Battleship Boardgame

Description

Battleship (also Battleships or Sea Battle[1]) is a guessing game for two players. It is played on ruled grids (paper or board) on which each players fleet of ships (including battleships) are marked. The locations of the fleets are concealed from the other player. Players alternate turns calling "shots" at the other player's ships, and the objective of the game is to destroy the opposing player's fleet.

Battleship is known worldwide as a pencil and paper game which dates from World War I. It was published by various companies as a pad-and-pencil game in the 1930s, and was released as a plastic board game by Milton Bradley in 1967. The game has spawned electronic versions, video games, smart device apps and a film.

Equipment & Supplies

The game is played on four grids, two for each player. The grids are typically square – usually 10×10 – and the individual squares in the grid are identified by letter and number.[7] On one grid the player arranges ships and records the shots by the opponent. On the other grid the player records their own shots.

Before play begins, each player secretly arranges their ships on their primary grid. Each ship occupies a number of consecutive squares on the grid, arranged either horizontally or vertically. The number of squares for each ship is determined by the type of the ship. The ships cannot overlap (i.e., only one ship can occupy any given square in the grid). The types and numbers of ships allowed are the same for each player. These may vary depending on the rules.

The 1990 Milton Bradley version of the rules specify the following ships:[8]

# Class of ship Size 1 Carrier 5 2 Battleship 4 3 Cruiser 3 4 Submarine 3 5 Destroyer 2

In 2002, Hasbro removed the Cruiser, made the Destroyer take 3 squares, and added a new 2-square ship called the Patrol Boat [9]

After the ships have been positioned, the game proceeds in a series of rounds. In each round, each player takes a turn to announce a target square in the opponent's grid which is to be shot at. The opponent announces whether or not the square is occupied by a ship, and if it is a "miss", the opponent player marks their primary grid with a white peg; if a "hit" they mark this on their own primary grid with a red peg. The attacking player notes the hit or miss on their own "tracking" grid with the appropriate color peg (red for "hit", white for "miss"), in order to build up a picture of the opponent's fleet.

When all of the squares of a ship have been hit, the ship is sunk, and the ship's owner announces this (e.g. "You sank my battleship!"). If all of a player's ships have been sunk, the game is over and their opponent wins.

Time Commitment

Cost

Skills Needed 

Skills Developed 

This article uses material from the Wikipedia article "Wikipedia contributors. (2018, September 26). Battleship (game). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 20:39, October 20, 2018, from https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Battleship_(game)&oldid=861314535", which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0.