Each player secretly places 5 ships on a 10×10 grid: Carrier (5), Battleship (4), Cruiser (3), Submarine (3), and Destroyer (2). Ships can be placed horizontally or vertically. Click to place, right-click to rotate. Players alternate calling out grid coordinates to fire shots. A hit is marked in red, a miss in white. When all cells of a ship are hit, it sinks — and its full outline is revealed. Sink all five enemy ships to win. A placement timer (90 seconds) starts at the beginning. Any unplaced ships are auto-placed randomly when time runs out.

The best Battleship players use probability and pattern recognition to eliminate possibilities faster than random guessing. A checkerboard hunt pattern and disciplined targeting are the keys.

Tips

• Space your ships apart — clustered fleets are easier to find after the first hit.
• Use a checkerboard pattern when hunting — no ship smaller than 2 can hide from it.
• Once you get a hit, shoot adjacent squares to determine the ship's orientation.

Setup and grid

Each player has a 10×10 grid (columns A–J, rows 1–10) and places five ships of lengths 5, 4, 3, 3, and 2. Ships are placed horizontally or vertically and cannot overlap. On each turn, you call a coordinate; the opponent reports hit or miss. When all squares of a ship are hit, it's sunk and the owner announces it.

History

Battleship started as a pencil-and-paper guessing game played by junior officers during World War I. It was first published commercially as L'Attaque variants in the 1930s, then standardized as Milton Bradley's plastic-peg edition in 1967. The modern computerized version preserves the original mechanics — hidden ship placement and grid-based hunting — while adding hit-streak displays and faster turnover.

Battleship is two games at once: placement and shooting. Most players cluster ships in the same quadrant or hug the edges. Both habits are exploitable. Spread ships across the grid, prefer diagonal orientations over horizontal-vertical, and avoid leaving 1-square gaps that make adjacent shots wasteful for you and informative for the opponent.

In hunt mode — when you have no live targets — fire on a parity pattern. Since the smallest ship is length 2, you only need to check every other square to be guaranteed at least one hit on every ship. This cuts your search space in half. Aim for the center of unsearched regions, not random squares.

In target mode — after a hit — fire the four orthogonal neighbors until you find the orientation, then extend along that line until the ship sinks. Don't waste turns going back to hunt mode mid-ship; finishing what you started is always the highest expected value.

Can ships touch each other?

Yes by default. Ships may sit edge-to-edge but cannot overlap. Some house rules forbid touching — Cogg uses the standard rule that allows it.

Can I move a ship after placing it?

No. Once you confirm placement, the layout is locked for the game.

What if both players sink each other on the same turn?

The first player to call the killing shot wins. There are no simultaneous turns — players alternate.

Are diagonal ship placements allowed?

No. Ships are always horizontal or vertical. The diagonal advice refers to spreading placements across the grid, not orienting individual ships.

Does the AI cheat?

No. The AI sees only the same hit/miss results you do. It uses parity hunting and density scoring, not knowledge of your layout.

What is a hit streak?

Consecutive hits without a miss. Streaks are tracked for fun and shown after the game — they have no rules effect.

Chess — No hidden info, full information strategy with a 1500-year history.

Tic-Tac-Toe — The simplest grid game — a great way to teach forks and parity.

Conquest of Resources — Catan-style multiplayer with hidden trades and territory control.

Othello — Open-information disc-flipping with sharp tactical turns.