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Printable Battleships Game Board Templates
Growing up as kids you were always on the lookout for games that provides endless hours of fun. A game that could be played in the wild outdoors and from the comfort of your own home. A game that could be played with family, but also with friends. There was only one game in mind to solve the problem and that was Battleships.
JustFamilyFun has created a free downloadable Battleship printable pdf for you and your family to enjoy without having to pay a fortune for the game.
How Can Our Paper Battleship Template Help Children?
Battleship introduces young children to coordinates and grids in a very practical and hands-on way without sacrificing the fun you get from the game. It helps them to understand the relationship between rows and columns and how they are represented on a graph.
When playing any Battleship game you develop important key skills that can be adapted to anything in life. You inherit logic and reason, as well as a good memory; as you must remember the shots you have taken to formulate a mental picture of your opponent’s board to understand where they have placed their ships.
It is a complete brain workout that makes learning easy and enjoyable no matter if you are in a classroom, at home, or in the park. This printable Battleships template will help to introduce your child to ways of critical thinking and understand how graphs work.
How To Play Battleships And Battleships Rules
Battleship Game Objective
The object of the game is to try and sink all of the other player’s ships before they attempt to sink yours. All of the other player’s ships are located randomly on their board. Neither you or the other player can see each other’s board so you must try to guess where they placed their ships.
You try to hit them by calling out the coordinates of one of the squares on the board. The other player also tries to hit your ships by guessing coordinates.
Rules For Battleship Game
Each player places the five ships somewhere on their board. The choice is completely up to you so choose wisely. The ships can only be placed vertically or horizontally. Diagonal placement is not allowed. We advise that you don’t place all of your ships together either as it makes it much easier for your opponent to guess.
It is important to remember that no part of the ship is allowed to hang off the edge of the board and ships may not overlap each other. No ships should be placed on top of another ship.
Once the guessing begins, the players must not move the ships. That’s cheating!
You have five ships that take up a selected number of coordinates from one to five. These are the carrier (occupies 5 spaces), Battleship (4), Cruiser (3), Submarine (3), and Destroyer (2).
Playing Battleship Game
Let the game begin! First you need to download our free printable Battleships pdf and printable battleship game pieces which can be found in the link at the top of this article. Once you have got set up, players take turns guessing by calling out the coordinates. The opponent can only respond with “hit” or “miss” as appropriate.
Both players should mark their board with a pen or pencil. Typically, a red pen/pencil could mean you have hit their ship and a black pen/pencil could mean you have missed it, but don’t be afraid to switch up the colours if you prefer the other way around.
An example can be if you call out B4 and your opponent does not have any of their ships placed at B4, your opponent would respond with “miss.”. You then record the miss B4 by crossing an X with the pen on your board at B4. Your opponent records the miss by placing. If you hit your opponent’s ship then either colour in the square or mark it with an X in a different coloured pen.
Once all of the squares that one of your ships occupies has been hit, the ship will sadly sink. You should announce “hit and sunk”.
As soon as all of the other player’s ships have been sunk, the game ends and the winner is declared. Will you be the winner?
If you are ready to play Battleships with young ones, visit the link below to the free printable battleship game. The printables can be saved so you can use them over and over again. If you are playing with someone different then all you have to do is print extra ships off to share with all your friends and family.
Did You Know?
Battleship was one of the earliest games to be produced as a computer game, with a version being released for the Z80 Compucolor in 1979. The game was originally inspired by heavy weaponry used in battle in World War 1. Many computer editions of the game have been produced since and there are millions of players worldwide today despite being more than 100 years old.
Even a science fiction action Battleship was released, which was inspired by the original board game – how cool is that?
I remember playing this game when I was younger all the time. I honestly couldn’t get enough of it and be always persuading my friends to have a quick game. The benefits of this printable Battleship template is that you can choose to use all five ships to compete with or if you only have limited time then use a couple of ships (however that does make the game harder)
I can’t wait until my daughter is old enough to understand how this game works because it means I can start mini-competitions in the family with her and her mummy.
Have you got any other games like this Battleship printable you would like to see on JustFamilyFun? If so, comment below as I would love to see all your ideas and suggestions. If you loved this game why not check out our free Printable Snake and Ladder game?