| Revision as of 09:49, 18 February 2013 editMcGeddon (talk | contribs)Extended confirmed users, Pending changes reviewers, Rollbackers121,439 edits image of a game in progress seems more explanatory than a cut-out-and-keep play sheet← Previous edit | Revision as of 09:55, 18 February 2013 edit undoMcGeddon (talk | contribs)Extended confirmed users, Pending changes reviewers, Rollbackers121,439 edits →Description: copyedit, cut repeated "variant", restore image showing a typical play sheetNext edit → | ||
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| ==Description== | ==Description== | ||
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| The game is played on four ], 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.<ref></ref> On one grid the player arranges ships and records the shots by the opponent. On the other grid the player records his/her own shots. | The game is played on four ], 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.<ref></ref> On one grid the player arranges ships and records the shots by the opponent. On the other grid the player records his/her own shots. | ||
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| After the ships have been positioned, the game proceeds in a series of rounds. In each round, each player |
After the ships have been positioned, the game proceeds in a series of rounds. In each round, each player takes a turn to announce a target square in the opponent's grid which is to be shot at. The opponent announces whether or not the square is occupied by a ship, and if it is a "hit" they mark this on their own primary grid. The attacking player notes the hit or miss on their own "tracking" grid, in order to build up a picture of the opponent's fleet. | ||
| When all of the squares of a ship have been hit, the ship is sunk, and the ship's owner announces this (eg. "You sunk my battleship!"). If all of a player's ships have been sunk, the game is over and their opponent wins. | |||
| For the Salvo variation, each player may take as many shots in one turn as that player has ships remaining. The starting player announces all five shots, then the opponent announces which if any are hits. Each time a player's ship is sunk, that player has one fewer shot in subsequent turns. In some versions (e.g. ]) the aircraft carrier has two shots. | |||
| ==Variations== | ==Variations== | ||
Revision as of 09:55, 18 February 2013
Battleship (also Battleships or Sea Battle) is a guessing game for two players. It is known worldwide as a pencil and paper game which dates from World War I. It was published by various companies as a pad-and-pencil game in the 1930s, and was released as a plastic board game by Milton Bradley in 1967.
History
The game of Battleship is thought to have its origins in the French game L'Attaque played during World War I, although parallels have also been drawn to E. I. Horseman's 1890 game Baslinda. The first commercial version of the game was Salvo, published in 1931 in the United States by the Starex company. Other versions of the game were printed in the 1930s and 1940s, including the Strathmore Company's Combat: The Battleship Game, Milton Bradley's Broadsides: A Game of Naval Strategy and Maurice L. Freedman's Warfare Naval Combat. Strategy Games Co produced a version called Wings which pictured planes flying over the Los Angeles Coliseum. All of these early editions of the game consisted of pre-printed pads of paper.
In 1967 Milton Bradley introduced a version of the game that used plastic boards and pegs. In 1977 the same company released a computerized Electronic Battleship, followed in 1989 by Electronic Talking Battleship. In 2010, an updated version of Battleship was released, using hexagonal tiles. In the updated version, each player's board contains several islands on which "captured man" figurines can be placed. Ships may be placed only around the islands, and only in the player's half of the board.
Battleship was one of the earliest games to be produced as a computer game, with a version being released for the Z80 Compucolor in 1979, and Atari's Battle Zone following in the early 1980s. Many computer editions of the game have been produced since. In Clubhouse Games for the Nintendo DS, Battleship is known as Grid Attack. It is played on an 8×8 grid, and includes slight variations, such as 4-player gameplay, various ship sizes and shapes, as well as the option to make the ships touch each other. Iterations of Battleship appear as applications on numerous social networking services.
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 (8×12 in the NES version, 8×8 in the Game Boy version), size of ships (it is common to feature a submarine that takes up one 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).
A minigame version of the game was used in the third season of Family Game Night, which uses a 5×5 grid and the first team to sink three ships wins the game.
The 2012 film Battleship is an American science fiction action movie inspired by the board game.
Description
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/her own shots.
Before play begins, each player secretly arranges their ships on their primary grid. 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., only 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:
After the ships have been positioned, the game proceeds in a series of rounds. In each round, each player takes a turn to announce a target square in the opponent's grid which is to be shot at. The opponent announces whether or not the square is occupied by a ship, and if it is a "hit" they mark this on their own primary grid. The attacking player notes the hit or miss on their own "tracking" grid, in order to build up a picture of the opponent's fleet. When all of the squares of a ship have been hit, the ship is sunk, and the ship's owner announces this (eg. "You sunk my battleship!"). If all of a player's ships have been sunk, the game is over and their opponent wins. VariationsIn a traditional variant of hte game, each turn both players declare a specified number of squares at one time, and all of the squares are attacked simultaneously. The number of shots a player is allowed to fire each turn depends on the number of ships they have remaining- one for each normal ship and two for the Carrier- allowing for a maximum of six shots to be fired at once if all five ships are intact at the start of a turn. A related variant is one that allows a player a number of shots equal to the size of their largest undamaged ship. 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), two destroyers (three spaces), one battleship (five spaces), and one aircraft carrier (five spaces arranged in a 'T'). See also
References
External links
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