This type of single-player patience game is traditionally part of the solitaire family. The objective is to sort a standard deck of 52 French-suited playing cards following specific rules. Scorpion’s card deck 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.
For an in-depth understanding of Scorpion’s rules compared to Spider Solitaire, explore the Scorpion Lesson available in our Spider School.
To set up a game of Scorpion, begin by shuffling the deck and arranging 49 cards in the tableau. This is achieved by forming seven cascades, each consisting of seven cards. The first four cascades contain three face-down cards followed by four revealed cards. The remaining three cascades are entirely revealed.
The three remaining cards are placed face-down to form the stock. If you choose to utilize the stock, one stock card will be added face-up at the end of each tableau pile from left to right. As there are only three cards in the scorpion stock, you can only do that once.
Above the tableau, you will find four empty spaces forming the foundation. Your aim to add cards to these foundation piles sorted by rank, with each foundation containing cards of only one suit. The order of ranks in the foundation is as follows: Ace at the bottom, followed by 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, Jack, Queen, and King on top.
In Scorpion, like Spider, you must keep your cards in the tableau until they form a complete sequence: Only complete one-suited sequences from King to Ace will move to the foundation.
That means that you must gradually reveal and sort all cards in the tableau. You do so by moving revealed cards or sequences between tableau piles. As a result, you reveal the new top card of the freed pile. While progressing towards the solution, you will eventually add all stock cards to the tableau since you cannot directly move any cards from the stock to the foundation.
Not all set-ups can be solved. If you encounter an unsolvable game, you have the option to give up at any time. The points accumulated up until the moment of giving up will constitute your score for that round.
You can play Scorpion using the respective custom rule at the Spider Palace, where we offer you an exclusive multiplayer mode on top! Engage in solving the same set-up of cards separately with your fellow players. The more effective and faster your approach, the more points you’ll earn. Shortly after one player moves all cards to the foundation, the round concludes. Upon completing the table, the player with the highest total score emerges as the winner!
