sanctus's Full Review: Milton Bradley Battleship Folio
Battleship is a game of strategy, luck, and a near-anal attention to detail. Your mission? To sink your opponents entire fleet of ships before they can sink yours.
Battleship comes in a self-contained plastic case. When you open it, you will have 2 separate playing fields, with a vertical wall between them. The bottom playing fields are peg boards, with letters down one side, numbers across the other. Its a basic graph, and the wall separating the two sides has a duplicate graph on it.
The game includes your 2 fleets of ships, white pegs, and red pegs. Before play begins, you will lay your fleet out on your playing field, and your opponent will do the same. No peeking!!
Actual play consists of taking turns calling out co-ordinates. These are guesses as to where you think your opponents ships may be. If there is a ship at the co-ordinates you pick, your opponent will tell you hit. If there is not, you will be told miss. You must keep track of your hits and misses with your pegs on the vertical graph. White pegs are for misses, red for hits. This is where your attention to detail is critical. You dont want to waste time calling C-5 more than once, after all.
If your opponent calls out a hit on one of your ships, you will put a red peg in the hole on that ship at those co-ordinates. It is not necessary to track your opponents misses, but I always do. The games ends when some one has hit every hole on their opponents ships.
The game seems to work best for children 10 and up. Maybe this is because theyve likely done some graphing in math by then. Younger children can play, but will likely need help keeping track of their hits and misses. Game play will probably last about 20 minutes, depending on how lucky the players are with their guesses..
This is a classic, old fashioned game. There are no lights and buzzers, no CDs to insert, and nothing to plug in. Because it closes up into its own case, it travels well. The game itself is quite sturdy. Ive stepped on ours with no bad effects. I would be very cautious with this game around young children as the ships and pegs are small and would definitely pose a choking hazard. Also, because pieces are small, they are easily lost, which leaves you scrambling for creative faux pegs to keep track of hits.
There are travel versions of this game where the two play fields are not connected, but they are smaller. There are also fancy versions with explosion noises and lights, but its really not necessary to spend the extra money.
Would I recommend this game? Absolutely. It works logic and graphing skills, and the children wont realize that this is an educational game. Its fun to play ever as an adult. It doesnt use any skills that give an advantage to your older child, so no one has to lose all the time, or let someone win.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 9.95 Type of Toy: Board Game
Age Range of Child: 9 Years or Older
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