Diplomat takes the Forty Thieves idea and opens the rule that makes the parent so airless. The tableau builds down regardless of suit: any seven goes on any eight. In Forty Thieves a card has exactly one legal host on the whole table, and most turns end with nothing to do. Here almost everything is placeable — which is why Diplomat is the game to reach for when the parent has stopped being a puzzle and started being a wall. The catch arrives later, and it is a real one.
Generosity is the trap. Because nearly every card fits somewhere, it is easy to spend a dozen moves tidying and bank nothing. The foundations are still suit-only, so a comfortable mixed stack can bury exactly the club a foundation is waiting for. Ask of every build: does this bring a card closer to a foundation, or does it only make the table look neater?
Keep your chains short. Every card you place is a card you must later move individually — there are no run moves here. A three-card pile you can dismantle beats a seven-card pile you cannot.
The stock is more than two thirds of the game. Seventy-two of the hundred and four cards arrive through the waste, one at a time, once. That is a higher proportion than the parent, so the eight columns are less a puzzle to unpick than a workbench to receive them. Keep space on it.
Open a column before the board fills. Empty columns are the only free space in the game, and with seventy-two cards still to come they get harder to make with every click. A space earned early is worth several earned late.
The Forty Thieves group is defined by a two-deck board feeding eight suit-built foundations, and its members differ by which dial they turn: how much is hidden, how you build, whether runs travel, whether the stock returns. Diplomat turns the build dial all the way — past Streets and Maria, which soften the parent only to alternating colours — and turns nothing else. It also deals eight columns instead of ten, which pushes even more of the game into the stock. The result is the family's most forgiving opening and one of its more demanding endgames, because a board built without regard to suit still has to be taken apart by suit.
Diplomat runs in your browser — free, no download, no sign-up. Install it as an app on your phone or computer and it works offline. You get unlimited undo, a hint button that names a legal move, statistics that track your wins and times, and seeded deals: every game has a seed you can replay, so a board you enjoyed (or lost) can be played again exactly.