Tag Archives: Battleship

Hasbro Announces Reboot of “Battleship”

International Maritime Satire Week Warning: The following is a piece of fiction intended to elicit insight through the use of satire and written by those who do not make a living being funny – so it’s not serious and very well might not be funny. See the rest of our IntMarSatWeek offerings here

It’s a classic from your childhood, but in the cut-throat board game business nothing is sacred.

In a surprise move the board game manufacturer Hasbro announced a series of changes to their stalwart wargame classic, “Battleship,” that would bring it into the 21st century. Their name of choice: “LCS,” referring to the Navy’s recently introduced Littoral Combat Ship (LCS).

“We thought it was time to bring ‘Battleship’ in line with the modern U.S. Navy,” said Martin Sawyer, the spokesman for Hasbro game, at a press conference on Friday afternoon. “When you think of the missions of a modern navy, you immediately think of the LCS.”

Hasbro officials believe that, while the image of a massive capital ship with unquestioned firepower was enough to carry the franchise over the past five decades, the name “Battleship” no longer resonates with their young target demographics.

“The age of the battleship has clearly passed. Heck, it was gone by the time we made the game. It’s time to make this a modern game.” Off the record, sources say the real reason for the change may be that the rare earth metals used to make the aircraft carrier pieces became exhorbiantly expensive, scuttling the move to rebrand the game “Carrier.” Officials also say the fact that ‘LCS’ contains 3 syllables played a role – enabling players to bemoan in the traditional “you sunk my….” phrasing the sinking of their vessels, over and over again. 

Battleship, which first started as a pen-and-paper game in the 1930s, has been a Hasbro mainstay since it was first released in its present form in 1967. In the game, two would-be fleet commanders square off in a battle of wits, vigor, and dumb luck by blindly firings at points on a grid to damage their opponent’s navy. Ships “sink” when they receive a requisite number of hits. Smaller ships, like the destroyer, take up fewer spaces on the grid and are thus harder to hit. This leads to real-life situations where the destroyer is more valuable than other, larger ships such as the cruiser, submarine, and aircraft carrier. “LCS” will build off this trend by replacing the ships in each navy exclusively with LCS destroyers.

The U.S. Navy was quick to praise the changes. “The LCS is a testament to the future of the low-observable Navy,” said Navy spokesman Lt. Cmdr. Michael Fabian. “It stands to reason that a game like ‘Battleship,’ where navies wildly shoot at empty water in an attempt to hit something, perfectly reflects the capacity of the LCS in the naval domains of the future.”

After battling aliens, pirates, and G.I.Joe, Battleship is moving on

Others, though, are not convinced. Some members of the surface warfare community that were allowed to playtest the new version have instituted the “Fire Scout” rule, referring to the shipboard UAV, which allows a player to look at the opponents board before declaring their shot. “Even if LCS is low-observable we still have eyes and flying robot cameras with persistent-loiter capability,” said one surly surface warfare officer.

“Seriously,” he said, “we can still see them with our freaking eyes.”

Members of the Air Force also added their own ruleset “Rods from God.” In the Rod God Mod, players are allowed to look at their opponent’s board and then immediately destroy a ship of their choice with tungsten rods dropped from satellites. “Take that, naval power!” said an Air Force playtester, right before the same rods destroyed his immobile, land-based runways in the modified game.

In conjunction with the rebranding, Universal Pictures announced that the blockbuster movie Battleship would be given a gritty reboot in line with the boardgame. Gone is the emphasis of capital ship warfare against aliens; instead, the movie will feature even greater suspension-of-disbelief in the dazzling capabilities of the LCS on the silver screen.

“Audiences will marvel at the LCS as it uses stealth technology to sneak up on pirate skiffs that lack radar and then do nothing further from lack of evidence that they are pirates!” said Universal sales representative Lester McPeak. “Think Captain Phillips but with less shooting and more bureaucracy.”

Added McPeak: “If Jack and the Beanstalk and Hansel and Gretel can get gritty reboots, we can totally do that for Battleship too. As long as we keep the same actors and writers, we should be just fine.”

Matthew Merighi is an employee of the United State Air Force, but we tolerate him anyway. His views do not reflect those of the United States Government but he hopes they are appreciated by other snarky Pentagon millennials.

You Sunk My…

I’m expecting a flood of Battleship-related posts in the near future with the U.S. opening this weekend. For instance, I’ve been promised a humorous take of this hard-hitting documentary over at USNI blog, so I’ll take a more straight-faced look at battleships.

 

As nukes are to the egos and deterrent calculus of nations today, so were battleships in the first half of the 20th Century. While the fact that today’s navies no longer possess battleships may be lost on this weekend’s moviegoers, what’s even more shocking is that after conducting extensive Wikipedia research, I uncovered no instances in which a battleship was sunk due to alien action.

 

Fear nothing?

This is an inexcusable error on the part of the filmmakers, but I thought our readers might nonetheless like to know the truth behind battleship sinkings. Below are the rough figures of the fates of post-Dreadnought battleships (excluding battlecruisers). Those not listed were scrapped, turned into a museum, taken to sea by Stephen Seagal, or commandeered by Cher (see photo above).

 

Doing some rough, back-of-the-envelope calculations, it looks like the number one cause of a sinking during a conflict (granted due primarily to the exceptional actions at Scapa Flow) was the hands of a ship’s own crew.

 

Sunk by Aircraft – 12 – 27%:

  • –        RN Conte di Cavour                                1940
  • –        HMS Prince of Wales                              1941
  • –        Marat                                                            1941
  • –        USS Arizona                                               1941
  • –        USS West Virginia                                   1941 (Salvaged and returned to service)
  • –        USS California                                          1941 (Salvaged and returned to service)
  • –        USS Oklahoma                                         1941
  • –        USS Utah:                                                   1941 (After conversion to an anti-aircraft training ship)
  • –        RN Roma                                                    1943
  • –        SMS Tirpitz                                                1944
  • –        IJN Musashi                                              1944
  • –        IJN Yamato                                               1945

Scuttled to Prevent Enemy Use – 15 – 33%:

  • –        Imperatritsa Ekaterina Velikaya       1917
  • –        SMS Kaiser                                                 1919
  • –        SMS Prinzregent Luitpold                    1919
  • –        SMS Kaiserin                                             1919
  • –        SMS Friedrich der Grosse                      1919
  • –        SMS König Albert                                     1919
  • –        SMS König                                                  1919
  • –        SMS Großer Kurfürst                              1919
  • –        SMS Kronprinz Wilhelm                       1919
  • –        SMS Markgraf                                          1919
  • –        SMS Bayern                                               1919
  • –        SMS Bismarck                                          1941  (While under enemy fire – cause disputed)
  • –        Dunkerque                                                  1942
  • –        Strasbourg                                                 1942
  • –        Provence                                                     1942

Surface Fire or Surface Torpedoes – 4 – 9%:

  • –        SMS Szent István                                      1918
  • –        Bretagne                                                      1940
  • –        Fusō                                                              1944
  • –        Yamashiro                                                  1944

Torpedoed by Submarine – 2 – 4%:

  • –        SMS Szent István                                      1918 (h/t Chuck Hill)
  • –        HMS Royal Oak                                        1939
  • –        HMS Barham                                             1941

Sunk as Breakwater – 2 – 4%:

  • –        HMS Centurion                                        1944
  • –        Courbet                                                        1944

Sunk after Running Aground – 1 – 2%:

  • –        España                                                        1923

Sunk by Frogmen – 1 – 2%:

  • –        Viribus Unitis                                           1918

Sunk by Claimed Sabotage – 2 – 4%:

  • –        RN Leonardo da Vinci                          1916
  • –        Jaime I                                                        1937

Sunk by Mines – 2 – 4%:

  • –        HMS Audacious                                      1914
  • –        España                                                       1937

Sunk by Internal Explosion – 4 – 9%:

  • –        Imperatritsa Mariya                             1916
  • –        HMS Vanguard                                       1917
  • –        Kawachi                                                     1918
  • –        Mutsu                                                          1943

Sunk by Aliens – 0 – 0%

Scuttling in the Scapa: German battleship Bayern.

Sunk During Peacetime

Scuttled at Sea:

  • –        USS Pennsylvania                                 1948

Sunk after Running Aground

  • –        France                                                        1922

Sunk During Target Practice:

  • –        SMS Ostfriesland                                   1921
  • –        SMS Baden                                               1921
  • –        SMS Thüringen                                       1923
  • –        Aki                                                                1924
  • –        Satsuma                                                     1924
  • –        USS Washington                                    1924
  • –        HMS Monarch                                        1925
  • –        HMS Emperor of India                        1931

Sunk During Underwater Nuclear Test

  • –        Nagato                                                       1946
  • –        USS Arkansas                                         1946

Unknown Cause:

  • –        Novorossiysk                                          1955

Sunk due to Weather:

  • –        São Paulo                                                  1951