How to Play Sea Battle

Sink every ship in your opponent's fleet before they sink yours.

Each player secretly places four ships on their own grid, either by hand or with shuffle. Neither player can see the other's grid.

1. 1Place your fleet. Arrange your ships horizontally or vertically. They can't overlap or hang off the grid.
2. 2Fire a shot. On your turn, pick one square on your opponent's grid.
3. 3Hit or miss. A red cross marks a hit, a blue dot a miss. When every square of a ship is hit, it sinks.
4. 4Pass the device. In local games, hand over between turns so your opponent can't see your fleet.
5. 5Win. Sink all four enemy ships to win the battle.

Sea Battle is played slightly differently from place to place. These are the variants you're most likely to meet:

• •Classic 10×10. Five ships of lengths 5, 4, 3, 3 and 2.
• •Salvo. Fire one shot for each ship you still have afloat.
• •Hit = shoot again. A common house rule where a hit earns another shot.

How Sea Battle works in Multiplayer Games:

• •8×8 grid with four ships: lengths 4, 3, 3 and 2.
• •Ships can't touch each other, not even diagonally.
• •One shot per turn, hit or miss.
• •You're told when a ship is sunk.

• •Search in a checkerboard pattern — every ship covers at least two squares, so you only need to hit every other square.
• •After a hit, fire at the four neighbouring squares to find which way the ship runs.
• •Spread your own ships out and avoid placing them all touching or along the edges in obvious lines.
• •Once a ship is sunk, cross off the squares around it in your head — nothing else can be there if ships don't touch.

• •Firing randomly instead of following a pattern.
• •Abandoning a hit before you've sunk the ship.

Hunt

Searching for a ship before you've found it.

Target

Firing around a hit to finish the ship.

Parity

Firing on a checkerboard pattern, since every ship covers at least two squares.

Sea Battle is the game known as Battleship. It began as a pencil-and-paper game around the time of the First World War, was sold as printed pads in the 1930s, and was released as a plastic board game by Milton Bradley in 1967. An electronic version with sound effects followed in 1977.

It's a game of deduction as much as luck: good players hunt in patterns, and once they get a hit they switch to finishing the ship off.

We checked these rules against:

1. The Strong National Museum of Play — Battleship
2. Wikipedia — Battleship (game)

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