Donjara NEO: THE iDOLM@STER Cinderella Girls

Donjara NEO: THE iDOLM@STER Cinderella Girls
Video Game Data
Platform:	Tabletop
Publisher:	Bandai
Selling Agency:	Bandai
Release Date:	March 2023 (Base Set) July 2023 (Additional Set)
CERO Rating:	None (Suggested player age 6+)

Donjara NEO: THE iDOLM@STER Cinderella Girls (ドンジャラNEO　アイドルマスターシンデレラガールズ, Donjyara NEO Aidorumasutaa Shinderera Gaaruzu) is a special collaboration variant of Bandai's Donjara NEO tabletop game using graphic and game design based on concepts and assets from THE iDOLM@STER Cinderella Girls brand and Starlight Stage. The base set along with the additional set were featured on the Bandai Namco’s online Asobi Store for a limited time. The game can be played with 2 to 4 players.

Gameplay

Objective

Be the Producer (player) with the most points after 2 full rounds (where all players get the chance to draw first) or until any producer runs out of fan coins.
Producers can gain points by completing 9 tile combinations, called yaku in conventional mahjong and mahjong variants, before their opponents and win a round.

Setup

1. Flip all tiles face down and mix them up in the open area in the middle.
2. Once the tiles have been mixed up enough, Producers will start to form walls with the tiles.

The most competent Producer (dealer) will have a wall of tiles that is 12 tiles long and 2 tiles high.
All other Producers will have a wall of tiles that is 10 tiles long and 2 tiles high.

3. Distribute 1,000,000 worth of fan coins (100万) to each producer.

Each fan coin is a multiple of 10,000 (万) fans, so the total number value on the coins for each player should add up to 100.
The online game manual suggests handing each player 6 10万 fan coins, 6 5万 fan coins, and 10 1万 fan coins.

4. All producers introduce themselves and declare a favorite idol they produce (tantou) from the available idols in Donjara NEO: THE iDOLM@STER Cinderella Girls.

Round Procedures

1. Starting with the most competent producer, each producer will draw 2 tiles at a time from the most competent producer's wall in clockwise order until all producers have 8 tiles in their hand.
2. The most competent producer will start the round by drawing from their wall.
3. The most competent producer who drew a tile will need to discard one tile.
4. The turn will end and the producer to the left (clockwise) will start their turn by drawing a tile and then discarding a tile in their hand face up to end their turn.
5. Producers will continue to draw and discard tiles in turn order as mentioned in step 4 until the following:

A producer declares Standby (riichi) and Live Start (ron or tsumo) with a 9 tile yaku. OR
All tiles have been depleted. If a producer's wall of tiles has been depleted, producers can proceed to draw tiles from the next producer's (clockwise) wall.

Interruption of Procedures

Certain actions can interrupt or change the flow of procedures.

Live Start! (Ron/Tsumo) - Is declared when a player has successfully drawn the last tile to complete their hand from the wall or from another producer's discarded tile. The round ends and producers will proceed to calculate the fan acquisition for the producer that won the round.
Standby! (Riichi) - Is declared when a player is 1 tile away from completing their hand.
- Producers must declare standby before declaring the start of a live unless they are playing with special house rules.
- When a producer declares Standby on their turn, the tile that is being discarded must be placed sideways in their discarded tile pile to inform all players that they are one tile away from winning. All other discarded tiles afterwards can be placed normally right-side up.
- Once Standby has been declared, the 8 tiles currently in their hand are locked in place and the producer must keep drawing every turn until they draw the last remaining tile that will complete a yaku and start a live. If the drawn tile that is drawn is not a winning tile, it is immediately discarded and their turn ends.
Scout! (Pon, chi, kan) - Is declared when a producer claims a tile discarded by another producer to form a meld or set of 3 tiles with matching type and status marking or to complete a unit of 3 or more members. Once the scouting producer claims the discarded tile, they must discard a tile from their hand and the turn order will resume with the player to the left of the producer that scouted.
- The scouted tile along with the other tiles required to complete a set or unit must be revealed to all players and placed near the corner to their right face up.
- Almighty Tiles cannot be scouted because they are technically not idol tiles.
- Producers cannot scout to complete melds or units of 2 tiles.
- Should multiple producers try and scout the same tile, the official rules state the scouting producers must make an appeal about the discarded idol to the producer that discarded the tile.
Tiara Mark Skills - Advanced Donjara NEO: Cinderella Girls rulesets allow players to activate skills when discarding certain tiles. More information can be found in the section:

End of Round Procedures

If the round ends with all tiles depleted and no valid yaku formed by any producer, then producers may proceed to reset the board and nobody gains or loses fans.
If a producer was able to start a live, the fan coins gained by that producer will depend on how the last tile was acquired. Use the table of Yaku to determine the total number of fans gained.
- If the last tile was drawn from the wall, the amount of fans gained will be divided and paid out by the other producers.
- If the last tile was claimed from another producer's discarded tile, the producer that discarded will pay the full amount of fan coins to the winning producer.
  - In the very unlikely case that multiple producers claim the same tile for their winning hand, the table can either agree to use similar rules with scouting when multiple players claim the same tile to settle for a single winner or have the discarding producer pay all winning producers the full amount of fan coins.
- If the winning producer's hand contains the idol they produce, the amount of fans gained is doubled. Players may play under house rules to not adopt this rule.
  - Should the divided amount be uneven, the other producers will play rock-paper-scissors to determine who gives away less fans.
- If the last tile was acquired from another producer's discarded tile, then that producer must give the full amount of fans specified by the table of Yaku.
- Should any producer run out of fan coins paying the winning producer, the game immediately ends and producers will need to calculate which producer had the most fans overall.
The role of the most competent producer (dealer) will shift to the next producer to the left for the next round.

Advanced Rules

The advanced ruleset adds optional Tiara Mark skills that can be used by discarding idol tiles with tiara markings and declaring intent to use the tile's skill. These skill trigger special effects and differ depending on the character. Players will often call the advanced ruleset Number 2 or Type 2 rules because of the rules being listed in section 2 of the online game manual.

Tiara Mark Skill List

Tiara Mark Skills
Idol Tiles	Skill Description	Additional Comments
Rin Shibuya Rin Shibuya Uzuki Shimamura Uzuki Shimamura Mio Honda Mio Honda	Turn any tile in your hand an Almighty Tile. The selected tile will be flipped inside out when the skill is used.	The type of the Almighty Tile chosen must match the tile that is being flipped. The type of Almighty tile will be revealed to the other producers, but the producer does not need to declare what idol is being substituted by the Almighty Tile.
Nana Abe Nana Abe Karen Hojo Karen Hojo	Retrieve any tile that was discarded by another producer from previous turns. Upon retrieving the tile, you must also discard 1 tile from your hand.
Ranko Kanzaki Ranko Kanzaki Fumika Sagisawa Fumika Sagisawa	Exchange 1 tile from your hand with any tile you discarded from a previous turn.
Syuko Shiomi Syuko Shiomi Kaede Takagaki Kaede Takagaki	Pick another producer. Select 2 tiles from their hand without looking at what tile it is and swap them with 2 tiles from their respective discard tile pile.	The targeted producer cannot declare Standby as a result of this effect because Standby can only be declared on their turn after they discard a tile. A targeted producer that is already in Standby can still start a live and win the round should the action not cancel their Standby state.
Airi Totoki Airi Totoki	Pick another producer. Select 1 tile from their hand without looking at what tile it is and exchange it with 1 tile in your hand.	The targeted producer cannot declare Standby as a result of this effect because Standby can only be declared on their turn after they discard a tile. A targeted producer that is already in Standby can still start a live and win the round should the action not cancel their Standby state.

Tiara Mark Skill Limitations

The discarded tiara marked tile will count as the producer's tile discard for their turn.
- Because of this, only one tiara mark skill can be used at a time, and they also cannot be activated outside a producer's turn.
Any declaration to start a live and end a round will take priority over tiara mark skill activation.
If a tiara mark skill can allow the producer to be 1 tile away from having a complete yaku, they may call standby upon resolving the tiara skill effects.
- The tiara marked tile itself will be discarded and placed sideways once standby has been declared.
Tiles that have been discarded or exchanged from a discard pile as a result of a tiara mark skill cannot be scouted.
- This does not include the tiara marked tile that was discarded to activate the skill. These tiles can still be scouted.
Producers may discard tiara marked tiles and choose to not activate their respective skill.
A producer that is in Standby cannot use tiara mark skills from newly drawn tiles.
Tiara mark skills can be used to cancel another producer's Standby state.
- Should this occur, Standby rules no longer apply to that producer, and they may proceed to play normally without Standby mode limitations.
- Should a producer's Standby state be cancelled, the other producers should be informed and the sideways tile that was discarded should be turned right-side up to visually reflect the change in state.

Addition set and combined set limitations

With the release of the additional set, players can opt to use the additional set as a standalone game or combine both the base and additional set to increase the pool of available tiles and characters. However, the rule book still suggests players to only use 84 tiles similar the base set which is less tiles than what both the additional and combined set have. To achieve this, the rule book suggests the following standard tile distribution for novice players or those who want the most consistency:

27 Cute idol tiles
- 9 of these Cute idol tiles should have Vo status markings
- 9 of these Cute idol tiles should be Da status markings
- 9 of these Cute idol tiles should have Vi status markings
27 Cool idol tiles
- 9 of these Cool idol tiles should have Vo status markings
- 9 of these Cool idol tiles should be Da status markings
- 9 of these Cool idol tiles should have Vi status markings
27 Passion idol tiles
- 9 of these Passion idol tiles should have Vo status markings
- 9 of these Passion idol tiles should be Da status markings
- 9 of these Passion idol tiles should have Vi status markings
1 Almighty tile of each type (Cute, Cool, and Passion)

However, for more advanced players, they can opt to randomly pick 84 tiles, selectively pick out their own 84 tiles, or do a mix of both random and selected tiles to ensure consistency and variance in gameplay. The game manual does not specify any other major changes other than the inclusion of special tiles, the allowed usage of official units that use tiles from both the base and additional set in a combined set, and no specific limitation on what official units are allowed. The vagueness of adding additional tiles but maintaining a the same restricted pool of 84 tiles creates allocation issues where players may not always know what hand combinations are valid or available due to the likelihood of edge cases where certain sets, and units, and even yaku hand combinations are impossible to form. Because of this, players should try and work around these problems with their tile selection or look into forming special house rules and leveraging their creativity to bring their own unique flavor of gameplay while still retaining the majority of Donjara's core rules and alleviating some of these known issues.

Differences between Donjara NEO and Riichi Mahjong

Setup
- Wall size differs depending on whether a player is a dealer or not due to the number of tiles divided by 4 resulting with an odd number of 21.
  - Dealer will have a wall that is 12 tiles long and 2 tiles high.
  - All other players will have a wall that is 10 tiles long and 2 tiles high.
Gameplay
- Hands consist of 9 tiles in Donjara instead of 14 in traditional Mahjong
- Turn order goes clockwise instead of counter-clockwise in traditional Mahjong
- Riichi must be declared in order to win any round unless players are playing with special house rules.
  - Players declaring riichi also do not need to deposit any points in Donjara.
- If all tiles are drawn and no player is able to form a yaku or complete hand in a round, the round simply ends and no partial payout in points are made.
- There is no concept of dora in Donjara that can affect scoring.
- Because all idols each have their own unique tile, there is no concept of furiten in Donjara.
- The dealer's role is to simply have more tiles on their side of the wall and to track who draws first in Donjara.
Tiles
- Donjara tiles do not carry any numeric value attribute and are typically defined through an attribute involving color and another type attribute that can substitute for suits.
  - Because of this, players in Donjara do not need to declare what type of meld is being formed when using tiles from discards and simply declare intent to form a meld with a discarded tile.
- There are no equivalent tiles for directional winds in Donjara, resulting with the dealer's role carrying a lot less weight and impact in gameplay and scoring.
- Donjara has special Almighty Tiles that can act as wildcards to complete melds and sets.
- The additional set of Donjara has special mascot tiles that can be used to increase the potency of a player's yaku or be used to draw and discard extra tiles in the same turn.
Scoring
- All hand combinations (yaku) in Donjara have fixed point rewards which means there is no need to track han, fu, dora, or any other situational or dealer multipliers.

Tile Distribution

Base Set

The base set contains 84 tiles:

Idol Tiles

81 tiles are tiles with a Cinderella Girls idol.

Cute Idol Tiles

Cool Idol Tiles

Passion Idol Tiles

Almighty Tiles

3 tiles are Almighty Tiles that serve as a wildcard tile for each specific attribute type:

Cute Almighty Tile
Cool Almighty Tile
Passion Almighty Tile

Almighty tiles can be substituted for any idol of the same type, but if a producer simply needs any idol of a particular status marking, they can simply declare the status marking needed to complete their set.