Indian Patience deals the Forty Thieves family shallow — ten columns of only three cards — hides the bottom card of each, and then uses a building rule no other member of the family has: a card may go on any suit EXCEPT its own. Three of the four suits will take your seven, which feels generous until you want the fourth. The one host a tidy-minded player always reaches for is the one the rules refuse.
Break up same-suit runs early. This is the rule that catches players arriving from the rest of the family. A descending run of one suit is dead weight in Indian: you cannot restack it anywhere, because every card in it refuses its own suit. Spot those columns at the deal and take them apart while you still have places to put the pieces.
Ten hidden cards is few — spend moves turning them. Only the base card of each column starts down, a fraction of what Emperor hides. That makes each reveal cheap and each one worth taking: an exposed card is information the rest of the game can use, and a column two moves from empty is a real prospect.
Do not spend the extra suit for nothing. Three legal hosts instead of one makes the early game fast and tempts you into moves that gain nothing at all. Move a card only when it uncovers something, opens a column, or sets up a card you can name.
Play the board out before every stock click. Seventy-four of the hundred and four cards come through the waste, one at a time, once. A card you cannot place when it turns up is a card you never see again.
Most members of this family argue about how much is hidden or whether runs may move. Indian argues about the build rule itself, and it is the only one to invert it: instead of narrowing the legal hosts from four suits down to one, it removes exactly one. Moosehide does the same thing in the Yukon family, and the two games share a distinctive feel — loose move to move, with a trap that only shows up once you have built something you cannot take apart. The shallow three-card deal and the single hidden row keep the board readable while that trap does its work.
Indian Patience 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.