pencil and paper game version

The game Battleship is a guessing game played by two people. Although popularized in the United States as a commercial board game, first published in 1931 by the Starex Novelty Company of New York under the name of "Salvo", it is known throughout the world as a pencil and paper game and predates the First World War in this form. It was published by Milton Bradley Company in 1943 as the pad-and-pencil game "Broadsides, the Game of Naval Strategy".[1] Games that can be played with only pencil and paper: Battleship was played as a pencil and paper game, long before Hasbro came out with a board game version. ... A guessing game is a game in which the object is to guess some kind of information, such as a word, a phrase, a title, or the location of an object. ... A board game is a game played with counters or pieces that are placed on, removed from, or moved across a board (a premarked surface, usually specific to that game). ... Year 1931 (MCMXXXI) was a common year starting on Thursday (link will display full 1931 calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... Games that can be played with only pencil and paper: Battleship was played as a pencil and paper game, long before Hasbro came out with a board game version. ... For the Oakland Athletics outfielder, see Milton Bradley (baseball player) The Milton Bradley Company is an American game company established by Milton Bradley in Springfield, Massachusetts in 1860. ... Year 1943 (MCMXLIII) was a common year starting on Friday (the link will display full 1943 calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ...

Description

printable version

The game is played on four square grids, two for each player. The grids are typically square - often 10×10 - and the individual squares in the grid are identified by letter and number [2]. On one grid the player arranges his own ships and records the shots by the opponent. On the other grid, the player records his own shots. Image File history File links Download high-resolution version (826x1169, 40 KB) Summary Description: Battleships game Author: DJGB 04:58, 24 August 2006 (UTC) Licensing File links The following pages on the English Wikipedia link to this file (pages on other projects are not listed): Battleship (game) ... Image File history File links Download high-resolution version (826x1169, 40 KB) Summary Description: Battleships game Author: DJGB 04:58, 24 August 2006 (UTC) Licensing File links The following pages on the English Wikipedia link to this file (pages on other projects are not listed): Battleship (game) ... For other uses, see Square. ... Look up grid in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... A player of a game is a participant therein. ... For other uses, see Ship (disambiguation). ...

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. Horizontal is an orientation relating to, or in parallel with the horizon, and thus perpendicular to the vertical. ... A vertical line. ...

Here is a typical complement of ships:

Number	Type of ship	Size
1	aircraft carrier	5
1	battleship	4
1	cruiser	3
1	patrol boat	2
1	submarine	3

After the ships have been positioned, the game proceeds in a series of rounds. In each round, each player has a turn. During a turn, the player announces a list of target squares in the opponents' grid which are to be shot at. If a ship occupies one of the squares, then it takes a hit. When all of the squares of a ship have been hit, the ship is sunk. After the target list has been given, the opponent then announces which of his ships have been hit. If at the end of a round all of one player's ships have been sunk, the game ends and the other player wins. Four aircraft carriers, (bottom-to-top) Principe de Asturias, amphibious assault carrier USS Wasp, USS Forrestal and light V/STOL carrier HMS Invincible, showing size differences of late 20th century carriers An aircraft carrier is a warship designed to deploy and in most cases recover aircraft, acting as a sea... For other uses, see Battleship (disambiguation). ... USS Port Royal (CG-73), a Ticonderoga-class guided missile cruiser (really an uprated guided missile destroyer), launched in 1992. ... // This article is about the naval vessel. ... For other uses, see Submarine (disambiguation). ...

The number of target squares that a player may shoot at in a given turn is determined by the condition of the players' own ships at the beginning of the round. Each player has 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.

Variations

Many variations in the basic rules are possible, including the sizes of the grids, the numbers and sizes of the ships, the numbers of shots allowed, whether or not to declare when a ship has been sunk, and when hits are announced. Some of the variants simplify the game, which is useful for younger players or people with difficulties. If the game ends early, with both players having sunk the same amount of ships, the player who sunk the largest ship, or collection of ships wins. (For example, if each player sunk 3 ships, and player one sunk three small ships, and player two sunk 3 larger ships, player 2 will win.) Image File history File links Question_book-3. ...

In The Dillinger Days, historian John Toland writes that prisoners in solitary confinement in the Indiana State Penitentiary played a version of Battleship during the 1920s, marking squares on their cell floors and calling out attacks from cell to cell. "For years the more obtuse guards wondered what was being plotted when they heard men calling: 'B-7.' 'Miss.' 'C-8.' 'Destroyer sunk!'" (John Toland, The Dillinger Days, p. 24. Da Capo Press 1995)

Variant rules for shots

In the simplest variation of all in this respect, players alternate turns to attack just one target square of their choice, with the result announced immediately. This rule is popular for its simplicity but minimizes the strategic aspect of the game. (Optionally, the rules may allow an additional shot to be fired after each successful hit. This makes it possible, though very unlikely, for a player to win without the opponent firing a single shot.)

Another variant is that a player has a shot per unit he/she have left. This makes things a lot more tricky and a higher want to destroy the other player quicker.

In a third variant, every player takes three shots per turn. They are told how many hits or misses they have, and whether any ships have been sunk, but they are not told which shots hit or missed. This makes the game more difficult in some ways.

Commercial variants

Electronic Battleship Advanced Mission is an advanced version published by Milton Bradley. Milton Bradley (1836 - 1911) was a game pioneer, credited by many with launching the game industry in North America. ...

Various Battleship variants for home video game consoles have been produced, including Battleship for the Nintendo Entertainment System (with a port to the Sega Game Gear), Battleship for the Nintendo Game Boy (different from the NES version) and Super Battleship for the Super Nintendo. 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. 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). “NES” redirects here. ... The Sega Game Gear is a handheld game console which was Segas response to Nintendos Game Boy. ... For the entire Game Boy series of handheld consoles, see Game Boy line. ... The Super Nintendo Entertainment System or Super NES (also called SNES and Super Nintendo) was a 16-bit video game console released by Nintendo in North America, Europe, Australasia, and Brazil between 1990 and 1993. ... Mixed reconnaissance patrol of the Polish Home Army and the Soviet Red Army during Operation Tempest, 1944 Reconnaissance is the military term for the active gathering of information about an enemy, or other conditions, by physical observation. ...

Gameloft S.A. has produced a variant of Battleship titled Navel Battle: Mission Commander for the current generation of the iPod. iPod is a brand of portable media players designed and marketed by Apple and launched in October 2001. ...

See also

• Battleship (puzzle)
• Battleship (video game)

The Battleship puzzle (sometimes called Solitaire Battleships or Battleship Solitaire) is a logic puzzle based on the Battleship guessing game. ... Battleship is an NES video game based on the classic board game of the same game. ...

External links

• WebBattleship.com - Play Battleship online (JavaScript)
• Armada(Java Applet) – an example of Battleships