Everyone knows at least some board and card games. The classics. Family staples that get played again and again until everyone is sick of them, because no-one can be bothered to learn anything new. This first world problem led me to create my own alternate versions of many of these games, and I thought I'd share a few for you to try for yourselves!
First up is battleship, the classic pen and paper/ board game where two players position their navy on a hidden 10X10 grid, then take turns bombing each other in the hopes that they will sink their enemies fleet before they are sunk themselves.
To me the fun of the original game was predicting where your opponent would place their ships, and strategizing to use as few bombs as possible to win.
The aim of my variation was to escalate both of these concepts.
And thus, Tactical Battleship was born!
THE SET UP:
In regular battleship you are assigned a default collection of ships, and all you get to do is place them. In tactical battleship, however, you get to customize your own navy!
The only rules are you can’t have more than 6 battleships on the board, and together your battleships can’t take up more than 20 squares.
A rather strange but totally valid set up for Tactical Battleship
In the game above, player A has 6 tiny rowboats, while player B has 2 huge destroyers that cross the entire grid!
Ships must still be placed horizontally or vertically on the board, however there is no rule stating that they can’t be adjacent to one another. You might think this removes some of the original games strategy, but it actually forces you to utilise tactical battleships special actions. What special actions, you say?
THE GAMEPLAY:
In regular battleship, you take turns naming a square to bomb (eg. E5), and your opponent replies hit or miss. After a while this can become a bit repetitive, so to spice it up I added alternative options!
On your turn, you may take only 1 of these 3 actions...
Bomb: bomb a square. The enemy must declare if this bomb hits or misses. However they do not declare if the battleship is sunk! Intel: player asks their opponent any true or false question that does not reference a battleships specific location (i.e can’t mention a square like A1). Their opponent must respond with a yes or no answer only. Recon: player states a matrix on the board (eg. A1 to E4), and their opponent tells them how many battleships are present within that matrix. The whole battleship doesn’t have to be inside to count, just part of it.
How this changes the game:
The fact that you can only use one action per turn forces an interesting decision over whether it's worth sacrificing an opportunity to bomb to gather more information.
Intel: helps you work out things like the number of your opponent’s battleships, what their sizes are, etc.
Examples of intel questions and responses
A question I found very fruitful is: do you have any adjacent ships? (make sure to clarify if you consider diagonal ships adjacent). In the game above Player B would say no, and you could use that information to cross out squares around ships you’ve already hit.
Also, in this version of the game, you don’t know when you have sunk an enemy ship, so intel can be used to find that out!
What’s great about the intel ability is the freedom it gives players, and it’s effectiveness depends on what questions you ask!
Recon: Recon is even more useful. Instead of doing one bomb at a time, you can first narrow down the ball park area of where the ships are located, then start bombing.
Example of how recon works (recon selections highlighted in blue)
In the above example, a recon on player A between A1 and B3 informs you there were no ships in that matrix. So in 1 turn you can cross out 6 squares instead of wasting 6 bombs!
However, you must proceed with caution. The recon on player B between A1 and B10 reveals 2 ships in that matrix, and a recon between G1 and H10 tells you the same thing. This might lead you to believe player B has at least 4 ships in play, but in reality they only have two, they are just particularly long!
These abilities on their own are enough to make the base game more interesting. Once you’ve tried playing with them, you can also add special bombs to increase the excitement!
Special Bombs:
Players can only use special bombs once the entire game, and they are used instead of a regular turn.
The 2 special bombs are...
Homing missile: works like a bomb, but if it hits, destroys the whole battleship. Opponent must reveal all the squares the sunken battleship covered.
Carpet bomb: bombs 5 squares in a line, horizontally or vertically. Enemy reveals whether each bomb hits or misses.
As you can use each special bomb only once, you need to be clever about when you decide to use them, and to maximize their effectiveness when you do. These bombs create big swings in the game, like helping a player who is falling behind to catch up, or to bring an end to the game in one swift turn.
Give it a try!
I believe these new rules allow for more ways to play. There are many other strategies I have not mentioned here as half the fun is figuring them out for yourself!
Also, perhaps you like some of these suggestions but not others? Maybe you think their should be a limit of 5 battleships, but they can cover up to 30 squares in total? Maybe you have an idea for another special bomb, or a new ability altogether? I found making this just as fun as playing it, so personalize the rules to your hearts content, so that the next time someone suggests a game of battleship, you don’t sigh, but are instead excited to introduce them to a new way to play!
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