Falling Star

Family: Terrace
Categories: Two-Deck, Large, Thinker's, Rewarding
Variants: Terrace, Blondes and Brunettes
Also known as: Wood

Falling Star is a close variant of Blondes and Brunettes, somewhat more difficult to win because there is one fewer tableau and one more card in the reserve (the “stars”). This is a two-deck game with elaborate rules and good prospects for skillful players.

Layout

Shuffle the decks together, then lay out 11 cards face up in an overlapping row, left to right. These 11 cards form the reserve, but you can think of these cards as the stars which must fall to the foundations in order to win!

Below the reserve are a row of eight foundations: deal one card face-up onto the first foundation. Below the foundations, lay out eight cards face-up in a row to form the eight tableau piles. Finally there is a discard pile, and the stock which holds the rest of the deck, face-up and squared.

Play

All building is circular, with Ace between King and 2. Tableaus build down in alternating colors. Foundations build up in alternating colors, red and black, until each contains 13 cards. The rank of the first card played onto any empty foundation pile must match the rank of the card placed on the first foundation in the initial layout. (For example, if the first card placed on a foundation pile is an eight, then eights must also be played onto the other empty foundations.)

During normal play, top cards of tableaus can be played onto other tableaus or to the foundations; the top card of the reserve can be played to the foundations; and the top card of the stock or the discard can be played to the tableaus or the foundations.

“Normal play” is interrupted whenever there is an empty tableau pile. The empty tableau must immediately be filled with a card from either the stock or the discard, and no other moves are allowed until this is done.

Exception: if the stock and discard are both empty, normal play continues because there is no way to fill the empty tableau.

As a shortcut, even when a tableau is empty Solitaire Till Dawn will allow you to move cards from stock or discard to the foundations, and to non-empty tableau piles. This is because you could accomplish the same thing in two moves by first filling the empty tableau, then moving the same card elsewhere leaving the tableau empty again.

Dealing

Play one card from the stock to the discard pile at any time, except when there is an empty tableau.

Goal

Move all cards to the foundations.

Tips

Moving cards from the reserve should be your highest priority. Look ahead for opportunities to move the top few reserve cards; don’t make plays that would block moving those reserve cards.

Fill empty tableaus from the discard pile, unless filling from the stock allows you to immediately play a card from the discard as well. It’s important to keep the discard pile small.

Keep as many one-card tableaus as you reasonably can, because they can be moved to other tableaus to create an empty pile.