Battleship (game)

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pencil and paper game version
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 World War I 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]

Contents

[edit] Description

printable version
printable version

The game is played on four square 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.[2] On one grid the player arranges ships and records the shots by the opponent. On the other grid, the player records 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.

Here is a typical complement of ships:

Number Type of ship Size
1
 aircraft carrier
5
1
 battleship
4
1
 destroyer
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.

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.

[edit] Variations

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!'"[3]

[edit] Commercial variants

Electronic Battleship Advanced Mission is an advanced version published by Milton Bradley.

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).

[edit] See also

[edit] External links

[edit] References

  1. ^ http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/2425
  2. ^ http://boardgames.about.com/od/salvo/a/rules.htm
  3. ^ Toland, John (1995). The Dillinger Days. Da Capo Press, 24.