Battleship: The Classic Naval Combat Game

Designer: Clifford Von Wickler

Players: 2

Age: 7+

Game time: 20-30 minutes

Objective of the game: "Sink your opponent's fleet of four ships before your opponent sinks yours. "

Board Game Contains:

- Ocean grid base

- vertical target grid

- 8 Plastic ships

- 60 red "hit" pegs

- 140 White "miss" pegs

-Label sheet instructions

Game Summary:

Battleship was originally just a paper-and-pencil public domain game but Milton Bradley turned it into the well known board game in 1967. Each player deploys his ships (lengths varrying from 2-5 squares) secretely on each of their square grids. Then each player shoots at the opponent's grid by calling a location (e.g A-9). The defender then responds by either "Hit" or "Miss!". The goal is to deduce where the enemy ships are and sink them. The first one to neutralize all ships wins the game.

Game Review:

My boyfriend officially banned this game from our household after encountering a devastating loss with 17 out of 20 hits. Until now, he still claims I somehow cheated and I keep telling him I just got lucky. Yes, this game is a lot of luck and a bit of strategy. Depending on who you're playing with, sometimes it's wiser to clump all of your ships together. Eventually, they'll figure that plan out but (hopefully) by then you've sunk most (if not all) of thier ships already. If you ever play with my boyfriend, just know he doesn't like to clump his ships together, he usually follows a pattern of some sort. That's how I wont the game so quickly; observing!

I absolutely love this game, it really doesn't take much brain power to play. It is definitely one of the easiest board games to explain. You just have to observe the game play once and you be ready to set sail. My issue with it, isn't exactly with the game but with the quality of board game you have. The one I have is courtesy of Walmart for less than $15. It's plastic, it's not the greatest quality but it works just as well. You can, however, go fancier. I played it once where the grids talked and you had to manually enter your target points. This is where I find could get annoying, time consuming and confusing for some people. For these expansions, you have to manually enter where your ships are located in the grid. Remember you have 5 ships in total. This is important because if you enter the wrong location (even if you just miss it by one space) this could impact how many missles actually hit or miss.