Battleship Rules: How to Play, Ship Sizes and Variants

Battleship is one of those games everybody knows and nobody has read the rules for, which is why so many games stop halfway for an argument. Can ships touch? Do you have to say which ship was hit? Does a hit earn another shot? Here are the Battleship rules as the classic board game prints them, the ship sizes, the common variants, how to play it on paper, and where the answer depends on which edition you learned.

Battleship rules in one minute

1. Each player has two 10×10 grids: one for their own fleet, one to track their shots at the opponent.
2. Each player secretly places five ships — sizes 5, 4, 3, 3 and 2 — horizontally or vertically, never diagonally, never overlapping.
3. Players take turns calling one square, such as B7.
4. The opponent answers "hit" or "miss", and the shooter marks it.
5. When every square of a ship has been hit, its owner announces it is sunk and names the ship.
6. The first player to sink the whole enemy fleet wins.

That is the complete game. Everything below is detail, and most of the detail is about the arguments.

What you need

The boxed game gives each player a folding case with two peg grids: the lower one, flat on the table, is your ocean grid, where your ships sit. The upright one is your target grid, where you record your shots at the enemy. Red pegs mark hits, white pegs mark misses. On paper you need exactly the same thing, drawn by hand — see playing on paper below.

The grid: A–J and 1–10

Each grid is 10 squares by 10, 100 squares in all. One edge is lettered A to J, the other numbered 1 to 10, so every square has a name made of a letter and a number: A1 in one corner, J10 in the opposite one. A shot is always called by that name. Which edge carries the letters does not matter, as long as both players use the same convention.

The ships and their sizes

Every player has the same fleet of five ships, 17 squares in total:

The sizes — 5, 4, 3, 3 and 2 — are the part to remember, and the plastic editions agree on them. The names are where editions differ. The list above is the one in the 1990 Milton Bradley rules and most printed rule sheets since. Hasbro's 2002 revision calls the second three-square ship a Destroyer and the two-square ship a Patrol Boat, so if your box says Patrol Boat, nothing is missing. Earlier pad-and-pencil versions of the game, sold before the plastic one, used fleets of their own, and different households still do.

17 of 100 squares means just 17% of the opponent's grid holds a ship, which is why the opening of a game is mostly misses.

How to place your ships

• Straight lines only. Every ship lies horizontally or vertically across consecutive squares. Diagonal placement is not allowed.
• No overlapping. A square holds one ship at most, and no ship may cross another.
• Entirely on the grid. No part of a ship may hang off an edge.
• Touching is allowed in the Milton Bradley and Hasbro rules — two ships can sit side by side. Forbidding it is a popular house rule, and it is the standard rule in the version played across the former Soviet Union (see variants).
• No moving once play starts. When both players say they are ready, the fleet is fixed for the rest of the game.

Taking turns and calling shots

Decide who goes first — some editions specify it, most families flip a coin — then alternate. On your turn you call exactly one square. Your opponent checks their ocean grid and answers:

• "Miss" — no ship there. Mark it white on your target grid so you never waste a shot on it again.
• "Hit" — a ship covers that square. Mark it red on your target grid; your opponent marks the same square on the ship itself.

In the classic rules a hit does not earn another shot: one shot per turn, hit or miss, and then it is your opponent's go. The extra shot on a hit is a variant, and a common one.

Hit, miss and sunk: what you have to announce

Three announcements are universal: hit, miss, and sunk. When the last square of a ship is hit, its owner must say so and name it — the "You sank my battleship!" moment the game is known for.

Whether you have to name the ship on an ordinary hit is the one rule the editions genuinely disagree on. The older Milton Bradley rules have the player who was hit say which ship it was every time. Other editions, and most people playing today, only say "hit" and keep the name back until the ship sinks. The second way makes for a harder, more interesting game, because a hit tells you something is there without telling you how long it is. Agree which one you are playing before the first shot.

How to win

The first player to sink all five of the opponent's ships wins. There are no points and no partial wins: 16 of 17 squares hit is still a loss if your own last ship goes down first. Nothing in the classic rules offsets the small edge of shooting first; the players simply alternate.

How to play Battleship on paper

Battleship started as a pencil-and-paper game, and it still works perfectly well as one:

1. Each player draws two 10×10 grids side by side and labels both with A–J and 1–10. Squared maths paper saves a lot of ruler work.
2. On the left grid, "my fleet", outline your five ships following the placement rules above. Keep the page hidden.
3. On the right grid, "enemy waters", record each of your shots: a dot for a miss, a cross for a hit.
4. When your ship is hit, cross that square on your own fleet grid too, so you know when a ship has gone down.

At the end, swap pages and check each other's answers. On paper, nobody can see whether a "miss" was honest until then, so a misplaced or misreported ship is found after the fact, not during the game.

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Sea Battle

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Common variants

• Salvo. Instead of one shot, you fire as many shots per turn as you have ships still afloat — five at the start, fewer as your fleet is sunk. Your opponent answers for all of them at once. Losing ships now costs firepower, which makes the endgame swing fast. The name goes back to the 1930s pad game, whose players fired several shots at once.
• Advanced Salvo. As Salvo, but the opponent only says how many of the shots hit, not which ones. A hard, deductive version.
• A hit fires again. Keep shooting as long as you hit; a miss passes the turn. Standard in the Soviet-era version below and common in sea-battle apps.
• No touching. Ships may not touch, not even at a corner. It pairs naturally with the extra shot, because a sunk ship then tells you every square around it is empty.
• The ten-ship fleet. The game played across the former Soviet Union uses the same 10×10 grid with ten ships: one of 4 squares, two of 3, three of 2 and four of 1, 20 squares in all. The single-square ships make the hunt noticeably longer.
• Smaller grids. An 8×8 grid, or four ships instead of five, for younger players or a faster game.

A short history

The game is older than the box. It was played on paper at least as early as the first decades of the 20th century, and is often said to predate the First World War; nobody is credited with inventing it. The first commercial version is usually given as Salvo, a pad game published in the United States in 1931, followed by other pad editions in the 1930s and 1940s, including Milton Bradley's own Broadsides.

The version most people picture — plastic grids, pegs and little ships — is Milton Bradley's Battleship of 1967. Milton Bradley followed it in 1977 with Electronic Battleship, one of the early microprocessor toys, and the game passed to Hasbro when Hasbro bought Milton Bradley in 1984. Hasbro has sold many editions since, which is why the ship names on your box may not match the ones your friend grew up with.

A note on strategy

The rules decide what is legal; they do not decide who wins. Two ideas do most of the work. First, after a hit, stop searching and finish the ship: its other squares can only be in a straight line from the hit. Second, the smallest ship is 2 squares long, so it always covers one light and one dark square of a chessboard pattern — firing at the 50 squares of one colour is enough to find every ship. The rest — probability and where people like to hide ships — is a subject of its own.

Sea Battle: the same game on Gift Club

Gift Club has its own take on the game, Sea Battle: a one-on-one sea battle in our Telegram Mini App, against a friend you challenge by link or against a bot. It uses the Soviet-era rules from the variants list — no touching, a hit fires again — on a board cut down so a match fits in a few minutes. Its rules, as they stand:

Two rules exist because of the extra shot. The very first turn of the battle is one shot only, even on a hit, so whoever fires first cannot sink ships before the other side has fired at all. And if the 12-second clock runs out, a random shot is fired for you and the turn passes even if it hits; the third missed turn in a row forfeits the match.

You can play free, or stake 5, 10, 20, 50 or 100 Stars; your opponent matches the stake. The winner takes the pot less a 5% house edge — 1.90× their stake at every tier, 19 Stars on a 10-Star match. At 5 Stars the exact figure is 9.5, settled to 9 or 10 by a rounding draw weighted so the average is exact. Who fires first, every dealt fleet and that rounding draw come from a seed committed before the match, and provably fair verification shows how to check a finished one. The Sea Battle guide has the full rules and a hunting strategy for the small board, and 1v1 games online covers what a rake means in any staked duel.

Battleship is a trademark of Hasbro. Sea Battle is Gift Club's own game, and Gift Club is not affiliated with or endorsed by Hasbro.

Battleship rules FAQ

Can ships touch in Battleship?

Yes, in the Milton Bradley and Hasbro rules: they only say ships may not overlap or sit diagonally. "No touching" is a house rule, and the standard rule in the Soviet-era version. Agree it before placing ships.

Do you have to say which ship was hit?

You always have to name a ship when it sinks. On an ordinary hit, editions differ: older Milton Bradley rules name the ship every time, while many players only say "hit". Pick one before the game starts.

What happens if you shoot the same square twice?

Nothing, except that you have wasted a shot: your opponent gives the same answer as before and the turn passes. That is exactly why misses are marked on the target grid. Some tables are kinder and let a player call again.

Can ships be placed diagonally?

No. Every ship is horizontal or vertical.

Do you get another turn if you hit?

Not in the classic rules — one shot per turn. Playing on after a hit is a popular variant, and it is how Sea Battle on Gift Club plays.

How many squares does the fleet take up?

17: ships of 5, 4, 3, 3 and 2 squares, on a grid of 100.

Can you move your ships during the game?

No. Once both players are ready, the fleet stays where it is until the game ends.

Keep reading

• Sea Battle — the Gift Club game — the full rules, hunt-and-target play and the pot.
• 1v1 games online — how a rake works and which duels reward skill.
• How to play Ludo — another classic whose house rules start arguments.

Try the game from this article

Sea Battle

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Play Sea Battle