Tag Archives: solitaire

Software

Game of the Week : Corners

Corners

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Corners combines simple rules, with a mixed layout,
allowing a great mix of luck and strategy.

 Corners always has a special place in my heart, as it’s one of the first games I learned, and has a nice symetric layout, mixing foundations and tableau piles in the same grid.

 

corners_layoutFoundation piles and Tableau piles arranged in a grid

 Foundation piles sit in the corners of the grid, and build up in suit until all cards of that suit are in the pile.   The rest of the grid is formed with Tableau piles.

At the start of the game, a random card is dealt to one of the  foundations, which becomes the starting value for all other foundations (after a king is played on a pile, you may play an Ace on it, to wrap around)

The Tableau piles in the center, may be built down, ignoring suit, and only one card may be moved at a time. When spaces form, you may play any card to them, which can be really useful as a staging area for combing two smaller piles into a larger one, when you are able.  The more gaps you’re able to create and keep, the more chances there are to combine piles in the Tableau, which can be very useful.

During play, the top card of the stock is always available, it may be played into the grid of Tableau and Foundation, or simply moved to the discard pile – the top card of the discard pile is always available for play.   Since there are no redeals in this game, so once a card is placed to the Discard pile, and covered with other cards, you can’t get at it, without  first clearing the cards on top.  As a result, you often don’t want to fill gaps in the Tableau quickly, it’s useful to have them available in case cards come up in the stock that you will need soon on a Foundation pile, and will probably block that foundation if they’re buried in the Discard pile.

The best strategy seems to be to make a space in the Tableau as soon as possible, using them to combine piles into as few piles as possible (making more gaps).   After that, going through the stock, moving cards to the discard – playing onto Tableau piles when possible – saving spaces for cards that will be needed soon by Foundation piles, so they’re not buried in the discard.  Essentially, the more cards that get into the Tableau, and not the Discard, the more chance you have to win.

Available now in Allgood Solitaire for OS X, and in the upcoming release of Allgood Solitaire for iPad.

 

 

 

 

Software

Game of the Week : Four Winds

Four Winds

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Four Winds offers a unique layout, but is easy to learn and play

This unusual game has become one of my new favourites games when I have 5 minutes free, and just want to play something quick that is a nice distraction, and I don’t have to get too involved in figuring out a deep strategy, like Free Cell, or Forty Thieves.

It’s nicely familiar in some ways, where the goal is to move all the cards to foundation piles, which build up in suit from Ace to King, but has the Tableau is developed through unique suit-based mechanics.

four_winds_layout
Stock and Discard are in the centre of the layout.
Foundations with matching Tableau piles like the points of a compass

 The layout is arranged like a compass rose, with foundations in the North, East, South and West directions, with each foundation owning four Tableau piles arranged near them.  You can’t build cards onto other cards on Tableau piles, you may only move cards to empty Tableau piles, and only if the card matches the suit of the nearest foundation.  Since there’s only space for four cards in the Tableau for any particular suit, when thinking about placing cards there, you’ll need to think ahead about what other cards you may want to use those spaces for.

The initial deal distributes the cards randomly, without regard to suit.  As spaces develop by building up foundations, I’ve found that since you don’t need to move cards to their own suit areas,  it’s often advantageous to wait, and do this only if you need to make a space in the area the card currently resides in.  I don’t move cards from Tableau piles to other Tableau piles, unless I want to move a card from the Discard pile into the Tableau, and I need to make a gap for them.

Since there’s two runs through the deck, it’s often useful strategy to use the first run to allow the lower value cards to play to foundations, and use their spaces to move mid-valued cards into the Tableau, preparing for the second run through the stock, freeing up those cards, leaving the face cards, and other high valued cards in the stock until the very end, as they will generally block gaps in the Tableau that you’ll need for smaller cards.

four_winds_screenshot_smUse the Four Color Jumbo deck to see the layout easily

Available in Allgood Solitaire for iPad, coming soon!