Printable battleship board

What is on the sheet

• Two grids, both 8 by 8, labelled A to H across the top and 1 to 8 down the side.
• The left grid is for your own fleet. Draw your five ships on it and keep it hidden from the other player.
• The right grid is for your shots. Mark a hit with a circle and a miss with a cross, so you can tell them apart later.
• The fleet list at the bottom, so neither player has to remember how long a cruiser is.

How to play on paper

• 1. Place your fleet. Each player draws the five ships on their own fleet grid, across or down. The standard rule is that ships may touch but may not overlap.
• 2. Take turns. The first player calls a square by letter and number, for example C4.
• 3. Answer honestly. The defender says "hit" if one of their ships covers that square and "miss" if it does not. Mark your own fleet grid either way.
• 4. Say when a ship goes down. When every square of a ship has been hit, announce it by name so the attacker knows its length is out of play.
• 5. Win the game. The first player to sink all five enemy ships wins.

Two players need two sheets, because each player needs their own fleet grid. Print four grids if you want to keep score across several games: two sheets per player, one for the fleet and one for shots.

Rules worth agreeing on before the first shot

• Salvo. Fire as many shots in a turn as you have ships still afloat, then let your opponent answer them all at once. It shortens the game and makes the opening less random.
• Touching ships. Allowed in the standard rules. If you want a harder game, ban ships from touching, which makes the fleet easier to find but the information noisier.
• Announcing misses. Some players only announce hits and mark misses silently. Agree on it up front, because it changes how much you can deduce.

Printing tips

Print at 100 percent, not "fit to page" — the grids are laid out relative to the page and scaling them makes each square a slightly different size. Black and white is fine; nothing on the sheet relies on colour. Use pencil on the fleet grid so a mis-placed ship can be fixed before the first shot, and pen on the shots grid so the marks stay readable.

The online version

The browser version of battleship uses the same 8 by 8 grid and the same five ships, with the computer firing back after every shot. It is a good way to practise the counting side of the game — after a ship sinks, the squares you already cleared tell you where the remaining ships can still fit. The classic games page has the rest of the paper-and-board shelf.