Battleship strategy
by Diana Pena
(Deltona, FL, USA)
This Battleship strategy will sink your opponent!
I have a winning Battleship strategy. One of the best ways to locate the hidden enemy ships is to avoid randomly firing away at various places on the board (the shotgun approach), but rather to use patterns of firing in a straight line, my favorite being diagonal volleys.
I like to go from the top left down to the bottom right, skipping every other space or two (but no more than two), then go down a few rows and repeat, from the left diagonally down to the right.
In this way, you are hitting anything parked on the edges and also strafing through various columns and rows at the same time. When you have finished the lower half, going down every two rows, then you repeat with other half of the board, going every couple of columns.
It is a sure thing to hit a battleship or aircraft carrier in this way. I sometimes will instead of skipping two rows just cut the board diagonally down the middle, then strafe the middle of those two sections, and even will do a big X first. It kind of depends on who you are playing, you get to know their style.
Once you have strafed a few times like this, then you will see various "holes" where the smaller ships might be hiding if you haven’t already hit them with the aforementioned diagonal strafing method. Since your board is split up into various "sections" by then you can have a good idea where you can send a volley.
I find attacking in a more logical way like the Battleship straegy above is better than the random "bombs away" approach.
