How to Play Battleship on Paper (Free Printable Grid)

To play Battleship on paper, each player needs two 10×10 grids: one for your own hidden fleet and one to record your shots at the enemy. Draw your five ships on the first grid, take turns calling squares like "C7," and mark each answer on the second grid. The free printable below has both grids on one sheet, so you can skip the drawing.

The PDF is free and there is no email or sign-up. It has two sheets: the classic 5-ship fleet and a 10-ship variant where ships may not touch. Each sheet has a My Fleet grid and an Enemy Waters grid (A–J, 1–10), a short how-to-play box, a marks legend, a games-won tracker, a fleet checklist for your ships and theirs, and a 100-box tally of shots fired. Print one sheet per player, in US Letter or A4.

The game started this way. It was a pencil-and-paper pastime long before Milton Bradley's 1967 plastic version, and it still is in much of the world (Rochester Business Journal).

What do you need to play Battleship on paper?

• Two sheets, one per player: either our printable or graph paper.
• A pen for drawing your fleet and a pencil for marking shots.
• Something to hide behind: a book, a folder, a clipboard tilted toward you, or a cereal box.
• Agreed rules. Settle the fleet, whether ships may touch, and whether a hit earns another shot before anyone draws. Our Battleship rules guide covers each option.

How do you draw a Battleship grid on graph paper?

If you have graph paper and no printer, you can draw both grids in about two minutes.

1. Count 10 squares across and 10 down, and outline the block. That is your fleet grid.
2. Write the letters A to J along the top, one per column.
3. Write the numbers 1 to 10 down the left side, one per row.
4. Skip two rows and draw a second 10×10 block the same way. Label it "Enemy" or "Shots."
5. Under the grids, list your fleet with a box for each square: 5, 4, 3, 3, 2. Tick a box each time one of your ships is hit.

On plain paper, use a ruler and space your lines about 1 cm (or 3/8 inch) apart. Crooked lines are fine as long as both players can read the labels.

How do you play Battleship on paper?

1. Draw your fleet on My Fleet in pen. Ships are straight lines across or down, never diagonal, and they can't overlap. The classic fleet our printable uses is Carrier 5, Dreadnought 4, Cruiser 3, Submarine 3 and Destroyer 2.
2. Pick who starts. Flip a coin, or let the loser of the last game go first.
3. Call a square, letter first: "E5."
4. Answer honestly. The defender checks My Fleet and says "miss," "hit," or "hit, sunk" when the last square of a ship is struck.
5. Mark both sheets. The shooter marks Enemy Waters. The defender marks the same square on My Fleet.
6. Take turns until one fleet is gone. The first player to sink every enemy ship wins.

How do you mark hits, misses and sunk ships?

Our printable uses three marks, and they work on any paper:

Ringing a sunk ship saves shots. Once you ring it, you know those squares are finished, and you won't fire next to them trying to extend a ship that is already gone.

A sample game, turn by turn

Here are the first five of one player's shots, marked on Enemy Waters, with the classic touching-allowed rule:

1. E5: "Miss." Dot on E5.
2. G6: "Hit." X on G6.
3. G7: "Miss." Dot on G7. The ship doesn't run down, so try sideways.
4. H6: "Hit." X on H6. Now you know the ship runs across row 6.
5. I6: "Hit, you sank my Cruiser." X on I6, then ring G6 to I6.

If you play the ten-ship variant, where ships may never touch, a sinking tells you more. Every square around the sunk ship must be empty, so you can dot all of them right away without spending shots.

For a smarter way to pick your next shot, see our Battleship strategy guide.

How do you keep a paper game honest?

There is no referee on paper, so a few habits keep both players straight:

• Draw your fleet in pen. Ink can't be erased and quietly moved.
• Write the shot before you hear the answer. It stops "I called E6, not E5" arguments.
• Track hits on your own fleet. Ticking the fleet checklist makes it obvious when a ship is sunk, so you don't forget to announce it.
• Count shots. The 100-box tally on the printable shows how many shots each of you took, which is handy for settling a close game.
• Swap sheets at the end. Check every call against the fleet. Agree beforehand what a misreported hit means; most groups count it as a loss for the player who made it.

Which variants work well on paper?

Paper is a good place to try other rules, because you only change what you draw.

• Salvo. Fire one shot for each of your ships still afloat, five at the start. Call them all, write them down, then hear the results together. Paper makes it easy to record a volley as a row of squares.
• The 10-ship fleet. Sheet 2 of our printable has it: one 4-square ship, two 3s, three 2s and four 1s, 20 squares in all, with no ships touching even at the corners. This is the standard paper game in Russia, Морской бой (Russian Wikipedia).
• 8×8 for kids. Draw A–H and 1–8 and use four ships of 4, 3, 2 and 2 squares. That is 11 ship squares out of 64, about 17%, the same share as the classic 17 out of 100. With 64 squares instead of 100, games end sooner, which suits short attention spans.

Using a Battleship printable in the classroom

Teachers use the game to practice coordinates and grid references, because every shot requires reading and saying a coordinate pair. Geography teachers adapt it for four-figure map grid references (Tes).

Two classroom formats work well:

• Pairs. Hand out one sheet per student. Students play in pairs, and each must say the full coordinate aloud before marking it.
• Teacher vs class. The teacher draws a fleet in secret, and students take turns calling squares while everyone marks a shared grid on the board.

For math classes, relabel the grid with 0–9 on both axes and call shots as (x, y). That turns the game into practice for Common Core standard 5.G.A.2, graphing points in the first quadrant of the coordinate plane (Common Core). Print as many copies as your class needs.

Paper Battleship on road trips and planes

Paper sea battle needs no battery, no signal and no table. For travel:

• Put each sheet on a clipboard and tilt it toward you. The clipboard is the hiding screen.
• Use pencils with erasers for shots, so a bumpy road doesn't ruin the sheet.
• On a plane, sit side by side and angle the clipboards away from each other. Call shots quietly; the person in the window seat doesn't need to hear "hit, you sank my Carrier."
• Bring a few spare sheets for rematches. The games-won tracker keeps score across a long drive.

It also makes a good low-key date-night game; our list of games for couples has more like it.

If you're looking for more ways to play without a connection, our guide to the best offline iPhone games covers them.

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