Battleship Game

The battleship game is usually based around a grid of 10 x 10 squares, however if playing on paper you can adapt this to suit your own preferences. Towards the bottom of this page you will find a grid you can copy and print out if you wish to play this way. The game is traditionally for two players, although, again, if playing with pen and paper you may wish to adapt the game whilst following these basic principles.
Here we explain how the battleship game works for a two player game. Firstly each player starts with two grids, the first to mark or plot out their own battleships and the second to mark their previous 'shots' at their opponent's ships. Again towards the bottom of this page we show a few examples.
Firstly each player needs to set out their own ships on one of the grids, this should be done without their opponent seeing where they are positioning their fleet of battleships. Each player has the same amount and same ships to position and this is traditionally five, the sizes of the ships vary according to the rules but here we show some examples

The size relates to the number of consecutive squares the ship occupies on the grid and they can be placed vertically or horizontally but are never allowed to overlap with one another. After both players have positioned their battleships, the decision is taken who is to fire fiirst and then the battle can commence.

The idea of the battleships game is very straight forward, the first player to go names a square to fire at, for example they may wish to fire at square a7, your opponent tells you what your shot has achieved, there are a few possibilities, firstly if it has missed they should say miss and you mark on your second grid (the grid without your ships marked on) that the square is a miss, usually indicated by a X, your opponent will also mark on their first grid (the grid with their ships on) the fact that you have fired a shot into that square, again with a X.
A hit, this is where a square occupied by part of a ship is located, here you would mark your second grid by shading in the square, your opponent would mark a X in their square, on their first grid.
The final possibility would be that all the squares associated with a ship have been hit and the battleship sunk and that fact being announced. The game continues with each player taking turns until all the battleships on one side have been sunk, thus losing the game.

If you wish to play battleships with pen and paper we hope you find this grid useful. Please feel free to copy and print out (dont forget you will ned at least four to play the game)

Here are just a few examples of battleship game play as a guide, the first picture shows a possible layout of your fleet of ships on your first grid, the second is exactly the same but after your opponent has fired 5 shots, notice the X's marked in 'missed' squares and upto press they have one hit. The third picture shows their record of the five shots