Battleship (Naval Combat Game): 12 Benefits & Advantages (Life Skills…)

Last Updated on January 25, 2024 by Gamesver Team and JC Franco

If you love strategic and war-heavy board games, then Battleship is for you. This naval combat-based board game is complete with an exciting design, great ships, intense competition, and more. Now you might ask, what are the benefits and advantages of playing Battleship?

There are many advantages to playing the Battleship board game, be it with your family or your closest friends. Let’s check out the most important benefits that help develop new and positive skills in our lives. 

We will go over the advantages of being a Battleship enthusiast, learn about the crucial pieces, and discuss some game tactics.

These are 12 benefits of playing Battleship (game): 

1. Learn Cognitive Skills

Cognitive skills such as:

• Pattern recognition
• Sustained attention
• Information processing speed
• Simultaneous attention
• Category distinction

These cognitive skills are essential for kids during their growing years. While it is near-impossible to teach your kids these skills hands-on, games are the best way to educate any child – here is where the Battleship board game shines. 

In this game, you need to remember the grids you chose to attack your opponent and your hits and misses. To make your next move matter, you must be attentive to which ships the opponent removed and what they plan next. These skills help develop the brain and train it to solve real-life problems. 

2. Help You Jog Your Memory

The ability to memorize small details is truly a gift. So does a board game like Battleship help sustain a sharp memory?

According to a French experiment, “To study the relationship between board game playing and risk of subsequent dementia in the Paquid cohort,” which involved 3675 non-demented participants, the answer is yes!

The study showed that the dementia risk was 15% lower for board game participants. Since Battleship involves utilizing almost all your cognitive skills and puts your memory to the test, its involvement in reducing cognitive decline is highly revered.

3. Create a Perfect Mentor

Whether a board game enthusiast or a video gamer, you must remember your first mentor. It is someone who helped foster the love for gaming inside of you. Similarly, every first Battleship game is best with a close and trustworthy friend. It creates a positive idea about the game thanks to enjoying it with someone you like. 

Battleship creates tension, excitement, and competitiveness between players, strangers, or opponents. Will your opponent sink your ship’s next turn? Was your last grid choices too predictable? When two players’ minds are in sync, it can help create some fantastic memories of playing Battleship.

You can also fill the mentor role for other players using the experience you gain from the game. It’s a great way to grow closer with other people and learn more about them.

4. Stress Management

Many studies conclude that board games can help alleviate stress and negative emotions, thanks to their immersive gameplay, strategies, competitiveness, etc. For example, a study in the mid-2010s concluded that people could regulate their stress and flight-or-fight response better while playing certain games.

Battleship ensures a positive distraction from real issues and helps players enjoy great games where two people plan and execute tactics to drown each other’s battleships. A game with so many elements as Battleship helps regulate pressure, stress, and anxiety and allows players to escape harsh realities and enjoy peace with friends. 

5. Differentiate Between Right and Wrong

A game like Battleship is for most ages. While it helps adults distract themselves from daily chores and elders to reduce the risks of dementia, its effect on a kid’s perception is immense.

A child’s understanding of right or wrong depends on how they treat rejection. The lesson is incomplete if a “no” makes them rebel and make mistakes. 

However, through a strategic rules-heavy game like Battleship, a child can learn if and when their moves are right or wrong. For example, a child will eat a cake at night when told not to. But when playing Battleship, they will need to abide by rules like:

• You cannot place any ship diagonally.
• Two ships should not touch each other.

Disobeying these rules calls for instant disqualification meaning the child cannot play. Knowing the consequence is zero game time will help them learn to distinguish between right and wrong moves, right decisions, and bad decisions.

You’ll also learn the “right” and “wrong” moves, increasing your decision-making skills. Children learn that their choices impact how the game turns out since whether they win depends on the strategy they come up with. Overall, this game offers plenty of teaching opportunities.  

6. Friendly Competition and Socializing

For anyone too shy to interact with people, board games are a go-to option to help socialize and enjoy quality time with like-minded folks. As a famous board game, Battleship attracts many enthusiasts. It also creates a social setting where you can discuss the game’s rules, strategy, and house rules.

Unlike forced social interaction, Battleship will not compel you to interact beyond requirements. The game involves two people targeting each other’s battleships and uttering only two phrases, “hit” and “miss.” Battleship, therefore, helps nurture the idea that communication can help learn something new and is not a strictly-formal gesture. 

7. Teaches Fairness in Games

Cheating in any game or task is never a good idea; however, it might make the results look easier. While in some games, people can cheat through unprofessional gameplay, Battleship rules ensure that everyone learns to play fair.

Appropriate actions are a virtue. When you act or speak honestly, it brings out the best in your intentions. For example, when playing the Battleship board game, you must be honest when your opponent asks if they hit your ship or missed it.

The more you play, the better you will realize how simple yet clever tactics like slotting your ships to the edges can help you stay afloat. A fair plan, but it enables you to win unconventionally.

If you were lying, sooner or later, you would get caught, thanks to coordinates. Coordinate grids are how opponents determine which ships to attack. If their attacks pass through, but you tell them they missed, sooner or later, they shall find out you were lying, thanks to their following coordinate patterns. 

Doing so will not only cost you trusted friends but your reputation. Hence, it is crucial to be fair in life and games, and Battleship portrays it beautifully through its carefully-conceptualized game mechanics. 

8. Gain Confidence

Battleship is an answer to resolving real-life issues with self-confidence, insecurity, and interactions. For example, strategizing your next move, and seeing it succeed in its aim to defeat the opponent, will help you assure yourself and your practical decision-making skill. 

Here is how Battleships helps nurture self-confidence:

• It enables you to understand your personality while playing and strategizing.
• It is the perfect place to learn about your decision-making skills
• It makes you feel more capable of saving your ships and launching an attack on the targets, all by yourself.

In real life, there might be moments when you need to make a final decision without any supervisor’s help. If interactions like this make you uncomfortable, you can always play Battleship to practice your communication skills, planning strategies, and understanding of the difference between a right and a wrong move.

For example, if you have to play a game alone or even take a crucial corporate decision, playing a Battleship game can help you test these abilities and learn how to boost your confidence. 

9. Enhance Your Focus

The ability to focus during any task can come in handy in various situations. Be it while cooking or during a crucial workplace decision; the results will be fruitful if you focus well. And Battleship helps to hone this skill. While playing the game, you need to learn how to focus on:

• Your opponent’s every move
• The grids they call out on their turn
• The names of ships that sank on both sides

Focusing will ensure that you utilize these bits of information for your future moves. Focusing is the ability to use available resources and knowledge to plan a fool-proof next step to achieving your goals. And playing Battleship is a great way to nurture this skill. 

10. Teaches Value of Teamwork

While Battleship does wonders in helping kids learn new skills and utilize them to win during games, it also teaches the value of teamwork as a two-player game.

However, you can always tweak this rule to teach kids teamwork. Every child is unique and has a fantastic skill set that makes them who they are. So if you have two children playing on either side, you might be able to foster a sense of teamwork among kids. For example:

• On one team, there is Kid A and Kid B
• Kid A is good at remembering details, and Kid B is great at making game plans

Working together can help them sustain victory on their side of the board. Teamwork, friendship, and skill sets are necessary for every child’s growth. And Battleship is a game that does it all.

11. It’s a Great Time-out

Why punish your kid with time out for being naughty when you can solve the issue with a great board game! It teaches kids to reflect on their actions, place their arguments, and negotiate their wrongs while playing a strategy-heavy game.

Children will get defensive to save face from consequences when caught breaking the rules. However, knowing that making mistakes will come with the platform to defend while playing against a parent might change their behavior. 

While a child might be too shy to explain their actions, they will find more confidence in doing so while being engrossed in a game to defeat their guardian. It nurtures a sense of self and the ability to defend on the ground.

Moreover, it allows you as a parent to communicate the wrong of their actions during the game. You can even act out their punishment by sinking their ships during your step.

12. Teaches Value of Losing

There is nothing wrong with losing to friends at a board game. Instead, losing is a learning experience that helps you reflect on the mistakes and undo them during the next round. Battleship is quite a strategic game, as you rely on your decision-making skills. It is not only a luck-based competition, and your every step needs to be calculative and skillful. 

So if you lose a round or two in Battleship, it might be due to not recalling grids and coordinates correctly. It might also be due to you getting distracted too often. Knowing that you need to improve your actions next game to win is always a morale booster and helps you strategize better.