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Rules

Shooting Party

Standard CardsSolitaire
👤 Players:
1
⏱ Time to play:
10 minutes
♟ Equipment:
A standard deck of cards with 1 Joker and ranks 6-10 removed
🧠 Designer(s):
John Kean (adapted by Nathan Long)

Unrest is brewing, and the annual hunting party at Vogelschnabel Hall is always a hotbed of intrigue and speculation. This year promises to be no exception as influential figures from across the country gather for a weekend of idealogical dissemination and bloody slaughter.

You, a member of MI6, have gained access to the gathering. While the party is depleting the wildlife in the area, your mission is to make contact with 4 sources, brave spouses of several key figures who are uneasy with the growing fervor, some of whom may be carrying plans and communiques.

You must use your impeccable training to find a way to gather information from the sources without arousing suspicion. This won't be easy under the watchful eyes of their spouses and associated political attaché.

Aim #

To contrive to be alone with each of four sources in turn, by removing all other cards from your hand on four separate occasions. Your secondary aim is for each of them to be carrying secret communiques that you can discretely return to headquarters.

Setup #

Remove one joker and ranks 6 to 10 from a standard pack of playing cards. The remaining 33 cards represent the guests with whom you may interact.

Gameplay #

  1. Shuffle the deck and place it face down as the draw pile.

    • Whenever you have five or fewer cards in your hand you may draw two more to add to your hand. This represents a pair of guests entering the room.
    • Whenever you draw an ace, place it face up on the table above the draw and discard piles and immediately draw another card to replace it in your hand. The displayed aces indicate which sources are carrying communiques at the time.
    • If the draw pile is exhausted, retain your hand, but thoroughly shuffle together the discards with any unscored aces to create a new draw pile. Reshuffling may only be performed twice in the course of the game.

  2. Draw four cards to form your hand. This represents the guests currently occupying the same room as you.

    • Discard from your hand according to the rules of etiquette (below). Discarding represents people leaving the room in response to your clever quip or verbal manipulation.
    • At any time you may leave the room yourself by discarding your entire hand and drawing a new hand of four cards.

  3. If you succeed in reducing your hand to a single queen, you make contact and may lay them on the score pile, indicating a successful exchange of orders and information.

    • If the ace of the same suit as this queen is currently displayed on the table then you may add it to the score pile as well, indicating that you successfully received their communique during contact.
    • Since your hand is now empty, draw a new hand of four cards.

Etiquette #

The rules of etiquette must be observed at all times, lest suspicion be aroused. If, on occasion, more than one might apply, then they should be obeyed in the following order of precedence.

1 Groups of more than seven are not conducive to agreeable discourse. #

You may draw a pair of cards only if you have five or fewer cards in your hand. Both cards must be drawn before resolving their effects.

2 Spouses should guard their partners by removing them from the company of curious guests. Constant vigilance is required; spouses should not allow themselves to be distracted by business. #

If you hold a queen and king of the same suit you must immediately discard them both, unless you also hold the jack of that suit, in which case you may discard the king and jack instead.

3 Sources must remain anonymous, even from each other. #

You may never hold more than one queen in your hand; the one that has been there the longest must be discarded immediately. If you draw two together then the one that was topmost in the draw pile must be discarded.

4 Political attachés are generally over-inquisitive people whose prying may uncover truths which you would prefer to remain hidden. #

If you ever hold two or more jacks you must immediately discard your whole hand (i.e. leave the room) and draw another four cards.

5 Guests are most comfortable conversing with others of similar social standing on topics of mutual interest. #

You may discard exactly two cards of the same suit, for example: 2♥︎ + 3♥︎, or J♦︎ + 4♦︎, or K♣︎ + 5♣︎. Or any two or more cards of the same rank, for example: 4♣︎ + 4♠︎, or K♦︎ + K♠︎, or 2♥︎ + 2♣︎ + 2♠︎

6 The butler is also an MI6 operative, and can assist in your mission. #

The joker may be discarded to retrieve one card from the discard pile, or one ace from the draw pile (place the ace face up as usual and shuffle the draw pile).

Alternatively the joker may simply be discarded on its own, without needing to be paired with another card.

Game End #

The game ends when the draw pile is exhausted for the third time, or all of the queens are in the score pile.

Count up the scored cards (queens and aces). Since the communiques can only be taken during contact, you should never have more aces than queens in the score pile. The number of scored cards indicates your operative status, from inept pencil-pusher to expert spymaster:

Number of communiques (aces) Number of successful contacts (queens)
0 = inept 0 = pencil-pusher
1 = novice 1 = infiltrator
2 = competent 2 = double-agent
3 = proficient 3 = operative
4 = expert 4 = spymaster

The Shooting Party © John Kean, 2016 (Modifications/rethemeing by Nathan Long, 2023) Rules version: 20160714 (Adapted)

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License

Nathan's Notes: This is a delightful solitaire game, but I found the original theme slightly problematic, hence the retheming to pre-WW2 covert operations. I encourage you to get and review the original ruleset.

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