Battleshots

Battleshots is Battleship played with real glasses: each player sets up a fleet of small glasses on their own grid, with a screen between the two boards. You take turns calling out coordinates like “C4” – if one of your opponent’s glasses sits there, it’s a hit, and your opponent drinks that glass.

For the board, strips of tape on the table, two open pizza boxes with a grid drawn on them or a printed grid of 6 × 6 to 8 × 8 squares all work, with letters down one side and numbers along the other. A good fleet per player is one three-glass ship, two two-glass ships and one single – eight glasses in total. Ships go horizontally or vertically and can’t touch. Everyone also gets a pen and paper to track their own shots.

Flip a coin to see who starts. After that, you take turns firing:

• Miss: There’s no glass on that square. Nothing happens, the shooter notes the miss and it’s the other player’s turn.
• Hit: The player who was hit drinks the glass on that square and puts it back empty, so the damaged ship stays visible. The shooter marks the hit on paper.
• Sunk: Once every glass in a ship is empty, the owner announces “sunk” so the opponent stops searching that area.
• Win: Whoever sinks the other player’s whole fleet first wins. Under the usual rule, the loser then drinks whatever glasses are still standing on the winner’s side – one more reason to keep the drinks light.

A game takes about half an hour, depending on the grid size and how good your aim is.

Variations

• Sea mines: Each player secretly marks one or two mines on paper and places a cup of water or beer there. Hit a mine and you take a sip from it yourself.
• Full fleet: Play the classic 10 × 10 grid with ships up to five squares long – ideally with cups holding just a sip of beer or water.
• Two vs. two: With four people, play in teams and take turns drinking the hits.
• Alcohol-free: Soda, juice spritzers or cola in the glasses work just as well.

Tips

Tape the grid down before the glasses go on, and pick glasses with a wide base – they tip over easily on cardboard. A towel or a box standing on its end makes a perfectly good screen. Feel free to rename your ships, too; it makes announcing “sunk” a lot more fun.