Battleshots Drinking Game

You sank my battleshot - naval warfare on a cardboard grid.

Also known as: Battle Shots · Drinking Battleship

Be the first to rate this game

Your rating:

Players 2-4

You need2 grids (cardboard), shot glasses, a divider

DrinkLight shots or beer shots

Intensity

Time20-40 min

Battleshots is the childhood classic Battleship rebuilt with consequences: two players, two hidden grids, and fleets made of shot glasses instead of plastic pegs. You call coordinates - 'B4!' - And if there's a glass sitting on that square of your opponent's board, they drink it and the hit stands. Sink every glass in their fleet and you've won the war. Miss, and the barrage comes back the other way.

What makes Battleshots great is that it's a real strategy game wearing a party costume. Fleet placement matters, search patterns matter, and remembering your hits matters more with every round - Which is a cruel joke, given what the hits are made of. It's the definitive two-player showdown for game nights: build the boards once out of a pizza box and a marker, and you'll refloat the fleets all year.

What you need & setup

Build two 5x5 grids - Draw them on cardboard, a pizza box, or tape them onto trays. Label columns A-E and rows 1-5.
Stand a divider between the boards (a propped box lid works) so neither player can see the other's fleet.
Each player places a fleet of shot glasses on their grid: one 4-glass battleship, one 3-glass destroyer, and one 2-glass patrol boat, each in a straight line.
Fill the glasses light - Beer, cider or a weak mixed drink beats straight liquor across nine glasses.
Keep a paper grid or the corners of your board free to mark your shots at the enemy.

How to play Battleshots

Hide your fleet

Place your three ships anywhere on your 5x5 grid - Horizontal or vertical, never diagonal, no two ships overlapping. Nine glasses on twenty-five squares means most of your board is open water, so think like a defender: corners and edges survive lazy center-heavy search patterns, but seasoned players hunt edges first. There's no objectively safe placement, only unpredictable ones.

Call your shot

Players alternate single shots, called as a column letter plus row number: 'C2'. Say it once, clearly - A called shot is final, and take-backs are how friendly games become naval incidents. Mark every call on your tracking grid immediately, hit or miss, because in this game your memory degrades at a rate directly proportional to your success.

Answer honestly

The defender checks the called square and announces 'hit' or 'miss' - Loudly and honestly. On a hit, the defender drinks the glass on that square, then leaves the empty glass in place upside down so both players can verify the wreckage later. On a miss, simply say so. The honor system is the entire game; cheaters get keelhauled from future game nights.

Report sunken ships

When the last glass of a ship is drunk, the defender must announce it: 'You sank my destroyer.' Saying the line is mandatory and non-negotiable - It's the whole reason anyone builds this game. Sink announcements are also real intel, telling the attacker how many ships remain and what sizes are still afloat, so the endgame sharpens with every wreck.

Hunt wounded ships

Strategy 101: shots scatter until you score a hit, then cluster. A hit means a ship extends in one of up to four directions, so probe the adjacent squares in a line until the sink announcement comes. Attackers who wander off after one hit leave wounded ships afloat and waste turns; attackers who over-focus forget the rest of the ocean exists. Balance both.

Win the war

Sink all three enemy ships - All nine glasses - Before your fleet goes down and you win. The loser refills both fleets for the rematch; the winner gets first call. For a series, play best-of-three with fleets moving between games, and expect game three to feature two admirals squinting at five-by-five grids like they're defusing a bomb.

The rules

Each player uses a 5x5 grid, columns labeled A-E and rows 1-5, hidden behind a divider.
Standard fleet: one battleship (4 shot glasses), one destroyer (3 glasses), one patrol boat (2 glasses).
Ships are placed in straight horizontal or vertical lines - No diagonals, no overlaps, no moving ships after the first shot.
Players alternate one called shot per turn, using column-plus-row coordinates (e.g. 'B4').
A called shot is final; the defender must truthfully answer 'hit' or 'miss'.
On a hit, the defender drinks the glass on that square and inverts the empty glass in place.
When a ship's last glass is drunk, the defender must announce 'You sank my [ship]'.
First player to sink the entire enemy fleet wins; the loser sets up the next game.
Playing 6x6 with a bigger fleet? Scale the pour strength down before you scale the fleet up.
House rule (optional): a sunken ship earns the attacker one immediate bonus shot.

Variations & house rules

Fleet Command (2v2)

Two admirals per board: one calls shots, one manages the tracking grid and drinks half the incoming hits. Teams confer in whispers before each call. Splitting the drinking across two livers makes the standard fleet far more manageable, and arguing about search patterns with a co-commander is at least half the entertainment. Rotate roles between games.

Salvo

Each turn you fire one shot per ship you still have afloat - Three calls at full strength, dwindling as your fleet sinks. The defender answers all shots before any glasses are drunk. Salvo triples the pace and creates real comeback tension, since a dominant fleet rains fire while a dying one gets a single desperate call per turn. Use light pours; the volume adds up.

Beer Sea

Replace shot glasses with quarter-filled cups of beer and expand to a 6x6 grid with a second patrol boat. The bigger ocean stretches games to a leisurely twenty-plus turns, and cup 'hits' are gentler than spirits, making this the right build for a long games night where Battleshots is the main event rather than a quick skirmish.

Minefield

During setup, each player also marks two secret mine squares on their own grid (written down beforehand for verification). If an attacker calls a mine square, the attacker drinks instead of the defender. Mines add a genuine risk to every call and punish reckless spray-and-pray searching - But verify the written records at game's end, because mine fraud is a court-martial offense.

Pro tips

Fill the fleet with beer or a weak mix, not straight liquor - Nine real shots per game is a design flaw, not a flex.

Track every call on paper from shot one; the game punishes memory, and memory is the first casualty of a good offense.

Break placement habits between games - Most players unconsciously rebuild the same fleet, and rematch opponents remember.

After a hit, probe in a straight line and reverse direction when you miss; it's the fastest kill pattern on a 5x5 board.

Laminate your boards or tape over the grid lines - Spilled hits erase marker grids, and soggy cardboard sinks faster than any fleet.

Open your search with a diagonal or checkerboard pattern; it can't miss the 4-glass battleship forever.

Where Battleshots fits on the shelf

Battleshots lands mid-table for intensity (6th of 17 challenge games), rated 4 out of 5.
It is one of the few games here that genuinely works with just 2 players, and it stays fun up to 4.
A typical session runs 20-40 min - a solid middle act for the evening.
Browse the full outdoor & challenge games shelf to compare all 17 games side by side.

A little history

Battleshots is a straightforward drinking adaptation of Battleship, the guessing game that began as a pencil-and-paper pastime in the early 20th century before Milton Bradley boxed it in 1967. When shot glasses replaced pegs is anyone's guess - Homemade Battleshots boards were a well-documented college craft project by the late 2000s, spread by photo forums and DIY blogs, and the pun in the name was presumably irresistible from day one.

Drink responsibly: A full fleet is nine drinks, so pour like it: beer or weak mixes in the glasses, water rounds between games, and no doubling fleet sizes without halving strength. Losing streaks concentrate the drinking on one person - Swap in a teammate or switch the loser's fleet to water refills, and keep food within reach of the war room. See our safety guide for pacing tips and alcohol-free versions.

Battleshots FAQ

What size grid do you use for Battleshots?

5x5 is the standard, and it's the right call: with a 4-3-2 fleet occupying nine of twenty-five squares, games run a brisk 15-25 calls per side. The classic 10x10 Battleship board is far too sparse for a drinking game - You'd spend forty turns hitting open water. If you want longer games, step up to 6x6 and add one small ship rather than going bigger.

What ships are in a Battleshots fleet?

The standard fleet is three ships totaling nine glasses: a battleship of four, a destroyer of three, and a patrol boat of two, each placed in a straight horizontal or vertical line with no overlaps. Some crews add a fourth two-glass ship on 6x6 boards. Whatever fleet you agree on, both players must place identical fleets - Asymmetric navies settle nothing.

What do you fill the shot glasses with?

Something light. Beer, cider, or a low-proof mixed drink are the smart standards, because a losing player drinks up to nine glasses in a single game. Straight-liquor fleets are the most common Battleshots mistake and end nights early. A good compromise: patrol boat and destroyer hold beer, and only the battleship's four glasses hold anything stronger - Diluted.

How do you stop people from lying about hits?

Two habits: empty glasses stay inverted on their squares, so the final board can be audited against the sink announcements, and each player writes their fleet's coordinates on a folded paper before the first shot. End-of-game verification takes ten seconds and keeps everyone honest. In practice the theater of 'you sank my battleship' is self-enforcing - Nobody wants to win by clerical fraud.

Can you play Battleshots with more than two players?

Yes, two good ways. Fleet Command puts two players per board sharing calls and hits, which halves each person's drinking and doubles the trash talk. Or run a bracket: multiple boards, quick 5x5 games, winners advance and losers refill glasses. True three-way free-for-alls technically work with three boards but drag badly - The bracket is the better party format.

Battleshots Drinking Game

What you need & setup