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Forty Fortunes

A new (?) patience game inspired by Fortunes Foundation by Zachtronics.

The name comes from Forty Theives and Fortunes Foundation, though the deal is not so much like Forty Theives any more.

Alternative names: Serpent (because the cards slither around), Serpents Fang (the cell is the fang?), Oroborus (because they slither around and you build up and down in a circle). Everest (because of the mountain of cards dealt).

I believe a high percentage of deals, if not all, are solvable with good planning.

Controls

Click-drag, or click-click to move.

Layout

  • 8 foundations
  • 13 columns in the tableau
  • 1 free cell

Deal

  • Deal 2 packs of 52 cards into the tableau. Fill the columns left to right, top to bottom, but skip column 7.
    • variant: Remove the face cards for an easier game.
  • During the deal, any aces are placed in the foundations, they are not placed in the tableau.

You should have 6 columns of 8 cards, an empty column, then 6 more columns of 8 cards, and an ace in every foundation.

Play

  • You may move the bottom card of a cascade.
  • Build sequences in same suit, ascending or descending rank.
  • If the card you are moving is part of a valid sequence, the sequence will be moved too, but stacking in the reverse order. Eg: Given [9 8 2 1 2 3] [], moving 3 to another cascade will result in [9 8 2] [3 2 1]
    • default: The cascade always moves. You must utilise the empty cell to break sequences.
    • variant: You may elect to move a single card without any attached sequence.

Tips

  • Having at least one free column to reverse sequences is critical to success, but harder deals require temporarily giving it up, for 1 or more moves.
    • Dont forget you may be able to leverage cards in other columns too.
  • Remember you can build up and down from a single card, Eg, the 1 in [3 2 1 2 3].
    • Building "mirrors" is important to create space.
  • Some moves are much better than others, try to plan a few steps ahead, especially when moving to the free cell or an empty column.
  • The auto-move algorithm is pessimistic and wont move a card to a foundation unless its provably safe to do so. You may be able to apply your judgement and intuition and move a card to the foundation earlier than it would.
  • Dont be too hasty to put cards into the foundation, Eg: Given [3 K Q J] [9 10 J], you may want to only move the first J (instead of J Q K) to a foundation, then use the 3 K Q to hold the J 10 9 to free up that column.

Critique

  • The nature of double suits means "safe auto-moves" rarely play into long strings of "free moves" which removes some of the joy of re-ordering a sequence and having all the cards move to foundation.
  • There is some amount of busy work flipping card orders around.

Variant ideas

  • Remove all faces but one (eg: Queen of Hearts). The queen must be placed in the free cell at the end of the game to win. Once placed in the cell, you may not remove it.
    • Gives us 97 cards to deal instead of 96, so the tableau would be uneven.
  • Ouroboros: You dont build into foundations, but like spider, must build a full "circle" in the tableau: [1 2 3 .. 9 10 9 .. 3 2 1]. (Hard!)
  • Occupied cell disables foundations
    • Per Fortunes Foundation but probably pushes the game into "often impossible".