Exiled Kings is Citadel with a single rule changed, and the change is the whole game. The deal is Citadel's: 52 cards go out one at a time across eight piles, and any card that fits a foundation at the moment it is dealt — an Ace, or the next card of a suit already started — goes straight up instead of onto the table. Once the deal ends, skimming stops and you are on your own. The tableau builds down by rank regardless of suit, one card at a time, and here is the twist: an empty pile accepts only a King. In Citadel a space is a free parking place for any card; in Exiled Kings it is a throne, and only a King may sit on it. No stock, no waste, no redeal. Free in your browser, no sign-up.
Goal: build all four foundations from Ace to King by suit.
Citadel players arrive with one habit that will lose this game: treating an empty pile as a free cell. Unlearn it first.
Exiled Kings belongs to the open castle family that descends from Beleaguered Castle, a line of games with no stock and nothing hidden, where the entire challenge is the order in which you dig. Citadel added the skimming deal, in which cards that fit a foundation are banked as they are dealt. Exiled Kings takes Citadel's deal and build and closes the spaces to everything but Kings, which is the same tightening that Streets and Alleys receives in Penelope's Web, and that Baker's Dozen receives in Portuguese Solitaire. The game is listed in the PySol Fan Club collection and in BVS Solitaire's castle group, which describes it as "similar to Citadel with this one exception".
Rule sources differ on one detail of the deal. Some describe the skimming deal running down the columns; the PySol tradition, which this version follows, deals row by row. The two produce different boards from the same shuffle but exactly the same game, and dealing row by row keeps Exiled Kings and Citadel identical seed for seed, so the only thing that changes when you switch between them is what a space will accept.
If you enjoy this shape, try Citadel itself for the same deal with open spaces, or Beleaguered Castle for the family's original layout with the Aces founded before the deal.
One rule. Both games use the same skimming deal, the same suit-blind downward build and the same single-card moves. In Citadel an empty pile accepts any card. In Exiled Kings an empty pile accepts only a King. That removes the family's easiest trick, parking a blocker in a space, and makes every dig a matter of planning through the build alone.
As each card is dealt, the game checks whether it fits a foundation right then: an Ace always does, and a card fits if the card one rank below it in the same suit is already the top of a foundation. A card that fits goes to the foundation instead of the table and its tableau position is skipped. Skimming stops the moment the deal ends.
Because skimmed cards never reach the table. The four Aces always skim, and often a few more cards do, so fewer than 48 cards are dealt into the eight piles and they end at uneven lengths. No pile ever holds more than six cards.
No. Only the top card of a pile moves, one card per move, even when several cards below it are already in descending order. This is the castle family rule and it is what keeps a fully visible deal difficult.
Not always. For Beleaguered Castle, the family's parent, a solver study found about 68% of deals winnable (Blake & Gent, 2026). The skimming deal gives Citadel a head start, and closing the spaces to Kings takes some of that ease back. Because nothing is hidden, a loss is nearly always a planning mistake rather than bad luck, and the game tells you when no legal move remains.
No. All 52 cards are dealt at the start, either to the table or, by skimming, to the foundations. There is no stock to turn and no redeal.