Not Your Ma’s Jong Card Game Review

Inspired by their Chinese and Jewish grandmothers’ shared love of Mahjong, the game creators of Not Your Ma’s Jong reimagined the classic game with funny artwork and a fast pace. The goal of the game is to finish with the most tokens.

Each player takes 10 tokens and a reminder card. The oldest player starts as “Ma” the first round and gets the “Ma” card. “Ma” shuffles the deck and deals 10 cards facedown to each player, but “Ma” gets 11 cards. The remaining cards go facedown into a draw pile, and then you’re ready to play. Pick up your cards and look at them, but don’t show them to anyone else.

“Ma” starts the round by discarding a card and saying the name of the card aloud. The next player draws one card from the draw pile, and then discards one card. What you’re looking to do is match cards so that you have three sets of three cards plus one pair. Pay attention to what’s being discarded because anyone can steal the most recently discarded card if it helps them complete a set or a pair. Just yell “STEAL!” after the card has been placed but before the next player draws a card, and then pick up that card. Once someone has the winning hand, the round is over. All other players must pay the winner tokens based on the score chart.

You’ll continue to a new round with the next player to the right becoming “Ma”. Keep playing until one player loses all of his tokens or you’ve played a certain number of rounds. The player with the most tokens wins.