FoxFire 13 Solitaire Rules
If you're a solitaire buf, FoxFire 13 should seem familiar. It shares
much in common with many of the traditional solitaire card games you
know and love, but it is an entirely new game -- easy to play,
difficult to win, and addictive to the point of distraction.
The original concept for this game was conceived by Todd Svec, and refined by Randy Rasa.
Setup & Play
The game of FoxFire 13 is begun by dealing four cards in a row, forming the tableau. The object of the game is to remove pairs of cards that add up to 13, or a single card with a value of 13 (i.e. a king). Cards are removed regardless of suit, and once removed, are discarded. Only the top card of each tableau pile is available for play. Valid card combinations are:
While removing cards, if a space in the tableau is created, you
may move the top card of any pile to the empty space.
In "easy mode", you can also create pairs from the top two cards of a given pile. For example, in the sample pile on the right, you could remove the nine of spades and the four of hearts:
If you can remove all the cards, you win.
Strategy
This game require a good deal of strategy to win consistently. You'll need to pay attention to the flow of the cards, noticing what cards have been played (and inferring what cards remain in the deck).
Pay special attention to spaces in the tableau -- careful management of these is essential to winning! Sometimes it's best to fill spaces as soon as possible, other times you might try working to keep a space open as long as possible.
Giving yourself a one-card or two-card "undo"
offers vast opportunities for what some would call cheating,
but what we prefer to think of as "score maximization"
Experiment!
Odds
FoxFire 13 appears to be winnable about one-third of the time; less if you don't allow yourself to take back ill-advised moves. At the time of this writing, my statistics are:
- Games Played: 567
- Games Won: 185
- Winning Percentage: 32.63%
- Average Score: 36.93
