How to play Battleship: rules and how to win

Battleship (also called sea battle) is a guessing game with real strategy in it. You’ll learn it in a minute, and there’s always a smarter way to search for that last boat.

What you need

• Two players.
• Each player has two 10 × 10 grids: one for their own fleet, and one to track their shots at the opponent. Columns are lettered A–J and rows numbered 1–10, so every square has a name like B7.

The fleet

Placing your ships

• Place every ship horizontally or vertically (never diagonally) on your own grid, fully inside the board.
• Ships can’t overlap. A common rule, used in Kepo Sea Battle, is that ships can’t touch, not even at the corners.
• Keep your grid hidden from your opponent.

Taking turns

1. On your turn, call out one square of your opponent’s grid, for example “C5”.
2. Your opponent answers “hit” if a ship is on that square, or “miss” if it’s water.
3. Mark the result on your tracking grid.
4. When every square of a ship has been hit, its owner says “sunk”.
5. Turns alternate, hit or miss.

How to win

Sink the entire enemy fleet before your opponent sinks yours.

Strategy: how to win at Battleship

1. Hunt on a checkerboard. Every ship is at least 2 squares long, so you only need to fire at every other square (like the black squares of a chessboard) to be sure to find each ship. That halves your search.
2. Then go for the kill. After a hit, fire at the four squares around it. Once you have two hits in a line, keep going along that line, in both directions, until the ship sinks.
3. Widen the pattern as small ships sink. Once the 2-square destroyer is gone, the smallest ship left is 3 long, so you can space your shots every third square.
4. Use the no-touch rule. If ships can’t touch, every square around a sunk ship is water. Don’t waste shots there.
5. Place your fleet unpredictably. Avoid placing every ship along the edges, or every ship in the middle. Mix long and short ships across the board, and don’t line them up neatly.

Play Battleship online

Kepo Sea Battle is the classic sea battle, free in your browser with no ads. The fleet has the classic five ship lengths, the boats can’t touch, and when a boat sinks the water around it is marked for you. Drag and rotate your boats or shuffle a fleet, then play Kepo on Easy, Medium (it hunts on a pattern) or Hard (it fires where boats are most likely to be).