Did Ya Know?

You Sunk my Battleship!

The game of Battleship is thought to have its origins in the French game L'Attaque played during the first World War. Although similarities exist between E. I. Horseman's 1890 game Baslinda, the game is said to have been played by Russian officers before World War I. The first commercial version of the game was Salvo, published in 1931 in the United States by the Starex company. Other versions of the game were printed in the 1930s and 1940s, including the Strathmore Company's Combat: The Battleship Game, Milton Bradley's Broadsides: A Game of Naval Strategy and Maurice L. Freedman's Warfare Naval Combat. Strategy Games Co produced a version called Wings which pictured planes flying over the Los Angeles Coliseum. All of these early editions of the game consisted of pre-printed pads of paper.
In 1967 Milton Bradley introduced a version of the game that used plastic boards and pegs. In 1977 the same company released a computerized Electronic Battleship, followed in 1989 by Electronic Talking Battleship. In 2010, an updated version of Battleship was released, using hexagonal tiles. In the updated version, each player's board contains several on which "captured man" figurines can be placed. Ships may be placed only around the islands, and only in the player's half of the board.
How to play: Battleship is a game of strategy using a gridded board and deductive reasoning! Each player takes turns calling out a location on the grid and the other player responds with, "hit" or "miss". A "hit" indicates where a ship may be placed on your opponents grid. It is then up to you to discern which direction the ship is placed in order to sink the battleship.