Beleaguered Castle
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Beleaguered Castle is a solitaire card game played with a deck of 52 playing cards. It is one of the games touted as "Freecell without cells" because its game play is somehow akin to the popular solitaire computer game but without extra empty spaces to maneuver. This game is also called Laying Siege and Sham Battle.
First, the player has to remove the aces from the deck and align them vertically without overlapping them. They form the foundations. Then cards are dealt to the left and right of the aces, forming eight rows of six overlapping cards each.
The top card of each row (the cards that are exposed) is available for play either on the foundations or on any other row. The foundations are built up to Kings in suit with the rows are bulit down regardless of suit. Once a row becomes empty, it is filled by any card.
The game is won when all of the cards are built onto the foundations. But this is easier said than done because most games are doomed to fail in just a few moves.
Below are some variations of Beleaguered Castle:
- Siegecraft allows an extra cell for any card to be placed on it to help in uncovering key cards, making it easier. The cell can only accommodate one card.
- In Streets and Alleys, the aces are included in the shuffling, resulting in the rows at the left of the foundations having seven cards each.
- Stronghold, invented by Thomas Warfield, is Streets and Alleys with the game play of Siegecraft, allowing an extra cell to accommodate a card.
- In Citadel, any card can be dealt onto the foundations during dealing. The other cards that aren't built are played as in Beleaguered Castle.
- In Selective Castle, cards are dealt and played as in Streets and Alleys, but the player has the freedom to choose the starting card for each foundation.
