so many components. Not wanting to pack around large, often heavy sets, we still want tiles which are large enough to be easily seen and handled. At 30mm in length, 23mm in width, and 13mm in depth, the solid feeling melamine tiles included in this set meet both requirements. The wooden racks and pushers are also lightweight with a design which allows for convenient storage. While my wife is a bit more impressed with the gorgeous turquoise colour featured in the set than I am, there’s no question that the set is striking in appearance, particularly when put out for play.The heavy duty Oxford cloth carry bag is ideal for transportation purposes and matches the tile colours perfectly. With long straps for carrying and a heavy zipper, the case features two separate carrying compartments, one to organize the tiles and a second to holed the racks and pushers. In addition, there is a convenient built in zippered pouch for smaller bits and pieces. Everything fits quickly and easily into the carrying bag.The 166 tiles are brightly coloured, clearly labelled, have nicely rounded corners, and, as previously mentioned, are easy to discern. With the dice, the scoring coins, the wind indicator, and the illustrated instructions, the set contains everything you are likely to need (with, of course, the exception of scoring cards). It was nice to see that it includes wooden pushers which we’ve found far less susceptible to breakage than their plastic counterparts.This is a lovely set featuring beautifully rendered tiles, well designed racks, the extra pieces occasionally required for play, and a durable carrying bag. While portable, the set, as with most Mahjong sets, is still large and a bit bulky but it’s a small trade off considering the excellent quality of the product. If you’re looking for a serviceable, reasonably priced Mahjong set, perfect for taking with you, you’re not likely to find one better than this! Highly recommended.

Review for: "Yellow Mountain Imports American Mahjong Set, Seabreeze with Green Soft Case - 4 All-in-One Racks with Pushers, Wright Patterson Scoring Coins, Dice, & Wind Indicator"Brand: YELLOW MOUNTAIN IMPORTSColour Name: MintFirst look: The Yellow Mountain Imports American Mahjong Set came inside a teal fabric zippered bag wrapped in plastic inside a plain brown box (52.7 cm x 20 1.9 cm x 12 cm, weighing almost 10 lb) with the instructions, Yellow Mountain Imports sticker, support information, a paper to remind you there are pieces inside the pocket of the bag, and two other instruction sheets. Inside the fabric zippered bag were two Velcro rolls, one with the 4 wood racks and the other with the 152 tiles. The zippered bags in the pocket contain scoring chips or "coins" (yellow, blue, red, green, & white), 6 spare tiles including 2 Jokers, 3 dice (only 2 required for the game), and a Wind indicator. The wind indicator has the 4 directions of winds in Chinese but the translation is in the manual or you can refer to the wind tiles to know which is which.The 152 tiles includes 36 tiles of circles or dots (4 of each), 36 tiles of bamboos or "bams" (4 of each), 36 tiles of characters or "craks" (4 of each), 28 tiles of winds (four of each of East, South, West, and North), 12 tiles of dragons (4 of each of green dragons, red dragons, and white dragons known as "soap" (the white dragons can be used as zeros when putting certain hands together), 4 tiles of flowers, 4 tiles of seasons, and 8 tiles of Jokers (not including the 2 spares). Jokers can substitute for any tile in a Pung (3 identical tiles), Kong (4 identical tiles), Quint (5 identical tiles) or Sextet (6 identical tiles). They cannot be used to substitute a tile in a Pair or any single tile.Each set of 40 tiles came wrapped in plastic. There are two black plastic holders (48 cm x 7 cm x 2.8 cm) to hold all the tiles. Each wooden rack has a removable magnetic pusher on it.Testing: I haven't played American Mahjong before, but I've played the computer (solitaire-type) game where you choose pairs of tiles to eliminate them. I expected this game to be similar, but it's more like Tile Rummy (Rubbikube) except with Chinese characters. It is a four-person game and there are lots of rules for tournament use.The game: In order to play, you would need a scorecard from the National Mah-jong League (NML). The scorecards are published by the NML and updated annually. The 2025 cards are available on their website for $14-15 U.S. It would be nice if Yellow Mountain Imports could work with NML to have those included in the set, as it's hard to play without knowing what the hands are. When I watched videos online about how to play, they suggested not to buy cards from other places as they may not be the correct hands. However, making up your own hands with scoring would be very difficult so anything would be better than nothing.The point of the game is to be the first one to call "Mah-jong" with all 14 tiles being used in hands. Normally you have 13 tiles, but each round you pick up a new one and discard one, so always have 13 tiles. As an example, if you had three sets of 3 of each (Pungs) and one set of 4 (Kong), then picked up another tile of one of the 3s, then you could use all 14 of your tiles and win the game. Those are basic hands but there are 73 hands on the NML scorecard to choose from.Opinion: I thought this set was quite expensive but after looking at others on the market, I see this one is quite nice and well made. I love the colour as each tile has white on the top and teal on the bottom. The tiles are smooth and handle nicely with a clinking sound. The zippered fabric bag holds the whole set. Some of the other less expensive sets only have plastic racks so I really like the wooden racks this set has, and they are also well-made with no rough edges. I think this game would be a lot of fun for family get togethers or game nights, or if you play professionally. It would have been nice for scorecards to be included in the set, even if they weren't the official NML 2025 ones, just so you can play the game out of the box.

Nice quality and I like that they come in a carrying case. Mahjong sets are always expensive but these seem to be a decent value.

Quality

Fatto molto bene e bello.

Arrived exactly as ordered. Love the easy carry case.

Tiles are beautiful and I really like the carrying case. Keeps everything organized.

Recommend

Terrific set. Good quality. Great value. Love playing with them