Beleaguered Castle is a patience or solitaire card game played with a deck of 52 playing cards.It is sometimes described as "Freecell without cells" because its gameplay is somewhat akin to the popular solitaire computer game of that name but without extra empty spaces to maneuver. Beleaguered Castle is also called Laying Siege and Sham Battle.
First, the player removes the aces from the deck and aligns them vertically without overlapping them to form the foundations. Then cards are dealt to the left and right of the aces, forming eight rows of six overlapping cards each, in a distinctive tableau layout with wings on either side of the foundations.
The top card of each row (the exposed card) is available for play either on the foundations or on any other row. The foundations are built up to kings by suit. Cards in the rows are built down in sequence regardless of suit. Once a row becomes empty, it can be filled by any card
The game is won when all of the cards are built onto the foundations