# Battleship on paper — find the hidden fleet

- From: Battleship, the pencil-and-paper game
- Players: 2 players
- Time: 8–10 min
- Made by: Traditional pencil-and-paper game
- This version: A 6 by 6 grid and three ships

Made with boardgameBuilder 0.14.4. To design from it, open boardgameBuilder and choose Open game: its blocks go on the canvas, and the feelings are left for you to pick.

Each player hides three ships on a small grid and fires at the other's grid by calling squares. All you learn is 'hit' or 'miss', and from that you work out where the ships are.

## What it shows a designer

Each yes-or-no answer narrows where the ships can be. It shows deduction on a hidden map, and how the size of the board sets how much luck there is at the start.

## What you need

- paper
- a pen each

## How to play

1. **Two grids.** Each player draws two grids of 6 by 6 squares, A to F across and 1 to 6 down: one for your ships, one for your shots. The usual game uses 10 by 10; this smaller one fits in ten minutes.
2. **Hide ships.** Without showing anyone, mark one ship 3 squares long and two ships 2 squares long, each across or down, not overlapping.
3. **Call a square.** Toss a coin to see who starts. Take turns calling one square, like C4. The other player says 'hit' or 'miss'. Mark it on your shots grid with a cross for a hit and a dot for a miss.
4. **Sunk.** When every square of a ship has been hit, its owner says 'sunk'.
5. **Win.** The first to sink all three of the other player's ships wins.

## After playing, talk about

- After a hit, how did you choose the next square?
- Did you hide your ships in a pattern?
- How much was luck at the start?

## Where the rules are written down

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battleship_(game)
- https://gambiter.com/paper-pencil/Battleship_game.html

## Its blocks

- Victory condition: race to finish
- Player interaction: direct confrontation
- Chance or skill: skill with luck
- Theme: war and conquest
- Information visibility: deduction
- Timing: take turns

## Saved state

boardgameBuilder reads this part back when the file is opened.

```json
{"mechanics": {"victory-condition": "race-to-finish", "player-interaction": "direct-confrontation", "chance-skill": "skill-with-luck-tempering", "information": "deduction", "theme": "war-and-conquest", "timing": ["take-turns"]}, "chosenFeelings": [], "previousMechanics": {}, "previousFeelings": [], "turnNumber": 0, "locked": false, "turnHistory": [], "answers": {}, "tests": {}}
```