Hero Order Strategy for a Roguelike Card Game

In most roguelike card games, the cards you own decide your score. In Outlaw Mahjong, where you put them matters just as much. Your heroes sit on a five-slot flower rack, and many of them trigger strictly from left to right. Swap two of them and the same hand can score hundreds of points more or less. This guide walks through the scoring order, explains why heroes that add mult belong on the left and heroes that multiply it belong on the right, works through a real example step by step, and finishes with three builds you can try with the heroes you recruit.

How a hand is scored in this roguelike card game

Every play starts with the base chips and mult of the pattern you played, raised by its level. A level 1 Meld, for example, starts at 20 chips and 2 mult. From there the game resolves the play in a fixed sequence of layers. Three of them matter for hero placement.

Layer B: each scoring tile, left to right

The game goes through your scoring tiles in the order you played them. For each tile it adds the tile's face value to chips, then applies the tile's enhancement and edition (chip bonuses first, then mult bonuses, then mult multipliers), then any seal, then the per-tile effects of heroes on your rack from left to right. Heroes like Lu Zhishen (+3 mult for each scoring 9) and Hua Rong (+30 chips for each scoring 1 or 9) work here.

Retriggers also live in layer B. A retrigger replays the whole of layer B for that one tile: its face value, its enhancement, its seal and the per-tile hero effects. Shi Qian retriggers the rightmost scoring tile once, which is why the order you play your tiles matters too.

Layer C: tiles left in your hand

Next come the tiles you kept. An iron tile gives ×1.5 mult while it stays in your hand, and retriggers apply here as well.

Layer D: heroes, strictly left to right

Finally, every hero with a "this play" effect fires, one at a time, from the leftmost slot to the rightmost. +Chips, +Mult and ×Mult are applied in exactly the order they appear on your rack. Then the score is chips times mult, rounded down.

Why ×Mult heroes go on the right

Chips and mult are separate totals, and ×Mult only ever multiplies mult. That leads to two simple rules.

Chips heroes can sit anywhere. Adding +100 chips gives the same final total whether it happens first or last, because nothing multiplies chips directly. Li Kui and Yang Zhi are free to fill whatever slot is left.

+Mult before ×Mult. If a hero adds 8 mult and another multiplies mult by 1.5, the +8 should land first so that the multiplier grows it as well. Put the adders on the left and the multipliers on the right. When you have several multipliers, their relative order does not matter, as long as all of them come after every adder.

Layer order also explains something that surprises new players: a layer B hero like Shi Qian always resolves before a layer D hero like Lin Chong, no matter which of them sits further left. Slot order only decides the order within a layer.

A worked example: 587 points

Here is a hand that shows every layer at work. Your rack holds Gongsun Sheng, Lin Chong and Shi Qian, in that order. Earlier this blind you played one hand with a chow in it, so Lin Chong's streak is already running. You play 8 Bamboo, 1 Bamboo and 9 Bamboo, in that order, so the 9 is on the far right. The 9 Bamboo is a jade tile. Meld is level 1.

The pattern. Normally 8-9-1 is not a run, but Gongsun Sheng lets same-suit 8-9-1 and 9-1-2 count as chows. The play is a Meld (one chow): 20 chips, 2 mult.
Layer B, first pass. The 8 adds 8 chips, for 28. The 1 adds 1, for 29. The jade 9 adds 9, for 38, and jade multiplies mult by 1.5, taking it from 2 to 3.
Layer B, retrigger. Shi Qian retriggers the rightmost scoring tile, the jade 9. It adds 9 again, for 47 chips, and jade multiplies mult by 1.5 again, from 3 to 4.5.
Layer D. Lin Chong counts this play as the second hand with a chow in a row, so he gives +4 × 2 = +8 mult, taking it from 4.5 to 12.5.
Score. 47 × 12.5 = 587.5, rounded down to 587.

Notice what did the heavy lifting. Playing the jade 9 last meant Shi Qian doubled the tile with the most chips and the only multiplier, and the hand gained 9 chips and another ×1.5. Had the 1 been on the right instead, the retrigger would have added a single chip.

The same hand with Wu Song

Now add Wu Song, who gives ×1.5 mult (×3 once you have no discards left in the blind). Say you still have discards, and he sits to the right of Lin Chong. Layer D adds Lin Chong's +8 first, for 12.5, then Wu Song multiplies it to 18.75. The play scores 47 × 18.75 = 881.25, rounded down to 881.

Put Wu Song to the left of Lin Chong and the order flips: 4.5 × 1.5 = 6.75, then +8 for 14.75, and the play scores 693. Same tiles, same heroes, 188 points lost to one swap.

Three builds to try

The endless Chow

Gongsun Sheng, Lin Chong, Shi Qian, Wu Song. In a thirteen-tile hand a Meld turns up about three times in four, chows are far easier to draw than pungs, and Gongsun Sheng's wrap-around runs make them easier still. Play hands with a chow in them back to back to grow Lin Chong's streak: +4, then +8, then +12. A Meld, a Meld + Pair or Two Melds all count, as long as one of the melds is a chow. Remember that the streak resets at the start of each blind and whenever you play a hand without a chow. Keep Wu Song on the far right, and add Wu Yong if you want to nudge a tile's rank by one to finish a run.

Kong hunters

Li Kui, Yang Zhi, Hu Sanniang, Lu Junyi. Li Kui adds +100 chips whenever the tiles you played contain a pung, Yang Zhi gains +30 chips for good every time you play a Kong, and Lu Junyi gives ×2 mult whenever the hand you play has a pung: a Meld or Meld + Pair built on a pung, Two Melds with a pung in them, or a Kong. Hu Sanniang adds ×1.5 whenever your tiles contain a pair, which a Meld + Pair always does. The chip heroes can go anywhere; the two multipliers belong on the right. Copying tiles with silk-bag tactics turns rare Kongs into a repeatable plan.

One suit, all the nines

Zhang Shun or Ruan Xiaoqi, Lu Zhishen, Hua Rong, Wu Song. Push the wall toward Bamboo or Dots, and every scoring tile of that suit adds +3 mult. Nines are the best tiles you can score: the most chips, +3 mult from Lu Zhishen and +30 chips from Hua Rong. Watch out for the bosses Gao Qiu (who debuffs Bamboo) and Tong Guan (who debuffs Dots), and consider An Daoquan as insurance on a bad boss draw.

Try it yourself

The fastest way to learn hero order is to drag heroes around on your rack and watch the score log replay each step. Start a run and put these builds to the test, or read the stories of the heroes behind them.