The Battleship Board Game entered our homes in the 1930s as the plastic sets we know today. Interestingly, the game itself had been around a lot longer, played with paper and pen, dating back to at least WW1 if not earlier. It is a pretty straight forward game where the players aim is sink their opponents Battleships first. It is a short game, taking no more than 30 minutes. Due to its length, many people have issues deciding if Battleship is a game of skill or luck – well, it is a bit of both, but we will hope to teach you some tips and tricks to steer you more towards skilful victories.
Table of Contents
- Which Battleships are Used in The Game?
- What Are the Rules of Battleship?
- Battleship Board Game Strategy
- The Best Places to Play Battleship Online
- The Battleship Board Game: What Have We Learnt?
Which Battleships are Used in The Game?
There are 5 Battleships in the game which range from 5 spaces to 2: their description and size are shown in the pictures below
What Are the Rules of Battleship?
To begin, you must secretly place all of your battleships on your side of the board. They can be placed horizontally and vertically, but not diagonally. Additionally, your battleships may not overlap each other, but they can touch.
Turns are played in an alternate fashion and players can take one shot per turn. To take a shot they call out a grid location on the board, for example, B4. If you hit your opponents ship they must announce “hit”, if you miss they must say “miss”. Players must also let you know if one of their ships have been sunk. Whoever sinks all of their opponents ships first wins!
Battleship Board Game Strategy
In Battleship you are somewhat calling blindly on the board and so a lot of people think it is more of a luck based game. However, there are a few things that you can do to tip the balance in your favour.
Setup Strategy
The first element of Battleship strategy starts before you even take your first shot – It is all about deciding where to place your ships.
Don’t Let Your Ship’s Touch
Even though it is well within the rules to have your Battleships touching it is not recommended that you do so. That is because players are more likely to guess around spots they have already hit. If, by luck, they hit your second ship too you are now in a very tough position
Try not to Place in A Pattern
Some players attempt to place all their Battleships in the centre, others on the edges. While players are less likely to guess the edges, if they see success once or twice guessing edge spots then they are more likely to continue to do so. Therefore, you should place your Battleships a mixture of on the side and on the edges to maximize the randomness.
High Risk – High Reward Battleship Strategy
The following strategy is incredibly high risk and should only be played if you know your opponents and can understand their thoughts, for example, a friend of sibling who you know very well. Alternatively, If you have played a few games of Battleship, this is a good way to mix it up. Essentially, this strategy involves bunching all your ships on one side of the board. The hope is that even if your opponents manage to sink some ships, they will not expect all of them to be together. Your opponent will then begin to guess other, unoccupied, areas of the board, thereby wasting their shots.
However, if your opponent cottons on, or continues to guess round that area, it can lead to an incredibly quick game indeed.
Shooting Strategy
Shooting strategy makes up the majority of the skill of Battleships. This makes sense as after the setup, taking turns shooting is the rest of the game and so the most time should be dedicated in figuring out the best way to do it.
Random Shooting
Random shooting is the worst possible Battleship strategy, we wanted to include it so you would know what not to do. As the name suggests, it involves randomly picking different points on the board to shoot at. It provides poor results and increases the length of game. When playing truly randomly, like say you programmed a computer to do so, more than 15% of games take all 100 squares on the board to finally sink all of your opponent’s battleships. As it is a 10×10 grid, this is the longest possible Battleship strategy and therefore most likely to make you lose.
Search on Hit
Search on Hit is probably the most common Battleship strategy and one you might have even adopted yourself from time to time. Search on Hit pretty much is what it says on the tin. Once you have got a hit, search around the next couple grid squares because the rest of the ship must be in one of those. As we have already established, the smallest ship, a patrol boat, is 2 squares long all the way to the 5 square long carrier. The rest of the ship must be around one of the 4 surrounding squares.
Parity or Chequerboard Strategy
The Chequerboard strategy is the most advanced battleships strategy. We know that the minimum size of a ship is two space long. This means that if you space your spot every other space, rather than every space, you are decreasing the total possible number of squares you need to check. Halving it really and therefore doubling your chances of success. If you are confident that you have sunk your opponents patrol boat you can even take the chance and guess every third square to further minimize the number of shots you need to take to win.
Combining this with search on hit is the most effective Battleship strategy.
Additional Shooting Tips
Firing diagonally can work as well, it is not an exact science, but by firing diagonally each turn is a shot on a new row and new column. We know that opposing Battleships cannot be placed diagonally, so we are increasing our chances on hitting our opponent’s ships by widening our search net.
The Best Places to Play Battleship Online
Battleship started as a pen and paper game, later to become the plastic set that most of us know and love. In the 21st century, we have developed even further – now we can play Battleship online, digitally. We have had a look around, so feel free to check out the best places to find Battleship Free and also apps on the app store below.
Free
- Battle ship online – A good old fashioned website, but does what it says on the tin
- Battle ship Game
- papergames.io – This one lets you play other live players as well!
Apps
As far as Apps go, we found the following
- Fleet Battle: Battleships game – This was the highest rated result
- Sea Battle Board Game – This was the most graphically pleasing
- SeaBattle: War Ship Puzzles – This one was most simplistic, but if you like that basic style it might be the best for you
The Battleship Board Game: What Have We Learnt?
We hope you learnt something about the Battleship Board Game. We wanted to involve a little history and a little how to play information. Mostly, we wanted to discuss some basic and advanced Battleship tactics because there is a bit more skill than people give it credit for.
