Battleship (game)

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". [ [http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/2425 Battleship | BoardGameGeek ] ]

Description

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. [ [http://boardgames.about.com/od/salvo/a/rules.htm Salvo - Battleships - Complete Rules - Paper and Pencil Game ] ] 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.

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

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.

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!'" [cite book |title=The Dillinger Days |last=Toland |first=John |authorlink= |coauthors= |year=1995 |publisher=Da Capo Press |location= |isbn= |pages=24 ]
*"Lap" is a version devised by Lech Pijanowski for Sid Sackson's A Gamut of Games (1969). In this game each player secretly divides an 8x8 grid cells, into four sectors of exactly 16 contiguous squares. Each players in turn gathers clues by asking their opponent how many cells in a particular 2x2 square belong to each sector. The first player who correctly deduces the opponent's setup wins the game [ [http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/19917 Lap] Board Game Geek] .

Commercial variants

"" 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),"Super Battleship" for the Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis, "Batleship" for the Game Boy Color, "Battleship" for the CDI, "Battleship" 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, for the PC, "TotalBattleship" for the PC, Battleship was also part of "Hasbro Family Game Night" for the Playstation 2 and Wii. 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).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.

ee also

* Battleship (puzzle)
* Battleship (video game)

References

External links

* [http://www.freeonlinebattleship.com www.FreeOnlineBattleship.com] - Play Battleship online free
* [http://scv.bu.edu/~aarondf/java/battleship.html Armada(Java Applet)] – an example of "Battleships"
* [http://www.hasbro.com/common/instruct/BattleShip_(2002).PDF Battleship Official Rules] – Rulebook insert for "Battleship" (2002 version)
* [http://totalbattleship.com/ TotalBattleship] - Combining "Battleship" with "Morse Code"