Beleaguered Castle
Screen shot of the game Beleaguered Castle from Pretty Good Solitaire.
Beleaguered Castle is a classic open solitaire game. In an open game, all of the cards are dealt face up at the start of the game, so you can see the placement of all cards. Like most open games, Beleaguered Castle is mostly a game of skill.
At the start of the game, all the cards of one deck are dealt to eight piles, four on the left and four on the right. Six cards are dealt face up to each pile, while the Aces are placed in the middle to start four foundation piles. These foundation piles are to be built up in suit from the Aces to Kings. The game is won when all the cards are played here.
Within the eight tableau piles, one card can be moved at a time. Building is down regardless of suit. An empty space can be filled by any card.
Winning Beleaguered Castle requires that you build long runs of cards in the tableau. The first thing to do is to empty a tableau pile or two so that you can begin a long run starting with a high card, ideally a King. Then try to build that pile down as far as possible and also create another empty space to do it again. It is not a good idea to let one of the foundation piles get too far ahead of the others because you may need those cards to build a long run.
Beleaguered Castle is a hard game to win. An average player can win only about 20-25% of the time, but since it is a game of skill a good player can increase that percentage significantly. This classic and strategic game is underrated by players and is not played as often as it should be.
Beleaguered Castle is one of the 725 games in Pretty Good Solitaire, one of the 101 games in Goodsol Solitaire 101, and one of the 30 games in Most Popular Solitaire.
