Battleship is one of the most famous board games available today. Likely only rivaled by Monopoly and Chess when it comes to name-recognition. In this guide, we’ll be looking at all the Battleship rules you need to know about. Now I know what you might be thinking, Battleship is quite a simple game, isn’t it? While it’s true there are plenty of more difficult board games, Battleship isn’t quite as simple as you might first think.

Battleship is a very interesting game because of its unusual history. The game which was first played with paper and pencils was believed to be created sometime during World War 1. The exact origins are unknown but there are some similarities with the French game L’Attaque. The object of Battleship is to try and sink all of the other player’s before they sink all of your ships. All of the other player’s ships are somewhere on his/her board. You try and hit them by calling out the coordinates of one of the squares on the board. The other player also tries to hit your ships by calling out coordinates. Neither you nor the other player can see the other’s board so you must try to guess where they are. Each board in the physical game has two grids: the lower (horizontal) section for the player’s ships and the upper part (vertical during play) for recording the player’s guesses.

Overview Battleship Board Game

Year: 1931 | Publisher: Milton Bradley, Hasbro | Designer: Clifford Von Wickler | Artist: NA

Genres: Deduction, Family, Wargame

Ages: 8+ | Number of Players: 2 | Length of Game: 20-30 minutes

Difficulty: Light | Strategy: Light | Luck: Moderate

Components: 1967 edition – two gameboards, 10 ships (two sets of five different ship), 168 white pegs, 84 red pegs

Rules for placing ships:

• Place each ship in any horizontal or vertical position but not diagonally.
• Don’t place a ship so that any part of it overlaps letters, numbers, the edge of the grid or another ship.
• Don’t change the position of any ships once the game has begun.

Weapons

Simple missile: 1 square of damage.
Big missile: 5 squares of splash damage.
Missile rain: 7 squares of random damage.
Nuclear missile: 14 squares of splash damage.

These are 15 things you need to know about playing Battleship:

1. Understand the Goal of the Game
2. Learn the Rules of the Game
3. Set Up Your Board Strategically
4. Select Which Player Will Go First
5. Take Your First Shot
6. Respond to Your Enemies’ Attacks
7. Track All Shots Fired
8. Guess Diagonally
9. Announce All Sunken Ships
10. Spread Out Your Guesses
11. Start Sinking All Hit Ships Immediately
12. Alternate Turns
13. Make the Game Harder
14. Play on the Go
15. Learn a New Variation of the Game

Advanced Gameplay

• On the first round of the game, you call out five shots (guesses) and mark each shot with a white peg in your target grid.
• After you have called out all five shots (a salvo), your opponent announces which ones were hits and which ships they hit.
• For hits, change the white pegs on your target grid to red pegs. Meanwhile, your opponent will place red pegs in the holes of any enemy ships that you hit.

Setup for Battleship

• Each player chooses a gameboard and opens it. You should turn your gameboard so your opponent can’t see your grid.
• Both players will take one set of five different ships.
• Each player should fill their trays with white and red pegs.
• The player with the red kit gets to start the game (this will obviously be different for other versions of the game).