Lights for cats

Four horsemen: a solitaire card game

Four Horsemen is a solitaire game where you try to defeat four "horsemen" before you run out of cards in your deck. It will appeal to you if you like making use of limited resources and predicting what will happen five turns into the future; it will appeal less to you if you don't want to do arithmetic or don't like the possibility of being screwed by bad luck.

26 43 84 132
7♥ 8♣ J♠ A♦ 2♦

Setup

Shuffle a standard 52-card deck (without jokers), then deal four sets of two cards:

2♦ 7♦ 5♠ 2♥ Q♠ A♠ 4♣ J♥

Each of these sets of cards will be a "horseman". Its value is the concatenation of the two cards. For example, a horseman composed of 2♦ 7♦ has a value of 27, and 10♣ 4♦ is 104. Jacks, Queens, and Kings are 11, 12, and 13 respectively, and Aces are always 1— in other words, Q♠ A♠ is 121. Additionally, a 10 in the units place is evaluated as a 0— for example. 10♥ 10♦ would be a 100.

Some horsemen are invalid and must be replaced. The units place of each of your horsemen must be an A-10. If there are any J's, Q's, or K's in the units places of your horsemen, shuffle those cards back into the deck and replace them. Additionally, if there are any horsemen with values 10, 11, 12, and 13, replace both cards of those horsemen. Keep replacing cards until none of your horsemen are invalid.

For example, in the board above, we have to replace the J♥:

2♦ 7♦ 5♠ 2♥ Q♠ A♠ 4♣ 2♦

Keep these cards in stacks at the top of your play area, such that you can see both numbers at once. For ease of reading I'll depict them like this:

27 52 121 42

Additionally, draw a card and place it horizontally onto the table. That card is your "reserve card".

27 52 121 42
J♥

Play

On your turn, you can draw as many cards as you want, one at a time. (Be careful, though— you lose if you run out of cards in your deck!) Let's say you draw three cards:

27 52 121 42
J♥ 9♣ 8♦ 4♣

If you have two cards with matching suits among cards in your hand, you can play your hand in a stack onto the field. The top card of the stack must be one of the cards with the same suit. For example, this hand has two clubs, so you can play either the 9♣ or the 4♣ on top.

27 52 121 42
9♣

Note that you must put your entire hand into the stack, even the cards that weren't of the same suit.

If you didn't want to do so, you could instead draw another card:

27 52 121 42
J♥ 9♣ 8♦ 4♣ 10♥

You could still play the stack as a 9♣ or 4♣, like before. Additionally, you may also pick up the reserve card into your hand. If you do so, you now have two hearts, so you can play your hand as a stack with either the 10♥ or the J♥ on top.

27 52 121 42
10♥

If you picked up your reserve card, replace it with a card from the deck after you finish:

27 52 121 42
10♥ 5♠

In summary, during your turn:

Defeating horsemen

Let's say you've played a few more stacks:

27 52 121 42
9♠ 3♥ 5♦

Recall that the object of the game is to defeat the four horsemen before you run out of cards. You do so by combining stacks using the four basic operations (+, −, ×, and ÷). For example, since 9×3=27, you can combine your 9♠ and 3♥ to defeat the 27 horseman...

27 52 121 42
9♠ 3♥ 5♦

...putting all cards from both stacks and the horseman into your discard pile.

52 121 42
5♦ 9♠

You can also chain operations in any way you like. For example, since 9×5−3=42, you could use the 9♠, 5♦, and 3♥ to defeat the 42 horseman. This is the only way to defeat some particularly nasty horsemen!

You can't combine stacks unless you're defeating a horseman then and there.

Winning and losing

If your deck is empty, use the resources you have to try to defeat the remaining horsemen. If you can't, you lose the game.

If you have six or more stacks in play, you must immediately combine some and defeat a horseman. If you can't, you lose the game.

If you've defeated all four horsemen, you win the game!

Optional rules

Since card counting can be a part of the game, I prefer playing with a memory component— that is, disallowing looking at cards in the discard pile or under stacks.

I also like keeping track of my winstreak with an ongoing score:

#game #solitaire