Learn Battleship: Interactive Tutorial for Beginners
Battleship is a guessing game, and its rules make every guess smarter than the last. In seven steps on the real board, you place a ship, fire your first shots, sink a battleship and hunt the last ship down.
Step 1 of 7
Two grids, five ships
Each player has a 10×10 grid. Columns are lettered A to J from left to right and rows are numbered 1 to 10 from the top, so every square has a name: your carrier lies across row 2, from B2 to F2. My fleet shows your own ships. Enemy waters is where you fire, and you don't see the enemy's ships there until you sink them, only your hits and misses.
Both fleets have five ships: the carrier (5 squares), the battleship (4), the cruiser (3), the submarine (3) and the destroyer (2). Each lies in a straight line, across or down, and ships may not touch, not even at a corner. Sink all five enemy ships before the enemy sinks yours, and you win.
Place your fleet
Before the battle, both players place their fleets in secret. Four of your ships are down, and the destroyer is left. Choose a square and the destroyer goes there, running to the right, or down once you turn it with Rotate (R on a keyboard). With a mouse, pointing at a square shows where it would go.
Your move
Place your destroyer where it touches no other ship.
Call your shot
In battle, the players take turns firing one shot at a square of enemy waters. A miss leaves a hollow ring. A hit leaves a solid peg: part of a ship is on that square. After each of your shots your opponent fires one back at your fleet.
Your move
Fire at D4 and at F8, the two starred squares.
Who fires next?
Your last shot hit on F8. Some house rules give an extra shot for a hit. Who fires next on Playboard?
Finish the ship
A hit tells you a ship is there, but not which way it lies. Ships lie across or down, never diagonally, so fire at the squares beside the hit: above, below, left or right. Once a second hit lines up with the first, the ship lies along that line. Keep firing at either end of it until it sinks.
Your move
Sink the ship you hit on F8.
What a sunk ship tells you
When the last square of a ship is hit, the ship sinks: the board draws its whole hull, and the enemy fleet list under the grids crosses it off. Ships never touch, so every square around a sunk ship is water, and you can save those shots. The enemy battleship is down on E8 to H8. Which of these squares can't hold a ship?
Hunt with a checkerboard
Every ship is at least two squares long, so it always covers both colours of a checkerboard. Picture one over enemy waters and fire at one colour only: no ship can hide, and you need only half the squares. Later in this game you have hunted that way and sunk four ships. Every miss on the chart is on your colour, the colour of D4 and F8. Only the destroyer is left: it must cover a square of your colour you haven't fired at, and it can't touch a sunk ship.
Your move
Find the destroyer. Fire only where it could be.
What you learned
- Each player has a 10×10 grid: columns A to J, rows 1 to 10.
- Five ships of 5, 4, 3, 3 and 2 squares lie straight and never touch.
- The players take turns firing one shot, and the turn passes, hit or miss.
- After a hit, fire beside it, then along the line until the ship sinks.
- Every square around a sunk ship is water.
- Fire at one colour of a checkerboard and no ship can hide from you.
- Sink all five enemy ships before the enemy sinks yours, and you win.
Take it to the table.
Put what you just read into practice. No sign-up needed.