Mahjong Bay › Seasonal › Fall Mahjong
Fall Mahjong
- 60tiles
- 3layers
- 27free at the start
- 14.1pairs open on a fresh deal, average
- 20%of boards lost by random clicking in my test runs
A maple leaf, 60 tiles, with a stem of three at the bottom and a small stack over the middle. It is the quickest of the seasonal boards and the one for a weekday evening in October when the long Turtle is too much. The flowers are two leaves, an acorn and a mushroom; the seasons are a pumpkin, an apple, a pine cone and an umbrella.
The leaf is wide and thin, so it plays from the outside in with hardly any digging. 27 of the 60 tiles can move on the first turn, which is nearly half the board, and the only depth is a two-tile cap over the centre. The points of the leaf, two tiles on each side and the tip at the top, come off first and tend to carry the same faces as the tiles under the cap; if the cap is slow to open, look at the points before you reach for a hint.
The stem is three tiles in a column. Only the bottom one is free until the leaf above it has been thinned, so the stem is usually the last thing on the board. Keep one of its faces in mind as you go.
A careless run gets stuck 20 times in a hundred, which puts the leaf next to the Arena as one of the two most forgiving shapes here. The rest of the set is the standard one. It stays up all year; the turkey is the other autumn board, for the end of November.
