Playing Battleship on a battleship (Source)

How to Win at Battleship

Most of the time!

Battleship is an all-time classic game for two players. It’s a game of hidden information, guessing, and a fair amount of luck. It likely originated from the French game L’Attaque in the early 1900s, which was also the source for Stratego. Battleship also likely draws influence from Basilinda, another early board game. It became a popular pastime for soldiers during World War 1 and has since become a staple family game. At first, Battleship was played using pencil and paper, but the game company Milton Bradley turned it into its iconic plastic version in 1967.

A diagram from the original patent for L’Attaque (Source)

Battleship begins with each player setting up their arrangement of ships, which are hidden from the opponent. Once these have been placed, they cannot be moved. While there are many variations, standard Battleship gives the player one ship of length 5 (the Carrier), one of length 4 (the Battleship), two of length 3 (the Cruiser and the Submarine), and one of length 2 (the Patrol Boat). Ships cannot be laid out diagonally, and no two ships can occupy the same space. Some variants restrict players from having ships touch each other (like the Game Pigeon version for iOS), but we will not consider that version here.