Terrace

Terrace — which Wikipedia files under Queen of Italy — opens with a decision most patience games never offer: you look at four candidate cards and choose which rank the foundations will start on. Everything after that follows from a choice you made before playing.

It uses two decks, an eleven-card reserve called the terrace, and foundations that build up in alternating colours rather than by suit, which is rare and makes the piles much more accommodating. The catch is that the terrace card can only ever go up to a foundation, so if the terrace does not cooperate it just sits there. About half of deals are winnable, and the half you lose usually trace back to that opening choice.

Two decks. Eleven overlapping cards form a reserve called the terrace, and nine more make up the tableau. You then choose which of four candidates sets the base rank for the foundations, which is unusual — most games with a variable base leave it to the deal. Foundations build upward in alternating colours, wrapping past King back to Ace, and the tableau builds downward in alternating colours too. Only the top card of each tableau pile is available, and the exposed terrace card can only go to a foundation, never into the tableau. Gaps fill immediately from the stock, and there is no redeal.

Choosing the base rank is the most consequential decision in the game and it happens before you have played a card — look at where the low cards sit in the terrace and pick the rank that makes the most of them. Alternating-colour foundations rather than suited ones means twice as many cards fit each pile, which sounds easy until you realise the terrace card can only go upward, never into the tableau, so a terrace that will not feed the foundations is dead weight for the whole game. Gaps auto-fill from the stock, so you cannot hoard space. Roughly half of deals go the distance.