Rules for Thirty Thieves

Family: Forty Thieves
Categories: Rewarding, New
Variants: Forty Thieves,Indian
Also Known As:

Thirty Thieves is a simpler, smaller, and easier-to-win variant of the excellent (but difficult) Forty Thieves. Rick Holzgrafe created it expressly for Solitaire Till Dawn, and we hope you enjoy it!

Layout

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

Play

Top cards of tableaus and the discard pile are available. The tableaus build down in suit. Any available card may be played to an empty tableau. The foundations build up in suit from the Ace to the King. Whenever you wish, deal a new card from the hand onto the discard pile.

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 move builds or partial builds from one tableau to another. The more empty piles you have, the longer are the builds you can move.

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

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