(L) Saki manga

[Qilin]

The way things are so far, Kuro's special dora ability has been reduced into a handicap since it drastically limits the flexibility of her hand. If she could only find some way to discard her dora while evading the consequences, they might still have a chance. Otherwise, the other players would be able to read her hand much too easily.

Originally Posted by Marina2

Somehow I feel that lot of anime watchers will disappoint at how little mahjong game in this spin-off.

Oh yes, but witnessing the sheer level carnage inflicted by Teru is more than worth it for me. They'll just have to bear with it 'til then.

[night_sentinel]

Yup, I know the feeling Episode 1 and 2 of Achiga-hen is okay, but I'm sincerely missing the main cast hijinks and cheesy mahjong battles. But, if they continue to animate at this pace they'll meet Saki next episode and there is that scene that I'm looking forward to see.

So the reasonable conclusion is Toki would probably faint or have already fainted? But, the game isn't over yet, what happens if Toki faints before the vanguard match is over?

Does the match pause or something until Toki recovers? Do Senriyama forfeit? Though if that's the case then it is actually a good plot device for Achiga to advance to the finals. But, I hope that doesn't happen ... Toki is actually growing on me.

[kona~chan]

Originally Posted by Marina2

So, I figue something out

How to counter Teru abilities

1.) Try to win with fast and cheap hand instead of bigger one. It will increase a chance to interrupt Teru chain win combo and Teru hand will be forced to stay at low score.

kirame successfully execute this tactic in chapter 8 with toki help but it seem it not really work in ch.9, and even it work teru just can win fast and cheap to make her as dealer again

2.) Teru uses "Mirror" ability to check up on everyone ability and play style at the first round and play her game according to those data. This is where you can do a trick.

You need to change your play style as often as you can (for each round of the match), so that Teru won’t able to catch up with how you play. She may need to activate her “Mirror” to re-analysis your play style again and in the turn she did that, she (may) can’t complete her hand!

well let's just wait for next chap and see whatever toki can do something against our champ

This one may be hard to do for “monster” player who have some kind of rules or conditions bond with their abilities which made it hard for them to change how they play, but for normal player who play according to situation, it will be easier to do, I guess.

3.) Since her hand value is fixed with her own ability’s rule (Start from low value to high value hand and the next hand value must higher than the last one), it shouldn’t be too hard to guess and try to figure out what hand Teru is going for/What tile she need/what tile she will discard. You can easily ron off Teru, if you good enough.


All of These ideas will work the best if all players at a table (except Teru) aim to do these things. Also, “helping each other to win” likes what Kirame and Toki done in ch.8 will be a great aid to these methods.

“The enemy of my enemy is my friend” - “Teru is our no.1 enemy, so let’s (temporary) join force and destroy her!!!”

what makes teru play so owning is she also will use richiii stick and dealer bonus to make her hand bigger, so even her hand value stay same it should naturally get bigger each round as long as she's stayed as dealer.
able to use other players ability as her own advantage, strong when attacking and her def also solid let alone reduce her point no one even able to complete their hand in 2nd round.

kinda interested what will happen if stealth momo meet teru, by ability alone momo should be teru natural enemy.

[Proto]

You need to change your play style as often as you can (for each round of the match), so that Teru won’t able to catch up with how you play. She may need to activate her “Mirror” to re-analysis your play style again and in the turn she did that, she (may) can’t complete her hand!

And suddendly Maho becomes the anti Teru. Dun dun dun.

[Peanutbutter]

Achiga vs Bansei will be a shock, that's for sure.

More shocking will be the people appearing in the next ep, based on 1 chapter = 1 episode so far.

Or they can slowly drag things out in the next few episodes.

[Sol Falling]

They've already gone a bit more than 1 chapter/episode with episode 2, actually. Honestly, I thought ep. 2 of the anime was a bit too rushed, although ch. 2 was also one of the shorter chapters. If they do stretch out the battle next week and conclude episode 3 in synchrony with ch. 3 of the manga, though, I think that'll be good. Hopefully they don't just barrel on into ch. 4.

[night_sentinel]

Since were talking about Teru's possible weakness, it seemed to be shown subtly in the last hand that they played in chapter 9.

Teru made a kan thus adding a kan dora which made it hard for Kuro to choose which to discard that is not a dora or Teru's winning tile or something that will break her hand.

Kuro chose the 9 of circles which allowed Teru to ron her for 10,200 points. This is an understandable choice since 9 of circles is a terminal tile and is usually the one that is discarded first because of the tanyao yaku and well the probability wait.

But, if Kuro have chosen for example the 8 of circles which is not a dora and something that won't destroy her chance to win. She might have avoided getting directly hit by Teru.

Its true that the 8 of circles is a winning tile for Teru. But, if we look closely at the calculations if Teru ronned the 8 circles her hand value would be somewhere in the 3000 range which is not higher than her previous hand. Due to this, Teru will not ron Kuro and thus will be furiten for the 8 of circles.

Darn... they should have been able to stop Teru in that round if this is true.

[Peanutbutter]

Originally Posted by night_sentinel

But, if Kuro have chosen for example the 8 of circles which is not a dora and something that won't destroy her chance to win. She might have avoided getting directly hit by Teru.

Its true that the 8 of circles is a winning tile for Teru. But, if we look closely at the calculations if Teru ronned the 8 circles her hand value would be somewhere in the 3000 range which is not higher than her previous hand. Due to this, Teru will not ron Kuro and thus will be furiten for the 8 of circles.

Darn... they should have been able to stop Teru in that round if this is true.

Even if that's the case, Teru still can Tsumo a 9-pin for the win, 4200 all.

[Lestaki]

Originally Posted by night_sentinel

Kuro chose the 9 of circles which allowed Teru to ron her for 10,200 points. This is an understandable choice since 9 of circles is a terminal tile and is usually the one that is discarded first because of the tanyao yaku and well the probability wait.

Pretty sure the 9-pin discard has nothing to do with tanyao. The 7-8-9 run is finished and the hand is closed and has a ton of dora, so there's no need to fish for a cheap yaku like that when riichi will do. Trying to incorporate all the dora into that kind of hand is hard, though. Assuming the 5-sou is coming you would presumably hold the 9-man as a triplet and try and build 33 sou pair 3-4-5 sou run 3-4-5 pin run and pray unto god that you get something to stick to the 5 man. That hand leaves no room for the 7-8-9 pin so it's all gotta go in the end, though Teru may end up in furiten based on the order it's discarded.

Alternatively you can try to do something with toi-toi but that seems a longer shot still.

If you want to form a completed hand without discarding any dora the 9 pin has to go, one way or the other. But so does the 8 pin, really.

As far as discarding defensively goes, it's impossible to say what the right move is since as far as I know we don't get to see the table discards. 9 pin probably isn't a terrible idea because it's a terminal, but you don't have many good options.

[LeaD36]

^you can give up the hand if you're too far from tenpai, having a full 14 tile hand with no calls usually enables atleast some safe discards

[Proto]

Yeah but it was full of dora's she couldn't discard because it's her, so her only possible discards where the pin tiles. Which were all a horrible choice from her perspective anyway.

[Lestaki]

Exactly. And even if she was willing to discard dora, they're still terrible tiles to discard for safety if you're not 100% sure they're safe.

[night_sentinel]

Looking at the match again you guys are right. Since we can't see the discard, it is possible that the 9-pin will be the one that Teru will draw next thus Peanutbutter is correct that Teru can still tsumo the 9-pin if she managed to self draw it.

Still, I would like to maintain that it would have been better if Kuro had discarded the 8-pin than the 9-pin, but I can say this because I have the benefit of hindsight. For if Kuro discarded the 8-pin, the hand value Teru will get be 3k something. And Teru thus will not ron her and will be in furiten. Even if Teru managed to self draw the needed 9-pin (which is so ridiculously likely that I don't even want to contemplate it ) at least Kuro will not pay all of it.

Of course like Lestaki said Kuro have no way of knowing before it actually happened and truthfully if I'm on Kuro's shoes I would have also discarded the 9-pin as opposed to the 8-pin since I don't value terminal tiles very much.

Now, that I contemplate the match, Teru is really really scary if we assume that Teru will be getting a winning tile like another 9-pin whether Kuro discarded it or by self drawing on the wall like peanutbutter suggested. Then, this meant that the kan would have two purpose:

1. It made Kuro's hand really dangerous as in no safe tiles on sight dangerous even with a full hand and Kuro not making any calls. And the most probable tile to be discarded is actually the 9-pin since it is terminal, not a dora and may actually get away from building a hand which is the tile that Teru needs.

2. It also changed the drawing order so that whatever winning tile like the 9-pin is set up to be drawn by Teru. I also don't think any of her opponents can change the drawing order so no one can is in any shape to make any calls. Thus, ensuring Teru will draw her winning tile.

This is all based on conjecture but if this is true then Teru have set-up everything so she will win no matter what her opponents do. If ... if this is true Teru deserved the moniker unstoppable player indeed.

[Marina2]

About Kuro's ability........

If I have to explain "how is it possible?", I would say that in the begining of each round, all dora tiles are magically pre-placed in position that Kuro will self-draw all of them.

However, this can't explain how can she still get all of dora-s after draw order changed or how can she suddenly able to draw up new dora tiles when new dora indicator appeared .

Kuro power is truly a reality bending one LOL. It's even hard to explain with "luck"

.................................................. ............................

In ch.9

Since author didn't end vanguard match yet, I beleve that an unexpected thing might occur in the rest 4(?) rounds whether It will be by Kuro, Toki or Kirame!! . If she want to end it with Teru's total domination,she should end it already, not prolonging it. Well, unless she just want to torture our Kuro more :P

Right now, I can think off some upgrades for Kuro ability that author may use if she want to make Kuro comes back and win somehow

What I thought are.... (I will explain in details later how these upgrades help her)

- Ability to enable/unable her dora magnet. Can choose which kinds of dora tiles (normal dora/red dora/ura-dora) she wants to gather and which not. (This must done at the start of new round)
- Ability to drop out dora with out any drawback.
- Ability to gather dora tiles which havn't revealed yet. (Kandora + ura-dora) (Use this with
the rest of upgrades)
- Ability to acknowledge all unrevealed dora tiles in a round. (Use to support above upgrade)

Oh, look like I used my fantasy a lot in this post. ^^

[dingmajiao]

Originally Posted by Marina2

What I thought are.... (I will explain in details later how these upgrades help her)

- Ability to enable/unable her dora magnet. Can choose which kinds of dora tiles (normal dora/red dora/ura-dora) she wants to gather and which not. (This must done at the start of new round)
- Ability to drop out dora with out any drawback.
- Ability to gather dora tiles which havn't revealed yet. (Kandora + ura-dora) (Use this with
the rest of upgrades)
- Ability to acknowledge all unrevealed dora tiles in a round. (Use to support above upgrade)

I like upgrade number 3... Which is really good imo... and the game with Teru seems to have hinted on it imo...

[Peanutbutter]

Saki Ch 96 is round the corner.

Spoiler for Crux of Ch 96 raw scan x 1:

Another good, but short chapter. Surprised to see something from Akagi here.

P.S: Just rewatched the Ichikawa arc. Kinda surprised myself how much is used in the Saki series. I can't seem to recall it for some reason.

[Kyuu]

Originally Posted by Peanutbutter

Saki Ch 96 is round the corner.

Spoiler for Crux of Ch 96 raw scan x 1:

Another good, but short chapter. Surprised to see something from Akagi here.

P.S: Just rewatched the Ichikawa arc. Kinda surprised myself how much is used in the Saki series. I can't seem to recall it for some reason.

Oh, lordy those boobies are worth more than 8000/4000.

[Bambi]

Haha, 5mins. That was fast :-D

[Peanutbutter]

Now that ep 3 has been released, if they continue with the 1 chapter = 1 episode so far, how are they gonna do the last few episodes?

Makes me very curious as to how far they will go beyond the manga. Or is Teru's first match the last for Achiga?

[Marina2]

Originally Posted by Peanutbutter

Now that ep 3 has been released, if they continue with the 1 chapter = 1 episode so far, how are they gonna do the last few episodes?

Makes me very curious as to how far they will go beyond the manga. Or is Teru's first match the last for Achiga?

From next ep. preview, Ep.4 may cover both ch.4-5 in manga because we can see Toki shows her ability.(Senriyama first match in the national is the match they played with Achiga)


Anyway, It's a good sign that they start to add some new scenes and dialogs to anime.