Battleship: Card Game

About this board game

Battleship: Card Game is a two-player naval battle played in about 15 minutes, where players search for, damage, and eliminate an opposing fleet of five ships.

Each player shuffles twelve Coordinate cards and places them facedown in a 3×4 grid. After drawing five cards from their Destruction Card deck, players take turns playing one card and then drawing back up to five cards in hand.

The Destruction cards offer several ways to attack and disrupt the opposing fleet:

• White peg cards search the opponent’s grid for ships.
• Red peg cards, available in different strengths, damage ships that have been revealed.
• Power cards provide a range of special abilities.

Revealed ships do more than mark targets. Each ship has a special power, and revealed ships give their player additional abilities that can bend the rules of play. Managing the cards in hand while choosing when to search, attack, or use a power creates a compact battle of timing and decisions.

The first player to eliminate all five of their opponent’s ships wins. Battleship: Card Game includes 24 Coordinate cards, 52 Destruction cards, four reference cards, and instructions.

Beginner and advanced rules provide different ways to approach the battle. The game later became part of the Shuffle series and is also simply called Battleship.