What Are the Pieces in the Game Battleship?
Each of the two players in the game of Battleship receives 84 white “miss” pegs, 42 red “hit” pegs and five vessels: an aircraft carrier, a battleship, a destroyer, a submarine and a patrol boat. The goal of the game is to guess the placement of all of the opponent’s vessels, marking hits and misses accordingly.
The vessels are laid out on a grid pattern of 90 spaces. The aircraft carrier piece takes up five grid spaces, the battleship utilizes four, the destroyer and submarine both take up three spaces and the patrol boat is the smallest with two grid spots. To start, each player secretly places five ships on his own board.
Grids are marked horizontally by letters A through I and vertically by numbers 1 through 10. Players take turns guessing where the opponent’s vessels are located by giving coordinates with one letter and one number. A player tracks his own misses with white pegs on the lower portion of the board and his opponent’s on the upper part of the board. Hits are marked in the same fashion using the red pegs. The player who is first to sink all of his opponent’s vessels wins the game.
