Sink Battleship with these seven great board games
Few games are truly "Battleship replacements," but these seven come close.
When I committed myself last week to write about replacements for that classic game of naval warfare, Battleship, I thought it would be easy. Why? I don’t know. It’s not.
Before we get to the difficulties, let’s talk about what Battleship does well, what it struggles to do, and why it needs replacing in your collection. It’s one of the core two-player games in most household collections, and it didn’t get there by pure happenstance. See, I don’t know that Battleship is a horrible game — it’s no Monopoly-with-awful-house-rules. It can be a nice way to pass the time. It’s even host to a nice spatial puzzle.
The core conceit of Battleship, if it’s not a game you’ve played, can be described pretty briefly. Each player is attempting to discover the locations of five different classes of ship on their opponent’s grid, which the opponent has secretly placed. Each of those types of ship are of differing lengths. On your turn, you’ll call out a coordinate (“B5”, for example,) and your opponent will tell you if you’ve hit a ship or missed. You’ll then mark the corresponding location on your board, indicating the success or failure of your attempt. Once you’ve hit every location with your opponent’s ships, you win. Simple enough, right? There’s a germ of a great game here, though I do think something’s missing that would really carry it over the line. Maybe the grid’s too big. Maybe there needs to be some way to logically discern things rather than guess wildly. I don’t know.
That’s where Battleship struggles the most: A lot of the game is filled with wild guessing. Sure, you might have an established pattern you like to use when calling out locations, hunting around the board systematically — but your success doesn’t really depend on you, it depends on your opponent, and your opponent in the past, at that. The gameplay is extremely basic, which isn’t a bad thing, but it does tend to grow long in the tooth. If you’re playing two-player games, you can do better than Battleship.
What ought we look for in a Battleship replacement, then?
Hidden information of some sort — not knowing where your opponents ships are the core conceit of the game. It must be considered. Hidden movement counts as hidden information, so that will both broaden and narrow the scope of games for which we’re searching.
We should aim for games that pit two players against each other in a tactical battle. Team games could be acceptable, too, but aren’t preferable.
Some sort of spatial reasoning would be nice — that’s a big part of Battleship, after all.
RUN
This is the best Battleship replacement in my collection, bar none. It combines the key elements of Battleship really well: The game’s a tactical battle between two players, one of whom is the Runner, and the other of whom is the Dispatcher, pursuing said Runner by way of helicopter. Neither player knows where the other is, but they’ll use clues to deduce locations — the runner will, of course, attempt to escape; the dispatcher will attempt to stun the runner in order to capture them. Making things substantially harder, the runner has a limited supply of movement, moving only once in each orthogonal and diagonal direction and sprinting in each orthogonal direction.
It’s such an excellent chase game. There’s information aplenty to glean from the movement tiles used or the searching actions of the helicopter that each player has a chance to logically deduce who’s where. It even has that classic gridded design — this really is the perfect Battleship replacement.
Designed by Moritz Dressler, published by Fowers Games.
Sky Team
I bet you didn’t expect to see a cooperative game here. Battleship is billed as a fierce game of wits, where players are working to discern the location of the other player’s ships. Sky Team is a cooperative game in which you and your teammate play as a pilot and copilot team attempting to safely land a plane. Each player will roll four dice at the beginning of their turn, which are kept secret and later placed in various locations around the board.
So, sure, it’s not a battle of wits, but you’ll have to keep your wits about you to land the plane. The visible information of placed dice will see you try to deduce what your teammate has hidden, which, to me, feels very much like Battleship, except way, way better. (I love Sky Team. I regret nothing.) Anyway, this one doesn’t have a spatial element, really. Maybe you could argue clearing the planes is. Let’s go with that.
Designed by Luc Rémond, published by Scorpion Masqué.
Fugitive
If you compress the two-dimensional grid of Battleship into a one-dimensional line, you might come up with Fugitive. In this chase game, designed by Tim Fowers, who published and developed RUN, one player acts as a fugitive from justice, and the other acts as the agent in hot pursuit.
The conceit of the game is basically a number line the fugitive moves across, skipping some numbers and attempting to disguise their location well enough that the agent can’t catch them. Thematically, it’s a lot cooler than a number line, and the art is typically wonderful Ryan Goldsberry fare. As the fugitive escaping the agent, you’ll delight in fooling your opponent, or you’ll feel the tension of their grasp collapsing around you. It’s a tense experience, and thus a great replacement for Battleship.
Designed by Tim Fowers, published by Fowers Games.
Letters from Whitechapel
If the thing that you find delightful about Battleship is less about the one-on-one battle and more about seeking out the hidden locations of an opposing player, Letters from Whitechapel would be an excellent choice. This pits one player against the rest, with the one playing as Jack the Ripper attempting to do some crimes of various sorts (we all know what crimes these are — let’s not pretend), and the others playing as detectives attempting to seek out the murderous historical figure.
While the key elements of Battleship here are few, there’s a tension in this game that feels just about right for a replacement. As Mr. The Ripper moves about, you’ll be racking your brain to figure out where they’ve gone, and finding them — and catching them — is just so fulfilling. I assume it’s fulfilling to be on the other side of that equation and escape, but, uh, I’ve never found out. I’ve just been caught instead. Oh well.
Designed by Gabriele Mari and Gianluca Santopietro, published internationally by Giochi Uniti.
Honorable mentions
Captain Sonar might have made my list, had I played the game. I have not. Still, this is basically a real-time sequel to Battleship. It’s a team game playable by up to eight players, and you’re trying to locate an enemy submarine. It’s pretty on the nose. Sonar is reportedly also good, and it’s not real time. Maybe that’s appealing to you.
Unmatched seems like a good fit — tense two-player action, imperfect information (you don’t know what cards the other player has at any given time) — but I have only played the cooperative version, which feels like maybe a bad fit here. Who would propose a cooperative game replace Battleship? I mean, really.
Watergate is a great two-player card game about the Nixon scandal, and I’d love to recommend it, but it’s just been too long since I’ve played to feel good trying to describe it. There’s a great Shut Up and Sit Down video about it. Maybe go watch that? Anyway, not a perfect one-for-one for Battleship, but a good game all the same.
Well, this.
As you can tell, it’s hard to really replace Battleship. You have to choose what you’re trying to find in a replacement, because few games really do what Battleship does. Now, it just so happens that I’m not big on what Battleship does outright, but I like elements of it, but if the whole game is what you love, there’s no replacing it, really. RUN fits the bill the best. There are so many great two-player games for your consideration — so if it’s just a two-player game you’re looking for, I’ve got you covered.
All that said, thank you again for joining me here at Don’t Eat the Meeples. I hope the week has found you well. If you’ve made it to the end, I’m curious: What have you been playing lately? I recently played a few games of Looot on Board Game Arena, and it’s been a fun spatial puzzle. I might have to find a physical copy of that one before long.
Next week: Exit, Unlock, Undo, Deckscape — where should you start?
I strongly recommend Captain Sonar, although I consider it a strictly 8 person game. Absolutely one of the best large player count board games.