Battleship (game)

Pencil and paper game version

The game Battleship (also known as Battleships) is a guessing game played by two people. It is known throughout the world as a pencil and paper game and predates World War I in this form. It was invented by Clifford Von Wickler in the early 1900s, but he never patented the game and it was soon published by Milton Bradley Company in 1931 as the pad-and-pencil game "Broadsides, the Game of Naval Strategy".

Description

Printable version

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. On one grid the player arranges ships and records the shots by the opponent. On the other grid the player records his own shots.

Before play begins, each player arranges a number of ships secretly on the grid for that player. 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., at most 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.

There are two typical complements of ships, as given in the Milton Bradley version of the rules:

Type of ship Size aircraft carrier 5 battleship 4 destroyer 3 submarine 3 patrol boat 2

Type of ship Size aircraft carrier 5 battleship 4 cruiser 3 submarine 3 destroyer 2

After the ships have been positioned, the game proceeds in a series of rounds. In each round, each player's turn consists of announcing a target square in the opponents' grid which is to be shot at. If a ship occupies the square, then it takes a hit. The player's opponent announces whether or not the shot hit one of his or her ships and then takes a turn. When all of the squares of a ship have been hit, the ship is sunk. After all of one player's ships have been sunk, the game ends and the other player wins.

For the Salvo variation, each player may take as many shots in one turn as he has ships remaining in play. The starting player announces all five shots, then his opponent announces which are hits. Each player has as many shots as he or she has vessels afloat in each turn. Thus each time a player's ship is entirely destroyed, that player has one fewer shot on all subsequent turns. In some versions (e.g. Sierra - Hoyle Board Games) the aircraft carrier has two shots.

Variations

Electronic Battleship: Advanced Mission is for the Amiga, Atari ST, Commodore 64, ZX Spectrum, Risk / Battleship / Clue, for the Game Boy Advance, Battleship / Connect Four / Sorry! / Trouble for the Nintendo DS, Monopoly / Boggle / Yahtzee / Battleship for the Nintendo DS.

Battleship has also been released on mobile phones, there also have been multiple versions of Battleship released on the PC, such as Battleship Fleet Command.

In 1977 Milton Bradley released a computerized Electronic Battleship, followed in 1989 by Electronic Talking Battleship.

In 2010 a new and updated version of Battleship was released. In the updated version, each player's board contains several islands on which "captured man" figurines can be placed. Ships may only be placed around the islands, and only in the player's own half of the board. The board itself uses hexagonal tiles.

Battleship was also part of Hasbro Family Game Night for the PlayStation 2 and Wii, as well as the Xbox 360 (Xbox Live Arcade). These alter the rules, including the size of the grid (8 x 12 in the NES version, 8 x 8 in the Game Boy version), size of ships (it is common to feature a submarine that takes up only a single square) and special shot missiles for each ship (for example, in the NES version the cruiser has a 5-shot missile which strikes 5 squares in an X pattern on the grid in one turn. Submarine-tracking sonar and aerial reconnaissance to spot ships are also features).

In Clubhouse Games for the Nintendo DS, Battleship is known as Grid Attack. It is played on an 8x8 grid, and includes slight variations, such as 4-player gameplay, various ship sizes and shapes, as well as the option to makes the ships touch each other.

Iterations of Battleship appear as applications on numerous social networking services. RNASoft created Naval Attack based upon Battleship for Toshiba SPANworks which was also used as a technology demo for Toshiba SPANworks' ImmediaNet SDK for WiFi based devices like laptop, PDAs, Windows Mobile and users could play across the platform.

A slightly different version of the game is played in India. Instead of announcing whether a shot is a hit or miss immediately, the players simply say how many of their opponent's three shots were hits, and if so on what kind of vessel. This allows for more strategy in game-play and loosens the game's dependency on luck. A slightly different recording system is used in this variation as there is a new importance on what turn a player hit something on. The ships themselves are also slightly different; the Indian version uses two submarines (two spaces long), two destroyers (three spaces long), one battleship (five spaces long), and one aircraft carrier (five spaces arranged in a 'T' pointing in any direction).

Feature film

Main article: Battleship (film)

It was announced in 2009 there were plans for a feature film based on the game. Peter Berg is in talks to direct for Universal Studios, with brother team Jon and Erich Hoeber writing the script. Peter Berg was announced as the director on 15 September. A release date of 5 August 2011 was originally set; however, it was pushed back to 25 May 2012.

Cultural references

Battleships is a central theme in the children's adventure book Camp Contact, by Edwin Newbold Bradley Published by Thomas Nelson and Sons Ltd (1941).

See also

• Battleship (puzzle)
• Battleship (video game)
• Electronic Battleship: Advanced Mission

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External links

• Battleship Official Rules – Rulebook insert for Battleship (2002 version)