Pack of Thieves

Family: Forty Thieves
Categories: Challenging, Two-Deck, Large, Long
Variants: Forty Thieves, Indian, Thirty Thieves
Also known as:

Pack of Thieves is a variant of the popular Forty Thieves. Its differences were suggested by users of Solitaire Till Dawn, and we are pleased to offer this alternative take on one of the classic solitaires.

The two differences from Forty Thieves are: you can move entire builds in the tableaus, and you can bring cards back from the foundations to the tableaus.

Good play should result in winning at least one game in four. For even easier variants of Forty Thieves, see Indian and Thirty Thieves.

Layout

Shuffle two decks and lay out forty cards in ten tableau piles, four cards to each pile, face up and fanned down. Keep the remaining cards in your hand. There are also eight foundation piles and a discard pile, which start out empty.

Play

The tableaus build down in suit. Top cards of tableaus, builds in suit, and the top card of the discard pile are available. Any available card or build may be played to an empty tableau. The foundations build up in suit from the Ace to the King.

Dealing

You may deal at any time by taking one card from the hand and turning it face up onto the wastepile. There are no redeals: when the hand is empty, dealing is no longer allowed.

Goal

The goal is to move all the cards onto the foundations.

Tips

As in all games of this type, empty piles are of great importance. Use them to unblock tangled piles to reach cards you need.

In general, try to play low-ranked cards at first, and let higher cards sit in the discard pile.

Be careful not to let important cards get buried in the discard pile. Remember that in a two-deck game, every card is doubled. Don’t allow (for example) both of the 2 of Hearts to be buried, or you may never be able to move any other Hearts to the foundations.

Late in the game, use empty piles to reduce the size of the discard pile.