🏠The Shooting Party
The Shooting Party is an Edwardian themed solitaire diversion designed by John Kean.
Victory in this game requires seducing all four queens — reducing you hand (aka room in Leverstoke Hall) down to one solitary queen four times. Extra status is achieved if her jewel (ace of the same suit) is taken as well.
What makes this tricky is the starting hand is an even number, four, and additional cards enter the room in pairs. Breaking the room down to an odd number so the queen can be isolated requires observing these rules of etiquette:
- If a queen's husband — the king of the same suit — is in the same room, he escourts his wife out, unless a business interest — jack of the same suit — is present, in which case you have the option of discarding the jack instead of the queen.
- If a second queen enters the room, the first queen leaves because she doesn't like competition.
- More than one jack in a room means you have to change rooms — click the discard deck to get a fresh hand.
- You can discard any number of cards of the same rank, or a pair of a matching suit.
- The buttler — black joker — can be discarded to either the draw pile to get a jewel or to the discard pile allowing you to add any desired card to your hand. Click on the discard pile after discarding the joker to cycle through the deck.
At the start of a turn, before you have discarded any cards, you have the option of drawing two cards provided this keeps you under the seven card limit, or clicking the discard deck to get a new room, ie four new cards.