Out of all the classic games we have covered this month, no other game has changed mediums multiple times over the last century, had a movie made about them, AND had its own memorable tagline. You sunk my battleship!

Game: Battleship
Debut: 1967
Age Range: 7 years and up
Objective: Sink all your opponent’s ships before they sink yours

The guessing game of accurately locating your adversary’s naval fleet and destroying them has been a favorite for decades. However, the game’s history dates way before Milton Bradley (now Hasbro) got their hands on it.

Battleship’s origins came from a pencil and paper game, popular among French and Russian soldiers during World War I. The concept was adopted in 1931 by Starex Novelty Co. and was named Salvo, a moniker referring to the simultaneous firing of bombs and firearms. Their rendition consisted of printed paper grids depicting land and sea. Other toy competitors jumped onto the strategic wargame trend, including Milton Bradley. In 1943, they released their pencil and paper version called Broadsides with the War of 1812 serving as its backdrop. In 1967, the company morphed its 2-D format to its iconic design: plastic 10×10 grids with miniature ships and colored pegs to record hits and misses.

What makes Battleship different than all the other war-themed strategy games is its easy setup and gameplay. Seriously, have you tried to play Risk or Stratego?  Additionally, its element of concealed information adds to the drama of the game. Each guess brings players one step closer to taking out their opponent’s armada all the while hoping not to get sunk themselves. The game is a combination of luck and strategy.

Gameplay

• Each player has a gameboard with two grids. Players should sit facing one another with lids of the battle cases open to not see each other’s ocean grid.
• Players will secretly place their set of five different ships onto their grid and cannot move their boats once the game starts.
• Decide who goes first and then alternate turns, calling out one shot (coordinate) per turn.
• The opponent announces if the shot was a hit or miss, placing a peg on their grid to mark the shot. The player records the hit (or miss) on their target grid using different colored pegs (red = hit, white = miss). The grids keep track of their guesses on the opponent as well as the status of their own fleet.
• A ship is sunk when all its holes have red pegs. The player must declare their ship sunk.
• The first player to sink their opponent’s fleet is the winner.

Skills Tested

While your kid is focused on sinking their enemy’s ships, they are also working on the following:

• Executive functions (analytical and critical reasoning, problem solving, working memory)
• Math skills (understanding data representations and probability)
• Visual perception (visualizing opponent’s board and possible ship locations)
• Social participation (communicating with opponent about hits/misses, perspective taking)
• Visual motor skills (hand-eye coordination)
• Fine motor skills (fine motor precision, pincer grasp, hand/finger strength, manual dexterity)
• Emotional regulation (frustration tolerance)
• Speech skills (articulating coordinates)
• Auditory skills (auditory attention, discrimination, and sequencing of coordinates)

Modifications

Battleship has already undergone so many modifications in its time while still maintaining its general concept. Here’s how you can change it up:

• Rather than sit facing each other, sit across the room. This encourages speaking loud and clear so players can hear the coordinates as well as address auditory discrimination where extraneous noises are present.
  
  
• If little ones want to take part, but are a bit young, make Battleship part of pretend play. While playing Battleship, the youngest members of the family relay coordinates between players. They could also operate as spies, looking at the opponent’s boards to find out where their ships are.
  
  
• To address fine motor and visual motor skills needed for writing, go old school and play Battleship on grid paper instead. You can reduce the grid size to make it easier or increase it to up the difficulty.
  

• Use the ships to make letters or patterns on the grid.
  
  
• Official game rules say that a player must announce which ship has been hit; however, a popular house rule is to not to disclose it to make play more strategic. Announce it to clue a young opponent in, or don’t to make it tricky.
  
  
• Play the Salvo version which has been added to newer additions of Battleship. Players call out 1 to 5 shots at a time depending on the number of ships the player has left (ex. 5 ships = 5 shots, 4 ships = 4 shots, and so on). Players collectively have the option to report if a ship has been hit or wait until the ship has been sunk.
  
  
• When the game is not being played, younger kids can use the pegs and grid to practice letters, spacing, fine motor skills, crossing the midline, counting, etc.
  

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