Xiangqi Mahjong Rules (32 tiles)

The tiles

The tiles are exactly one standard xiangqi set, the same 32 pieces you set up on a xiangqi board: sixteen red and sixteen black. Each side has one General, two Advisors, two Elephants, two Chariots, two Horses, two Cannons and five Soldiers. Colour works like a suit in mahjong. A set has to be all red or all black.

Each tile shows its piece in the piece set you play xiangqi with on Mistboard, so you can play with figures or with the Chinese characters of a traditional set. The pictures on this page follow your piece set too, with each piece’s English name underneath.

Sets and the pair

A set is three tiles of one colour, and there are only two kinds. A sequence is one of four fixed groups: General, Advisor and Elephant, or Chariot, Horse and Cannon, in red or in black. The order in your hand does not matter.

A triplet is three identical tiles. Only the Soldiers have more than two of a kind, so the only triplets are three red Soldiers and three black Soldiers.

A pair is two identical tiles. There is one exception: the red General and the black General also make a pair, even though they differ in colour. Each General is a single tile, so this is the only way a General can be in the pair at all, and it scores extra.

The deal and a turn

Shuffle the 32 tiles face down. The dealer takes five and the other player four; the other 23 are the wall, and both players draw from it. The table shows how many tiles are left in the wall.

The dealer starts by discarding one tile, without drawing. From then on, a turn is: draw one tile from the wall, then either declare a win or discard one tile face up. Between turns you always hold four tiles, one short of a hand, and the fifth tile is the one you are waiting for.

If you discard the tile you just drew, it shows shaded in your discard row, so the other player knows you did not keep the new tile. If you discard from your hand instead, they know you kept it, but not which of your tiles you threw: the table always shows the tile leaving from the middle of your hand, never from the place it really sat.

Claiming a discard

When the other player discards, you may take that tile instead of drawing. You can claim it to win, if it completes your hand. Or you can claim it to finish a set: two tiles of a sequence and the discard as the third, or two Soldiers and a third. A claimed set goes face up, and you discard without drawing.

Deciding whether to claim takes time from your own clock, and there is no separate claim timer. If you pass, you draw as usual.

After every discard, the table waits about a second and a half before the next draw, whether or not anyone can claim. If it waited only when you could claim, the wait itself would tell the other player that their discard fits your hand.

Here is a claim. You hold the red Chariot and Horse, a black Elephant and a black Soldier. On their turn the other player draws from the wall and discards the red Cannon, the tile your sequence is missing.

You can lay down only one set this way, since a hand has room for one. There is no kong (four of a kind) in this game, and no declaring that you are one tile from winning.

How a hand ends

A hand ends in one of three ways. You draw the tile that completes your hand and declare a win, which is a self-drawn win. Or the other player discards that tile and you claim it. Or the wall runs out with nobody winning: the hand is void, nobody scores, and the deal passes.

A win before the hand has really started is a heavenly hand: the dealer’s opening five tiles already make a winning hand, or the other player wins with their first draw, before anyone has claimed a tile.

Winning hands and their score

A winning hand is five tiles: one set and one pair, counting a set you laid down after a claim. There are only three sets to make, a General sequence, a Chariot sequence or three Soldiers, so the first three hands below cover them all. A hand scores points; each caption gives what it scores when it is won on a discard.

Close, but not a win

These look finished and are not. In each, the three tiles on the left fail to make a set or the two on the right fail to make a pair.

Adding it up

Every winning hand scores 1. Add every line marked + that applies: the hand’s own lines from the pictures above, then how it was won.

Five Soldiers of one colour score Five Soldiers, not Mixed Soldiers as well. The dealer scores nothing extra for dealing.

The heavenly hand is the exception: it scores a flat 6 whoever wins it, and nothing is added to it.

A worked example. The dealer holds the red Chariot, Horse and Cannon and the red General, and draws the black General from the wall. That is a set and the Generals pair: 1 for the win, 2 for the Generals pair and 2 for the self-draw, 5 points in all. It is not one colour, since the pair is half black, and with both Generals in it, One General does not apply.

The match

A match is six hands, and the deal alternates every hand, so each player deals three times. The winner of a hand adds its points to their score, and the other score stays where it was. After six hands the higher score wins the match, and equal scores are a draw.

Here is a whole match between Ana and Ben, kept the way a mahjong scoreboard is. Ana deals hands 1, 3 and 5, and Ben deals 2, 4 and 6. Each column is one hand, with the points its winner scored from the table above; hands 2 and 6 are void, because the wall ran out.

Ana wins the match 6 to 5. The fifth hand decided it: a self-draw on the last tile, worth 1 for the win, 2 for the self-draw and 1 for the last tile.

Common questions

Where do these rules come from?

The game has no rulebook. The tiles and winning hands here follow the Chinese Wikipedia article and the Eastking rule page, which agree, checked against other Taiwanese rule pages and FunTown’s online parlour. The points follow the scoring table inside Gamesofa’s Xiangqi Mahjong app. Where they leave a choice, Mistboard made it: the deal alternates every hand, a match is six hands, since the sources play for money and give no match format, and five Soldiers of one colour do not also score Mixed Soldiers.

Can more than two people play?

Folk sources play with two to four. With four, 17 tiles are dealt and only 15 stay in the wall, so each player gets about four draws, and claims on the other three players’ discards do much of the work. Mistboard plays the two-player game.

What if a player leaves before the match is over?

The other player wins the match, whatever the score. Leaving the game, running out of time and resigning all end the match the same way they end any game on Mistboard.

Why is there no kong or ready declaration?

Online tables mostly drop the kong from the 32-tile game, and Mistboard does too. A kong would hardly come up anyway: it is four identical tiles, and only the Soldiers come in more than two. The ready declaration is not in yet. Gamesofa’s table gives 1 point for declaring ready and 5 for each of two hands won after a ready declaration; Mistboard leaves those three lines out until the table has a way to declare ready.

Why does the deal always alternate?

Some tables let a dealer who wins keep the deal and score extra for it. Mistboard passes the deal every hand instead, and the dealer scores nothing extra, so in a six-hand match each player deals three times.

Play on Mistboard

Pick 1+1, 3+2, 5+5 or 10+5. Each player has one clock for all six hands, and it stops between hands. Who deals the first hand is drawn at random.

A match at 1+1, 3+2 or 5+5 between two signed-in players can be rated, and the rating counts the whole match as one result. Matches at 10+5 and matches against Misty, the computer, are unrated.

Five tiles, one set and a pair. Learn the hands against the computer, then play a friend.