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What do the colors on the NMJL card mean?

The colors on the NMJL card tell you how many suits a line uses, never which suit. One color means one suit, any suit you like; two colors mean two different suits; three colors mean all three. Numbers printed in the same color must share a suit, and numbers in different colors must not.

Answered by Prim. Last reviewed 2026-09-15.

Color counts suits, it never names one

Nearly every newcomer makes the same assumption, and it is a reasonable one. The card prints numbers in three colors, the tiles come in three suits, so surely each color belongs to a suit. It does not. A color is a grouping instruction and nothing more. The card is saying which parts of a hand must match each other and which parts must differ, and it leaves the choosing of suits entirely to you.

So a line printed all in one color can be played in Bams, in Craks or in Dots. A line in two colors takes any two suits, in either arrangement. A line in three colors uses all three. The same line can be built several different ways depending on the suits you happen to hold, and every one of them is correct.

Same color, same suit. Different color, different suit

Read a line by where its color changes. Wherever the color stays the same, those number groups live together in one suit. Wherever the color changes, the next group moves to a different suit. That is the whole rule, and once it lands the card stops looking like a paint chart and starts looking like a set of instructions.

A practical habit follows. Before you count tiles, count colors. Glance at a line and ask how many suits it wants. If your rack is heavy in two suits and nearly empty in the third, a three-color line is a long road, and a one-color or two-color line may already be half built.

Winds, Flowers and Dragons follow their own logic

The tiles without numbers are printed in a color too, and this is where careful readers get tripped. Winds and Flowers belong to no suit at all, so their color never names one, and they are not counted when you work out how many suits a line takes.

Dragons are different, because each Dragon is married to a suit: Red goes with Craks, Green with Bams, and Soap (White Dragon) with Dots. A Dragon printed in the same color as a number group on its line is the Dragon that matches that group's suit. A Dragon printed in a color no number group on the line wears is a Dragon that does not match. When a line says Any Dragon, any of the three will do, whatever the ink. And when Soap stands in as a zero, it has no suit and takes none from the color around it.

When the words and the colors disagree, read the words

Some lines carry a short note in parentheses, such as Any 1 Suit, Any 2 Suits or Matching Dragons. Those words say exactly what they say, and they overrule anything you might infer from the ink. Read the note first, then the colors. The card rewards the player who reads the small print, and it quietly punishes the one who does not.

Everything here is about how the card is read, and that holds from year to year. The hands themselves change each spring, so practice your colors on the 2026 card, not last year's.