Battleships!

When playing battleships many people approach it different ways. I go for an approach i like to call shove them everywhere and hope for the best. I randomly place my battleships everywhere and just hope that's enough to help me win. However when playing against Alex that wasn't going to be enough. He seemed to have luck on side as he sunk all but one of my battleships. I still hadn't even got one, it was at this point i felt like giving up on the game, i was more or less defeated why carry on there was no chance i could win. So when it came to talk about any changes we wanted to make to the game, this was an area we could agree needed work on.

We introduced an element we later called 'the killer square'. This was a single square both players had to place that, if their opponent hit, it would sink all of their battleships. This gave a losing player a chance to win, give them a glimmer of hope that if they hit that one square they could turn the game around and win out of the blue. Therefore give them an incentive to carry on playing. Just what i needed to want to carry on playing earlier.

Another good thing about this 'killer square' is it makes you play the game more tactically. You need to think about where you place this square, shoving it anywhere could ruin your game if your on a winning streak. You cant place it too close to your ships, in case they get taken down and your opponent mistakes that square as part of that ship. Too far away and it stands out too much.

Although when we played the game again no-one hit that square, we both still felt the pressure whenever the opposing player got close. Adding more unintentional tension to the game. However we both did also agree that when we got close to winning if our opponent did hit that square it would make losing the game even more frustrating. But then again when isnt losing a game frustrating?