This type of patience game is traditionally played alone, hence its classification as a solitaire game. You aim to sort one deck of 52 French-suited playing cards following specific sorting rules.
The card deck used in Easthaven includes the suits Spades, Clubs, Hearts, and Diamonds, each with all 13 ranks – King, Queen, Jack, 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, Ace – appearing once.
You can take a deep dive into the Easthaven rules compared with the Klondike rules in our Easthaven Lesson in our Solitaire School as Klondike and Easthaven are similar regarding the ruleset for moving cards in the tableau and to the foundation.
To set up the game, shuffle the deck and arrange 21 cards in the tableau by forming seven piles of three cards each. Then reveal each tableau pile’s top card.
The remaining 31 cards become the face-down stock. If you choose to use it, one stock card will be added face-up at the end of each tableau pile from left to right. This can help if you can make no more moves in the tableau.
As usual in solitaire games, four empty spaces are above the tableau – the foundation. The objective in Easthaven is to move all cards into the four foundation piles, each in one suit only.
You can only move individual cards from the tableau to the foundation. In order to move a card to the foundation, it must be revealed and fit the next required rank in the foundation pile. The order from bottom to top in the foundation is Ace, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, Jack, Queen, and King.
As a result, you must reveal all cards over the game’s course: Move revealed cards from one tableau pile to another to sort the sequences in the tableau from King to Ace and consequently reveal the new top card of the first pile. In that process, you will need to add some cards from the stock to the tableau. You will also likely move cards from the stock directly to the foundation from time to time.
Not all set-ups can be solved. If you encounter such a game, you can give up at any time. The points gained until giving up will make up your score for that round.
You can play Easthaven using the respective custom rule at the Solitaire Palace, where we offer you an exclusive multiplayer mode on top! You and your fellow players get to solve the same set-up of cards separately. More effective and quicker approaches gain more points, with the round ending shortly after one player moves all cards to the foundation. After completing the table, the player with the highest total score wins!