How to play Battleship

What you need

• Two Battleship game units. Each has a flat ocean grid for your own ships and an upright target grid in the lid for tracking your shots
• Two fleets of five ships: Carrier (5 holes), Battleship (4), Cruiser (3), Submarine (3) and Destroyer (2)
• Red pegs for hits and white pegs for misses

No board, no dice, no cards. If you have no set, two sheets of squared paper with a 10 by 10 grid each work the same way.

Missing pieces, or need a fresh copy? Miniature Market stocks current editions; compare the edition and component list against the rules here before you buy. (Affiliate link: we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. How links work.)

Set up the game

1. The first time you play, remove the pieces from the plastic frame and smooth any rough edges.
2. Slide the two units apart. Each player takes one and sits facing the other. Keep the lids up the whole game; the lid is the screen that hides your ocean grid.
3. Secretly place your five ships on your ocean grid by pressing them into the holes. Ships go horizontally or vertically, never diagonally, and no part may hang off the grid. Ships may not overlap.
4. Split the pegs: each player keeps half the red and half the white in the storage areas beside their ocean grid.
5. Leave your target grid empty. It records your attacks, not your own ships.
6. Decide who goes first.

Once the game starts, ships never move.

Playing Battleship

1. Call one shot. Pick a hole on your target grid and call it by its letter (rows, down the left side) and number (columns, across the top), for example "D-4".
2. Defender answers. Your opponent checks that hole on their ocean grid and says "hit" or "miss". On a hit, they push a red peg into the struck ship.
3. Record it. Put a red peg in that hole of your target grid for a hit or a white peg for a miss, so you never call it twice.
4. Your turn ends. One shot per turn, even after a hit.
5. Sinking. When every hole of a ship holds a red peg, it is sunk. Its owner must announce which ship it was. In the 22678 travel edition, the sunk ship is then removed from the ocean grid.
6. Winning. The first player to sink all five of the opponent's ships wins.

A note on announcements: the 1990 full-size rules also have the defender name the ship on every hit ("Hit. Cruiser."). The 22678 travel rules only require naming the ship when it sinks. Agree on one before you start; naming on every hit makes the game easier.

A sample round, turn by turn

Priya and Tom are playing with the travel edition rules, so ships are named only when they sink.

Priya: "E-4." Tom: "Miss." Priya puts a white peg at E-4 on her target grid.

Tom: "C-7." Priya: "Miss."

Priya: "C-4." Tom: "Hit." Priya places a red peg at C-4; Tom puts a red peg into the ship sitting on his C-4. Priya's turn ends there despite the hit.

Tom: "H-2." Priya: "Miss."

Priya now has one hit and four possible directions. She tries "B-4." Tom: "Hit." Two hits stacked in column 4 suggest the ship runs up and down.

Tom: "H-3." Priya: "Hit." Tom finally has a target of his own.

Priya: "A-4." Tom: "Miss." So the ship's top end is B-4. It must continue down.

Tom: "H-4." Priya: "Miss." Tom will try G-3 or I-3 next.

Priya: "D-4." Tom checks his grid: every hole of that ship now holds a red peg. "Hit. You sank my Cruiser." Priya knows the whole ship: B-4, C-4 and D-4. Her opening miss at E-4 and the miss at A-4 confirm it could not have been longer.

Tom: "G-3." Priya: "Miss." He will try I-3 next.

The point defenders forget most often: check after every hit whether that ship is now full of pegs, and announce the sink right away. The attacker is relying on it.

The diagram shows Priya's target grid a few turns later: B-4, C-4 and D-4 are hits, A-4 and E-4 are misses. Every other ship is still hidden.

Keeping score

Battleship has no points. The fleet totals 17 holes (5 + 4 + 3 + 3 + 2), so the game ends the moment one player lands their 17th hit. Many families play a match instead of one game:

• Best of three or five games. The loser of each game shoots first in the next.
• Shot count (house rule). Count the shots each winner needed. Fewer is better. A winner who needed 48 shots beats a later winner who needed 61.
• Surviving holes (house rule). The winner scores one point for each of their own ship holes still unhit. Sink the enemy fleet while you still have 9 unhit holes and you score 9.

Worked example, surviving holes: Tom wins game one with his Carrier untouched (5), his Battleship hit once (3 left) and everything else sunk. He scores 5 + 3 = 8. Priya wins game two with 11 unhit holes. Priya leads the match 11 to 8.

The pegs at the top of some full-size units are a simple tally: one red peg for each enemy ship you have sunk.

Beginner strategy tips

1. Search on a checkerboard. The smallest ship is 2 holes long, so it must cover one square of each color on a checkerboard. Shooting only one color still finds every ship, with half the shots.
2. After one hit, test the four neighbors. Up, down, left and right. A ship cannot continue diagonally.
3. After two hits in a line, keep going that way. Shoot along the line until you hit a miss or the edge, then go back and finish the other end.
4. Use the ship sizes. Once the Destroyer is sunk, every remaining ship is at least 3 long. Gaps of 1 or 2 empty holes between misses can then be ignored.
5. Do not assume one hit is the middle. It may be an end. Also watch for two ships touching, which can look like one long ship.
6. Hide your own fleet unpredictably. Players expect ships along the edges or bunched in the middle. Mix both, and vary from game to game.
7. Keep your pegs honest. One wrong peg on your target grid can send you chasing a ship that is not there for five turns.

Common mistakes and rule disputes

• Extra shot after a hit. No. After a hit or a miss, your turn is over.
• Moving a ship in danger. Never. Positions are fixed for the whole game.
• Diagonal placement. Not allowed.
• Can ships touch? The rules forbid overlapping, not touching. Ships may sit side by side. Some families ban touching as a house rule.
• Not announcing a sink. When a ship's last hole is hit, the owner must say which ship sank.
• Placing your ships on the target grid. Your ships go on the flat ocean grid. The upright grid is only for your shots.
• Calling a hole you already shot. It is wasted. Your white pegs are there to stop this.
• Fibbing about a hit. It happens by accident more than on purpose. If a dispute comes up after the game, reveal both grids and check.

Variants and house rules

Salvo (official, in Hasbro's full-size rules): each turn you call 5 different shots, marking each with a white peg. After all 5, your opponent says which were hits and on which ships; switch those pegs to red. Each time one of your ships is sunk, you fire one fewer shot on your next salvo. For a harder Salvo game, the defender does not say which ships were hit. Newer Hasbro sheets fire salvo shots one at a time with hit or miss announced after each, so check the version you own.

House rules (not official):

• No touching. Ships must have at least one empty hole between them.
• Bonus shot on a hit. Popular with kids, it shortens the game, but it is not in the rules.
• Paper Battleship. Draw two 10 by 10 grids on graph paper. Same rules, no box needed.

Teach it in 5 minutes

1. "Hide your five ships on the flat grid. Straight lines only, no diagonals, nothing off the edge."
2. "Take turns calling one square, like D-4. Letters down the side, numbers across the top."
3. "I'll say hit or miss. Put a red peg in your upright grid for a hit, white for a miss."
4. "One shot per turn, even if you hit."
5. "When every hole of a ship is hit, its owner says which ship sank."
6. "Sink all five first and you win."

For kids, add one tip: "When you get a hit, try the squares right next to it."

Ages and group size

Battleship is strictly two players, recommended 7 and up. Five- and six-year-olds can play if an adult helps with coordinates, and it is genuinely useful practice for reading grids. For a group, run a little tournament: winners stay on, or pair kids into teams of two who share a unit and argue over each shot. A game takes 20 to 40 minutes depending on luck and how well both players track their pegs.

Check yourself

Questions about this game

Sources and edition notes

Hasbro travel Battleship 22678 (2010), basic one-shot-per-turn rules. Salvo, electronic missions and movie editions use different attack systems.

Rules re-checked against Hasbro's 22678 instructions and the 1990 Milton Bradley full-size instructions (for Salvo and the grid labels) October 2026. This records a document check, not a claim of hands-on testing. House rules above are labeled and are not part of the official game.

• Hasbro: Battleship 22678 instructions (PDF)
• Hasbro: Battleship full-size instructions with Salvo, 1990 (PDF)

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