Battleship strategy: where to put your ships and where to shoot first

· BY BRANDON

Battleship looks like pure guessing, and it isn't. The same handful of decisions keeps deciding who wins: where the ships go, and what you do before you've hit anything. Here's how I think about both.

Placing your ships

The classic game gives you a 10×10 grid and a fleet of ships that each take up a straight line of squares, horizontal or vertical, never diagonal. Your opponent has to find them with nothing but "hit" and "miss", so your whole job is to be hard to find.

  • Don't be predictable. Most people tuck ships against the edge or lay them out in neat parallel rows. Good opponents know that, and they'll shoot there first. Put at least one ship in the middle of the board.
  • Don't clump. Ships side by side let one lucky hit turn into three. Spread them out so a hit gives away as little as possible.
  • Change it up. If you place your ships the same way every game, whoever you play most will work it out. Keep a couple of layouts you like and rotate.

Your first shots

Before you hit anything, you're hunting. The smartest thing you can do here is stop shooting at random.

In the current Hasbro rules the smallest ship, the Patrol Boat, is two squares long. That means you never need to check every square to find it: shoot every other square in a checkerboard pattern, and every ship on the board has to be touched at least once. You cover the grid in half the shots.

Start near the middle, where ships are most likely to cross, and work outward. Corners are the worst place to open, because fewer ship positions pass through them.

When you get a hit

This is the other half of the game. One hit tells you a ship is there, but not which way it runs. Shoot the four squares around it until you get a second hit. Now you know the line, so follow it to the end. When it stops, try the other direction, because the ship might extend past your first hit.

Once a ship sinks, go back to the checkerboard. If you hit more squares than that ship covers, a second ship is touching it, so finish that one off first.

Where this changes in BattleTabs

BattleTabs is Battleship with one big twist: your four ships have abilities on a cooldown. Some scout the enemy grid, some protect yours, and some hit several squares at once. The checkerboard and the "follow the line" habit still work, but the abilities mean placement matters even more. A ship that can reveal tiles is worth keeping safe, and an opponent who knows your layout habits can plan around them.

If you want to try it, how to play walks through a match from start to finish, and you can play Battleship online free in your browser without downloading anything.