Interestingly, whenever I used to play as a kid, we *never* said what ship we hit, even though we only had one shot. Part of the strategy was working out if it was worth continuing to shoot around somewhere to keep hitting it or not. If I recall you were only told what ship it was once you'd sunk it.
Another variation is for each miss give the other player the number of squares to the nearest boat. Then when the player misses they get an idea of how close they were and allows players to do "ranging" shots
There is a building blocks version of Battleship where you can build and design your own ships. The big difference is that you can arm each ship differently with a total of 12 guns. I could arm the battleship with 9 guns and leave 1 each for the others. It plays similar to the Salvo rules, but each gun takes a shot. If there is a hit on the gun, it cannot fire anymore.
So I think I found the strategy for Battleship with 1 shot per ship. First move you’d do A-1 A-3 A-5 A-7 and A-9, then the next turn youd do B-2 B-4 B-6 B-8 and B-10, then so on. If you hit anything focus fire.
I remember my first time playing Battleships and finding it a lot of fun!! I have since got a few versions of it :D Love these "Actually Good?" vids too. Would love to see you do one on 'Trivial Pursuit' or 'The Game of Life'!!
Another variation that makes the game more interesting than the first version discussed in the video, is to still shoot only once per turn (i.e. no salvo), but to then report more information from that shot, namely in addition to "hit" and "miss" there is in this variation an additional possibility for the result of a shot, namely the "grazing shot" (Dutch "schampschot", German "Streifschuss") which is when your bomb lands on a square that empty but that is orthogonally or diagonally neighbouring to at least one ship. But with the grazing shot you do not get told in which of the 8 squares around your shot you grazed another ship, nor which type(s) of ship(s) you grazed. I hadn't known yet of the third rule variation played in the video, with the salvo and then reporting only the number of hits, that looks quite interesting. Nice video, well done.
I have only ever played this as a pen and paper game. My primary school teacher would make us play this every now and then, I now suspect it was because my teacher was hungover.
A variant that *really* makes Battleship a guessing game of no information and reveals how little the designers know the value of the smaller ships is one that came packed in the electronic Star Wars branded version from around the turn of the century. You play Salvo style but once you have fewer than 5 ships you start to gain points that can be used to deploy new ships to the board. You think you've got a good handle on where your opponent has played only for them to drop a new TIE fighter (patrol boat analog) anywhere on the board...Good luck! Turns the optimization of Salvo play on its head to the point that the best strategy may be to leave your opponent's ships wounded but alive and suffer the higher number of incoming shots just so that you continue to have a game of improving information while you reset your opponents board by playing a new tiny ship every handful of turns.
6:14 I have never played with that rule. We are always left guessing how many more hits it will take to destroy that ship. We did use a rule that once you hit you get another turn to try and destroy it totally. If you miss the ship survives and play turns to the other player.
2 years later... I'm suprised at the apparently lack of efficient strategy except for Blair, and then Adams final 4 shots. I have always enjoyed Battleship, and even brought a small travel version on a scouting trip so the boys could play Battleship on the USS Massachusetts. The Salvo with no information looks interesting. I've recently played the movie licened game with advanced Special Ops, and it made for an exciting final chance with 4 shots on 3 known targets and one 1:4 chance to get the last shot on the patrol boat.
I think you should try playing Battleship with the salvo rules BUT whenever a player gets a hit, they don't get told what kind of ship was hit, just where they hit at and only letting players know when a ship has been sunk. This makes for a more interesting game as players don't have as much information meaning that launching salvos at specific areas once you register a hit might be a complete waste of shots that you could have used to search for the opponent's other ships.
I had a version called Battleship Torpedo Attack where if you destroyed an opponent's ship, you put the piece in the appropriate slot and shoot them with a plastic cannonball for bonus points. I can't do it justice, it's worth a google.
I was very torn about how to answer this question when I saw the poll go up. It is one of the "simple machine" classic games, easy to learn and play. But everyone here hit it on the head that while it has eternal replay value, your desire to replay is very weak due to the monotony. So it's somehow totally neutral. I didn't even know before now there were other versions or rules to the game. I'll have to try them sometime. The last version (I call it "Salvo Fog" rules) was really interesting, and I would have done the exact same thing Adam did.
If "Baselinda" is from the 1890 "Kriegsspeil" is way way older, with the first prototype being from 1816, and the first version udner the name from 1824. Fun fact: it was invented as a teaching tool in the Prussian Military academy, and is often cited as the origin of Wargaming and over a few corners, Dungeons and Dragons (due to its nature as a tabletop miniature game)
Rather liked Battleship when I was a kid but salvo mode would make it a lot more enjoyable and I was today years old realizing that battleship was just a toy version of bingo... idk why I never put that together. Great video and love this series.
How about a mashup of Battleship & Risk? The grid has the map of the world, instead of just the ocean, and you place different size armies, on different countries. Your opponent has to guess where your armies are located.
There was a Battleship: Galaxies some time ago, pitting two rival fleets in varied scenarios, in a hybrid of board-game space combat and a grid-based "hit your foe's secret weak spot" a la the original.
The checkerboard firing strategy all the way for me. Start anywhere, even in a corner, and drop that ordnance like painting alternating squares on a tiled floor.
I think whether Captain Sonar is good is extremely dependent on the group and how much patience people have to play multiple games after playing the lesser roles. The sequel, Sonar, I think is a far better game that solves the glaring problems by removing 2 roles. If you haven't tried it, I thoroughly recommend.
I've never played the Salvo rules, but I feel like it would amplify the first turn advantage. Especially if you were playing the high information rules. Still, seems more fun than the one at a time rules, and would speed things up a lot so perhaps it wouldn't matter much because in the same time frame you could play 2-3 games alternating who starts or something like that.
@@Trevin_Taylor That... is a very simple and obvious solution that I'm embarrassed I didn't see. I was thinking about maybe the starting player should replace their cruiser with a destroyer or something so it's a larger target or something like that, trying to find complicated way to balance it, none of which would have worked nearly as well. I guess we know why I'm not a game designer then
The regular rules fit best if you wanted a diff game then play a diff game lol Seems like you were having fun even with the misses its fun to get mad at the misses. Its kinda the entire point of the game
sometimes a game can be good, but not good enough to play. battleship probably inspired a lot of better games out there, and for that reason, even if its not "good", its important.
Just like many of the other classic game, Battleship have lead to better games in the future but I think that is the hallmark of a good game but for it's time. There are very old games that stand the test of time. Sure, Chess, Go and even the royal game of Ur are actually still really fun but those are exceptions. Battleship is still fun but not as fun as many newer games and you really need those salvo rules (preferably the last version Luke played against Adam) for it to work for older persons. But it is actually still good for younger kids, most games for younger kids even today are still pretty crap and with battleships a 7 year old kid can still play on close to equal terms against a parent without the parent having to suffer extreme boredom. I think that is where the game truly shine and while it is still being sold, the kid are likely to have more fun then the parent but it isn't painful to play like Candyland or anything with Peppa Pig on the box. So sure, unless you make a drinking variant (maybe with 5 drinks each, stronger for the larger ships) it probably isn't a game most adults would play a Friday night. Hmmm, that drinking game actually sounds like a great idea, maybe using Naval themed drinks like Gin Gimlet, Rum based Grog and so on.... Someone must already sell a drinking version somewhere with ship shaped glasses. But for kids I do think it is still good. Most adult game creators doesn't really bother to make a good game for them, they just make it colorful and maybe splash some candy or popular kids figures from cartoons on it so most of them are pretty shait.
Yeah, sploosh when putting a white peg down is a bit too close to splooge... Also, kind of funny seeing your own comment show up below a number of chosen comments! I swear I only insulted the game once, when I could have done so lots of times...
All of these OG games are similar in which they were the first game of its kind but better games have since come out. Like how Black Sabbath were the first metal band but Metallica are greatest. So the OG games may not be the best but without them we would have the newer better games
Excuse me but did Luke just call Transformers toys shit? Look, you can say whatever you want about the movies, but if you ever imply that Transformers toys are anything less than one of humanity's greatest achievements again I am going to bludgeon you with a Masterpiece Optimus Prime.
LAURIE: Just wading in here to say: I agree, let's bludgeon Luke and I'll... uh... hide the evidence if you want to give me that Masterpiece Optimus Pride to... uh... hide...
I got bored just watching this video and fast-forwarded through most of the playthroughs. For me, this game is just boring now matter how you slice it and I'm bored even thinking about it.
Interestingly, whenever I used to play as a kid, we *never* said what ship we hit, even though we only had one shot. Part of the strategy was working out if it was worth continuing to shoot around somewhere to keep hitting it or not. If I recall you were only told what ship it was once you'd sunk it.
that's because telling them what they hit isn't a main rule, it's an extra optional rule u have to choose to use
personally at some point while playing it we decided that you didn't have to say if it had been sunk
I never heard that you had to state the name of the ship that was hit either.
If people ever play games in the same room again, y’all should do a Board Game Club play through of Captain SONAR!
As soon as Laurie said "Sploosh", I was reminded of LoZ Wind Waker
Another variation is for each miss give the other player the number of squares to the nearest boat. Then when the player misses they get an idea of how close they were and allows players to do "ranging" shots
AYYYYEERE THATS MY COMMENT
"Its a very simple game that nearly anyone could learn quickly and enjoy"
There is a building blocks version of Battleship where you can build and design your own ships. The big difference is that you can arm each ship differently with a total of 12 guns. I could arm the battleship with 9 guns and leave 1 each for the others. It plays similar to the Salvo rules, but each gun takes a shot. If there is a hit on the gun, it cannot fire anymore.
Support No Rolls Barred! Give 'em a subscribe! I really love these "Actually Good...?" videos - please keep 'em coming!
So I think I found the strategy for Battleship with 1 shot per ship. First move you’d do A-1 A-3 A-5 A-7 and A-9, then the next turn youd do B-2 B-4 B-6 B-8 and B-10, then so on. If you hit anything focus fire.
Good video, but so ready for Lukewarm Luke to help us figure out if Risk is actually good...
I remember my first time playing Battleships and finding it a lot of fun!! I have since got a few versions of it :D
Love these "Actually Good?" vids too. Would love to see you do one on 'Trivial Pursuit' or 'The Game of Life'!!
True waiting for Trivia Pursuit
At school we always played one shot and no info besides if it hit/sunk or not. Somehow that was always super fun for us.
Another variation that makes the game more interesting than the first version discussed in the video, is to still shoot only once per turn (i.e. no salvo), but to then report more information from that shot, namely in addition to "hit" and "miss" there is in this variation an additional possibility for the result of a shot, namely the "grazing shot" (Dutch "schampschot", German "Streifschuss") which is when your bomb lands on a square that empty but that is orthogonally or diagonally neighbouring to at least one ship. But with the grazing shot you do not get told in which of the 8 squares around your shot you grazed another ship, nor which type(s) of ship(s) you grazed.
I hadn't known yet of the third rule variation played in the video, with the salvo and then reporting only the number of hits, that looks quite interesting. Nice video, well done.
I have only ever played this as a pen and paper game. My primary school teacher would make us play this every now and then, I now suspect it was because my teacher was hungover.
A variant that *really* makes Battleship a guessing game of no information and reveals how little the designers know the value of the smaller ships is one that came packed in the electronic Star Wars branded version from around the turn of the century. You play Salvo style but once you have fewer than 5 ships you start to gain points that can be used to deploy new ships to the board. You think you've got a good handle on where your opponent has played only for them to drop a new TIE fighter (patrol boat analog) anywhere on the board...Good luck!
Turns the optimization of Salvo play on its head to the point that the best strategy may be to leave your opponent's ships wounded but alive and suffer the higher number of incoming shots just so that you continue to have a game of improving information while you reset your opponents board by playing a new tiny ship every handful of turns.
6:14 I have never played with that rule. We are always left guessing how many more hits it will take to destroy that ship. We did use a rule that once you hit you get another turn to try and destroy it totally. If you miss the ship survives and play turns to the other player.
I feel like the best move with the "Expert Salvo" mode would be to do A2 A4 A6 A8 A10. Then move down the board, eliminating one row at a time.
Had no idea there were rule variants with multi shots! Waay better method to play.
Another top review lads 🤙🤙
This is the first time I’ve ever heard of announcing what you’ve hit. Usually that was saved until the end.
2 years later... I'm suprised at the apparently lack of efficient strategy except for Blair, and then Adams final 4 shots.
I have always enjoyed Battleship, and even brought a small travel version on a scouting trip so the boys could play Battleship on the USS Massachusetts.
The Salvo with no information looks interesting.
I've recently played the movie licened game with advanced Special Ops, and it made for an exciting final chance with 4 shots on 3 known targets and one 1:4 chance to get the last shot on the patrol boat.
I think you should try playing Battleship with the salvo rules BUT whenever a player gets a hit, they don't get told what kind of ship was hit, just where they hit at and only letting players know when a ship has been sunk. This makes for a more interesting game as players don't have as much information meaning that launching salvos at specific areas once you register a hit might be a complete waste of shots that you could have used to search for the opponent's other ships.
I had a version called Battleship Torpedo Attack where if you destroyed an opponent's ship, you put the piece in the appropriate slot and shoot them with a plastic cannonball for bonus points. I can't do it justice, it's worth a google.
The best rules are to not know what you hit and to shoot once at a time. That’s how I’ve always played; you have to guess what ship you hit instead.
that's because that is the actual rule, the telling them what they hit is an extra rule not one of the main ones
I got a copy of Battleship from the 70's in my board game collection... I dig it out once in a while and play it with friends. We always have fun.
I was very torn about how to answer this question when I saw the poll go up. It is one of the "simple machine" classic games, easy to learn and play. But everyone here hit it on the head that while it has eternal replay value, your desire to replay is very weak due to the monotony. So it's somehow totally neutral.
I didn't even know before now there were other versions or rules to the game. I'll have to try them sometime. The last version (I call it "Salvo Fog" rules) was really interesting, and I would have done the exact same thing Adam did.
I remember an electronic Star Wars version of Battleships called Galactic Battle.
Used to love that game
If "Baselinda" is from the 1890 "Kriegsspeil" is way way older, with the first prototype being from 1816, and the first version udner the name from 1824.
Fun fact: it was invented as a teaching tool in the Prussian Military academy, and is often cited as the origin of Wargaming and over a few corners, Dungeons and Dragons (due to its nature as a tabletop miniature game)
Rather liked Battleship when I was a kid but salvo mode would make it a lot more enjoyable and I was today years old realizing that battleship was just a toy version of bingo... idk why I never put that together. Great video and love this series.
An article on Cracked.Com years ago described it as "Bingo without the exciting social scene", and I've remembered that description ever since
Why did Pam from Archer came to mind the moment Luke said "Sploosh"? 😞
How about a mashup of Battleship & Risk?
The grid has the map of the world, instead of just the ocean, and you place different size armies, on different countries. Your opponent has to guess where your armies are located.
Everytime I played this game I used a rule that if you hit you go again, its so weird discovering thats not an actual rule
There was a Battleship: Galaxies some time ago, pitting two rival fleets in varied scenarios, in a hybrid of board-game space combat and a grid-based "hit your foe's secret weak spot" a la the original.
You got to cocky Luke... huh. 🦆Luke screwed Luke. 🍻lol great video. I want more “Science deduction “ please Sherlock 🕵️♂️
Battleship with sonar mechanism is awesome
Want to see more of the real El Fakidor aka Laurie´s cat!
Blair plays the same way I do. Work my way through diagonally.
The checkerboard firing strategy all the way for me. Start anywhere, even in a corner, and drop that ordnance like painting alternating squares on a tiled floor.
Love the Nukem Shirt Luke!
LUKE: It's a quality game from Butler Brothers.
Luke Nukem
@@NoRollsBarred you better have bought that for a dollar...
Get them before they get you
Fun fact peter Berg is my father's name.
But he's not a director. He's an ophthalmologist
I love this series. Connect 4 next?
Damn I'd forgotten about salvo mode! Makes me want to have a game, haven't played it for years!
I once won a game of battleship by grouping my ships like a pair of pants. That was a fun game
The salvo variant sounds AWESOME
Battleships was amazing when I was younger. Haven't played it in absolutely ages.
Surely I'm not the only person here who thinks walking around a dark room looking for a light switch is actually kinda fun...
I think whether Captain Sonar is good is extremely dependent on the group and how much patience people have to play multiple games after playing the lesser roles.
The sequel, Sonar, I think is a far better game that solves the glaring problems by removing 2 roles. If you haven't tried it, I thoroughly recommend.
Our board games shelf is so similar it is crazy to me.
Lovely Patridge reference, Luke
The band the Beatles could have been.
I've never played the Salvo rules, but I feel like it would amplify the first turn advantage. Especially if you were playing the high information rules. Still, seems more fun than the one at a time rules, and would speed things up a lot so perhaps it wouldn't matter much because in the same time frame you could play 2-3 games alternating who starts or something like that.
Take simultaneous turns.
@@Trevin_Taylor That... is a very simple and obvious solution that I'm embarrassed I didn't see. I was thinking about maybe the starting player should replace their cruiser with a destroyer or something so it's a larger target or something like that, trying to find complicated way to balance it, none of which would have worked nearly as well. I guess we know why I'm not a game designer then
This is a great series
Is it fair to call Salvo mode Grapeshot mode as well since you have scattered shots
What version were they playing online? Anyone have a link? Dug the aesthetic.
Luke right out the gate: “‘Battleship’ not ‘Battleships’”
Everyone in the comments: “BaTtLeSHiPssSs”
Can Connect Four be next?
How about checking if Game of Life is actually good?
8:01 u could see my comment !!!
The regular rules fit best if you wanted a diff game then play a diff game lol
Seems like you were having fun even with the misses its fun to get mad at the misses. Its kinda the entire point of the game
ohh it looks like i have many shots in the video
I loved battleship when I was younger haha
Hey good vid.
But that begs the question. Is risk actually good?
sometimes a game can be good, but not good enough to play. battleship probably inspired a lot of better games out there, and for that reason, even if its not "good", its important.
You sunk my Battleship
since when do they have to tell u what u hit? that has never been a rule i have used, u only have to tell them if they have sunk one of your ships
Can you feature Mastermind and Game Of The Generals next please? 🙂
B-4? Bingo!
Is it weird that Battleship is literally only 1 of 2 bourd games I own. The other is The Binding of Isaac card game.
Just like many of the other classic game, Battleship have lead to better games in the future but I think that is the hallmark of a good game but for it's time. There are very old games that stand the test of time. Sure, Chess, Go and even the royal game of Ur are actually still really fun but those are exceptions.
Battleship is still fun but not as fun as many newer games and you really need those salvo rules (preferably the last version Luke played against Adam) for it to work for older persons.
But it is actually still good for younger kids, most games for younger kids even today are still pretty crap and with battleships a 7 year old kid can still play on close to equal terms against a parent without the parent having to suffer extreme boredom. I think that is where the game truly shine and while it is still being sold, the kid are likely to have more fun then the parent but it isn't painful to play like Candyland or anything with Peppa Pig on the box.
So sure, unless you make a drinking variant (maybe with 5 drinks each, stronger for the larger ships) it probably isn't a game most adults would play a Friday night. Hmmm, that drinking game actually sounds like a great idea, maybe using Naval themed drinks like Gin Gimlet, Rum based Grog and so on.... Someone must already sell a drinking version somewhere with ship shaped glasses.
But for kids I do think it is still good. Most adult game creators doesn't really bother to make a good game for them, they just make it colorful and maybe splash some candy or popular kids figures from cartoons on it so most of them are pretty shait.
Yeah, sploosh when putting a white peg down is a bit too close to splooge...
Also, kind of funny seeing your own comment show up below a number of chosen comments! I swear I only insulted the game once, when I could have done so lots of times...
I knew you weren't beating adam
When all the splooshes are one ahead around 11:50 xD
wait so is taking another shot after a successful hit a house rule?
Yes
Battleship is fun, and there's more strategy involved then one might initially expect. But no, I wouldn't consider it 'good'. Fun, but not good.
Baddleship
I like chocolate battleship
I nominate dominos
I've cheated at battle ship so much lol
where is the rule that u get an extra turn if u score a hit?
Hey Mr Luke Owen I challenge you to a game of battleship
is Hasbro actually good?
What expansion to Pandemic is he referring to?
All of these OG games are similar in which they were the first game of its kind but better games have since come out. Like how Black Sabbath were the first metal band but Metallica are greatest. So the OG games may not be the best but without them we would have the newer better games
Battleship can be just summarized as "And I shot then I missed and I shot again and I missed i shot and I missed"
is that a game grumps reference?
@@FuryousD of course it is
yeah its a weird game that i wont play
Wait you’re supposed to tell people what type of ship they hit? What?
Think yall missed the point of battleship.
Excuse me but did Luke just call Transformers toys shit? Look, you can say whatever you want about the movies, but if you ever imply that Transformers toys are anything less than one of humanity's greatest achievements again I am going to bludgeon you with a Masterpiece Optimus Prime.
LAURIE: Just wading in here to say: I agree, let's bludgeon Luke and I'll... uh... hide the evidence if you want to give me that Masterpiece Optimus Pride to... uh... hide...
I want to see "Is risk actually good?" Video
Spoilers, it's not xd
I’d rather play connect 4
Goddamn it’s as boring as boring can be.
Battleship is extremely good...when SHOTS OF LIQUOR are factored into the gameplay!
I got bored just watching this video and fast-forwarded through most of the playthroughs. For me, this game is just boring now matter how you slice it and I'm bored even thinking about it.
11:40 hell yeah we got those Wind Waker minigame references.