Increase your chances of winning by checking out our how to win at Battleship strategy and tips. If you are looking to learn how to play Battleship, visit our play guide here.
In Battleship, your goal is to locate your opponent’s fleet of ships on their ocean grid as quickly as possible and to sink them. The game involves deduction where players take turns to target different locations on the grid and get alerted if the location they called out is a hit or a miss. A winning Battleship strategy involves positioning your ships such that your opponent has a hard time locating them and calling out shots in a manner that helps you quickly identify your opponent’s ships.
Battleship ship positioning strategy
Spread out your ships
Don’t cluster your fleet in one position. This puts them at risk when your opponent locates one of them and starts trying to sink that ship and ends up finding your other ships.
Middle is a popular target, place some ships on the edge
Middle is a popular go-to target for many players. Place your ships away from the center and it helps to put some ships on the edge.
Be as unpredictable and random as possible
If you use the same patterns to place your ships, your opponents will start noticing your strategy. It’s best to be undpredicatable and random as possible to keep your opponents guessing.
Attacking Strategy
As quickly as possible, you need to locate and sink your opponent’s ships. A logical and ordered approach is better than firing shots randomly.
Divide the board and move your shots diagonally
Start diagonally across the board by dividing it into smaller sections. It works best if you start in one corner and move towards the opposite corner. Follow this plan to avoid overlooking a section on the board or going over one section too much.
Don’t cluster your shots too early
Cover as much of the grid as possible so that you can locate your opponent’s ships in a systematic way. Clustering your shots in search of that one ship may disrupt your pattern and approach.
Checkerboard Option
Another option is the checkerboard method where you imagine the grid as alternating white and black squares and approach your shots by firing only on black squares. By combining this with the diagonal approach strategy, you reduce your shots by half when trying to locate your opponent’s ships
