Two balloon pilots, the same deal, one shared sky. Race to empty your ballast pile before your rival does, and toss a card onto their basket whenever the suit lines up.
Updraft Duel is our own two-player solitaire. Each pilot lays out a small solitaire of their own, and both of you race to get rid of one pile, the ballast . The first pilot with an empty ballast lifts off and wins the flight.
It comes from a family of old race-to-empty card games. Russian Bank (also called Crapette) lets you load cards onto your opponent's piles. Nerts, also known as Pounce or Racing Demon, is a mad scramble where everyone builds on the same foundations at once. We kept the parts we love from both, a shared middle and a direct way to slow your rival down, and left out the long list of compulsory moves that makes Russian Bank hard to learn.
There is one more twist. By default both pilots get the mirror deal : exactly the same cards in exactly the same places. Nobody can blame the shuffle, because you both had the same one.
Read the full Updraft Duel guide
In Updraft Duel each player has their own small solitaire (a ballast pile, four ropes and a draw pile) and you share eight sky piles in the middle. You race to empty your ballast first, and you can toss cards onto your rival's ballast to slow them down.
No. It borrows ideas from both, loading your opponent's pile from Russian Bank and the shared foundations race from Nerts, and adds its own: the mirror deal, updrafts, gusts and a choice of Turns or Race tempo.
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