Shooting Blind
Battleships and Beyond
During WWI, naval battles still occurred within sight of the enemy. The beginnings of naval aviation provided some ability to scout for enemy formations, but the dearth of major battles – Jutland being the sole example of a major fleet action – meant that the artillery spotting role for aircraft did not evolve at sea as it did on land. The difficulty of plotting naval gunfire at long distances led to a new form of wargame, first published in the mid-1920s by Gibson in the UK, and understandably titled Jutland.
As with L’Attaque and its successors, each player sets up forces secretly. But in this game, now known generically as Battleships, the battle takes place at sea between two forces that cannot see one another.
Each player’s board consists of a grid, usually a 10 by 10 square. A screen prevents players from seeing the opponent’s board. On his board, the player secretly places his fleet, consisting of a number of ships of varying lengths, typically between two and five squares. These ships must be placed either vertically or horizontally on the grid. Once both players have placed their fleets, the game begins.
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Instead of moving those forces, the ships remained fixed in place. The game consisted of taking turns in firing at a designated square on the grid. The opposing player then declares that square to be either a hit or a miss. For each hit, the firing player may continue to take shots, knowing that a hit means that a ship continues in one of four directions from that square.
Once a target ship has had all its squares hit, the defender declares it “sunk”. The winner is the first player to sink all of the opponent’s ships.
Jutland is a paper and pencil game. Each player has a single sheet with two grids: one to place his own ships, and the other to plot his hits and misses. The game consisted of 20 sheets.
This game spawned a host of imitators over the following decades.
Titles published during the 1930s and 1940s included:
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Two versions called Salvo, one by Starex Novelty Co. (above), and the other an advertising vehicle for the Signal Oil Company (right);
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Sea Battle from Kaywood Corp. (above right);
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Combat: The Battleship Game (Strathmore Co.);
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Broadsides (Milton Bradley);
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Warfare Naval Combat (Maurice L. Freedman Co.);
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Sunk (Parker Bros.);
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Convoy (Transogram); and
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Naval Battle (3M).
The game also made a quick transition from naval war to other fields of battle. Jimmie Allen’s Air Battles, for instance, had the same 10 by 10 grid, but used scout, fighter and bomber planes, along with dirigibles and observation balloons, instead of ships. This game also was a promotional vehicle based on a popular radio serial broadcast during the 1930s called The Air Adventures of Jimmie Allen. It also pitched the sponsor of the series, The Skelly Oil Co.
Blast 'Em, published by the Electric Game Co. during WWII, uses the standard 10 x 10 grids but they contain grey areas representing land areas surrounded by ocean. The Battleship and Submarine must be placed on water squares, the Land Battery and Tank Force on land, and the Air Squadron anywhere.
Most of these games stuck to the paper and pencil format, which allowed the publication of cheap games but with replayability limited to the number of sheets included. On the other hand, the game also could be played easily on home-made sheets once the printed game sheets had been used up.
It was Milton Bradley that eventually moved the game from cardboard to plastic, the format well known today, with unfolding player boards, plastic ships and pegs for shots to be marked incoming (horizontal) and outgoing (vertical). However, boxed versions of the game appeared well before WWII. Examples include this Belgian title, Aero Navale.
The box is hinged on one side. As it opens, it raises a screen between two playing boards, and contains a drawer on each player’s side with both ships and shot markers.
The most elaborate example of this game format was developed by an unknown but adventurous soul. Named Extended Broadside, it is a huge game, with an octagonal wooden board measuring 36 inches (91.4 cm) across. Each player gets 2 large ships (either battleships, aircraft carriers or liners), and one small ship (submarine or destroyer). The playing pieces themselves are detailed metal miniatures formed on wooden bases, with the large ships measuring 6 inches long and the small ones 4 inches.
The game’s primary innovation was to extend the game to four players. Each player deploys a fleet, and each shot affects all three of the opposing player boards.
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That, however, is just the beginning. Each player board is shaped like a slice of pie, with a point at the center and an outer edge with one full side of the octagon flanked by two half-segments. Each player’s quarter is isolated by pressboard screens on either side. The result is a playing field consisting of 160 spaces.
On these spaces, ships may be deployed diagonally as well as horizontally or vertically. The result is that ships occupy one space less if placed diagonally (5/4 for the large ships and 4/3 for the small ones). It also creates more possibilities of a miss following a hit. A diagonal placement helps avoid an initial hit, but is a more likely choice for a follow-up shot following a hit.
In addition to the ships, each player places an “island” one space wide and 4 long orthogonally (3 if placed diagonally), two single-space minefields, and three “aircraft” attack spaces. Before regular play begins, each player first announces the spaces occupied by his island. Any other player’s ship affected by an island is announced as “grounded”, effectively a hit. Note that where a player puts his island also identifies spaces that his own fleet cannot occupy.
The players then in turn announced the locations of their minefields. Any ship hit by a minefield sinks immediately, regardless of its size, and is removed from the board. After the minefield round, players announce their air attack spaces. Air attacks are more powerful than regular gun shots. Any ship hit by an air attack can be sunk by a single additional hit of any kind.
Only then does the regular game begin, with players taking single shots in turn. As in the standard game, a hit allows another shot. But in this version, players may choose to shoot with mines or aircraft instead of guns. The advantage is the greater damage done by the alternate forms of attack. The disadvantage is that a player making an air attack loses his next turn. One using a minefield loses his two next turns.
As if this were not enough, the rules also permit players to move a single ship instead of shooting.
This has the obvious benefit of messing up opponents’ plotting, but also sacrifices a turn of attacks (which means taking three salvoes from opponents). The most obvious use of a move is to save a ship that has been hit but not yet sunk. However, a move may tempt opponents to gang up on the moving player – to find and finish off the damaged ship before it can be moved again. (Note that in the image above, the player on the left has been eliminated while the player on the right has slyly placed his battleship diagonally along the squares on the board edge and thus far eluded detection.)
The only known copy of this game appears to be hand-crafted, with typed rather than printed rules. It has no publisher’s mark except the logo printed on the box. And it creates a uniquely exciting multi-player version of a decades-old game mechanic that survives to the present day.
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