Battleships

Battleships (also known as Battleship) is basically a guessing game of glory played by two people. While the plastic and electronic version of the game was first made in 1979 and will be avidly remembered by all boys of the era, it is apparently known throughout the world as a pencil and paper game, and was played for centuries even since the 1600's!.

It’s been a massively successful game since it was first produced by Milton Bradley Company in 1943. In fact versions of the game have featured on the Amiga, Atari ST, Commodore 64, ZX Spectrum, Clue, for the Game Boy Advance, Trouble for the Nintendo DS, Battleship for the Nintendo DS and as boardgames incorporated into Risk.

The rules sound quite complicated when written down, but are really very simple when played.

The game is played on four grids, two for each player. The grids are typically square – usually 10 × 10 squares – and the individual squares in the grid are identified by letter and number. i.e. A4 or D2. On the first grid the player places his ships and records the shots by the other player. On the second grid the player records their own shots.

Different ships cover different sized areas i.e. aircraft carriers are bigger than fighter ships. 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.

Battleships fact: A different version of the game is played in India. They don’t let you know if your shot is a hit or miss straight away but just say how many of your three shots were hits, and if so on what kind of ship. I don’t know if this change is a part of India’s official military strategy or not.

Amazingly the game is going to be made into a film to be released in 2011. Not sure how that will come across, the drama of watching 2 players destroy each others toy battleships. But maybe they have another idea for it?