comments:
Is there anything about Riichi that benefits from the free standing set vs the rack? In Riichi, tiles in calls are turned to indicate which player discarded the called tile. Your rack may not be long enough to fit four calls in this way (especially if any of them are Kongs). Added Kongs also present a challenge; your rack may not be wide enough to fit two sideways tiles side-by-side. In Riichi, players are not supposed to place their drawn tile directly into their hand of tiles until after they discard. Generally, they will place their drawn tile either on top of or to the side of their hand. With a rack, this becomes somewhat awkward; you can't place the drawn tile on top of the tiles on the sloped part of the rack because they'll fall off; placing them to the side of the rack can easily lead to the tile falling over due to its narrowness. Maybe you can place them next to one's hand of tiles, on the rack itself, but depending on the height of your tiles and the height of the rack, it may not be visible to other players that you're doing this. Is it more satisfying to play Riiichi free standing? Yes. Winning is simply done by knocking over the entire hand in one single motion with two hands (and this motion is so iconic that it's the Japanese Sign Language sign for "mahjong"). This hand motion itself is satisfying, and you can't do that on a rack. Even something as simple as calling a tile is best done without a rack, since it's as simple as using two (or more) fingers to knock over two (or more) tiles to reveal your call. Again, satisfying, but not possible if you're playing with a rack. And culture wise, how much do people value the ‘classic’ fronts over a more cute front like the soulchen set? While people do value the classic tile designs because of culture, more importantly, they're used because they're way more subitisable. I've played with nonstandard tile designs before; the last time, everyone at the table agreed that there was a significantly increased mental load, and that we should never play using them again. Also, one of the hands in Riichi ("ryuuiisou", aka "All Green"), which is composed entirely of tiles whose faces are green, makes no sense if you're playing with a non-traditional set where tiles are not the same colours as the classic tile designs. Haven't played Riichi but want to try to get into it, but like the idea of the set being able to cover American also. Generally, my advice is that if you are committed to playing both variants, you should get two different sets; one for American Mah-Jongg, and one for Riichi. The SoulChen set you describe doesn't come with red fives, a round wind indicator or point sticks, so you'd need to purchase each of those separately, and at that point, you may as well save yourself the hassle and buy an AMOS Begin at one-third the price of the SoulChen set. What materials should I look for? I really like how Bakelite feels, but I guess I mainly want a bit of heft in the feel. Look for sets made of melamine, urea resin, or HDPE, as these plastics are reasonably dense. Acrylic is considerably lighter than these.