OP
Name: Battleship
Description:
Who needs plastic and pegs to play Battleship? Paper and pencil still works just fine.
Requirements:
Preparations:
Using pre-printed grid sheets makes preparation much easier, compared to hand-drawn pages. There is even a letter-size game sheet PDF available for printing. Printing (two sided) and laminating the game sheet gives you a waterproof card on which to use grease/marking pencils to play. (If you want someone else to print and laminate for you, just PM me.)
To go hand-drawn, make two 10x10 grids. Label the columns and rows 1-10, starting at the top/left. (In plastic Battleship games, the rows are A-J, but it's easier to signal numbers than letters.) Additionally, note the ships. There are five ships; I call them "PT Boat" (ship 1, two squares, letter 'P'), "Submarine" (ship 2, three squares, letter 'S'), "Destroyer" (ship 3, three squares, letter 'D'), "Battleship" (ship 4, four squares, letter 'B'), and "Carrier" (ship 5, five squares, letter 'C').
You will need hand signals for "Row", "Column", "Hit", "Miss", and "Sank". Do not use the thumbs up or throat slash signals, as those should be reserved in case someone truly needs to ascend or has lost their air. The signals we use (although you can agree on others, if you wish) are:
Gameplay:
To begin the game, each player writes in their five ships on one of their pair of grids. Ships can be placed vertically or horizontally. They cannot be placed diagonally, and they cannot overlap. (You can use the letters or ship numbers on your grids, although you always signal by numbers.)
The first player then signals: "Row, [row number], Column, [column number]." The opposing player replies with "Hit" or "Miss". Optionally, the ship identification may be included ("Hit. 5." meaning "You hit my carrier!"). Also optionally, when a ship has sunk, that may be signaled, with or without the identification ("Hit. Sank." or "Hit. Sank. 5."). Battleship can be played in many variants, so decide before the dive what rules you're using. Not identifying the ships when hit and not signaling when a ship sank makes for a "harder" game than when identification and sinking are both signaled.
To mark shots, put an 'X' in the square of each miss, and put the number or letter of the ship for each hit. If playing without identifying which ship was hit, use another mark (like a dot or '+'), so you can scribble the square once the ship has been sunk. The first person to sink all the opponents ships wins, of course.
One more variant that can be played (and which can be rather fun) is the "salvo rule". Instead of a single shot per turn, each player gets to take one shot for each of their ships remaining before the turn passes to the next player. At the beginning of the game, each player has five shots a turn. Once ships start being sunk, the number of shots per turn decreases. When playing with the salvo rule, mark the results of each shot before signaling the next shot.
Comments:
Battleship is a fairly easy game to play, and it's an excellent game for signaling practice. As it was originally a paper-and-pencil game, it translates quite well to underwater play, only requiring agreement on a few signals and setup notes.
Description:
Who needs plastic and pegs to play Battleship? Paper and pencil still works just fine.
Requirements:
- Grid sheets (hand drawn or pre-printed)
- Writing implement
- Hand signals
Preparations:
Using pre-printed grid sheets makes preparation much easier, compared to hand-drawn pages. There is even a letter-size game sheet PDF available for printing. Printing (two sided) and laminating the game sheet gives you a waterproof card on which to use grease/marking pencils to play. (If you want someone else to print and laminate for you, just PM me.)
To go hand-drawn, make two 10x10 grids. Label the columns and rows 1-10, starting at the top/left. (In plastic Battleship games, the rows are A-J, but it's easier to signal numbers than letters.) Additionally, note the ships. There are five ships; I call them "PT Boat" (ship 1, two squares, letter 'P'), "Submarine" (ship 2, three squares, letter 'S'), "Destroyer" (ship 3, three squares, letter 'D'), "Battleship" (ship 4, four squares, letter 'B'), and "Carrier" (ship 5, five squares, letter 'C').
You will need hand signals for "Row", "Column", "Hit", "Miss", and "Sank". Do not use the thumbs up or throat slash signals, as those should be reserved in case someone truly needs to ascend or has lost their air. The signals we use (although you can agree on others, if you wish) are:
- Row: hand flat and horizontal, waved to the side as if to indicate "level"
- Column: hand flat and vertical, waved like a tomahawk chop at a sporting event
- Hit: punch your hand (or just the water)
- Miss: open hand up and over your head (as if saying the joke went over their head); basically, like smoothing your hair, but above your head
- Sank: hand flat with fingers forward, moving down as if you were saying "let's go off the deck and plunge head-first into the sand"
- One-handed numbers.
Gameplay:
To begin the game, each player writes in their five ships on one of their pair of grids. Ships can be placed vertically or horizontally. They cannot be placed diagonally, and they cannot overlap. (You can use the letters or ship numbers on your grids, although you always signal by numbers.)
The first player then signals: "Row, [row number], Column, [column number]." The opposing player replies with "Hit" or "Miss". Optionally, the ship identification may be included ("Hit. 5." meaning "You hit my carrier!"). Also optionally, when a ship has sunk, that may be signaled, with or without the identification ("Hit. Sank." or "Hit. Sank. 5."). Battleship can be played in many variants, so decide before the dive what rules you're using. Not identifying the ships when hit and not signaling when a ship sank makes for a "harder" game than when identification and sinking are both signaled.
To mark shots, put an 'X' in the square of each miss, and put the number or letter of the ship for each hit. If playing without identifying which ship was hit, use another mark (like a dot or '+'), so you can scribble the square once the ship has been sunk. The first person to sink all the opponents ships wins, of course.
One more variant that can be played (and which can be rather fun) is the "salvo rule". Instead of a single shot per turn, each player gets to take one shot for each of their ships remaining before the turn passes to the next player. At the beginning of the game, each player has five shots a turn. Once ships start being sunk, the number of shots per turn decreases. When playing with the salvo rule, mark the results of each shot before signaling the next shot.
Comments:
Battleship is a fairly easy game to play, and it's an excellent game for signaling practice. As it was originally a paper-and-pencil game, it translates quite well to underwater play, only requiring agreement on a few signals and setup notes.
