Michael O'Reilly

Use it

Agile Battleships

Three rounds against the same seven ships, with the same thirty shots and the same five minutes. Nothing changes between them except how often you find out whether it is working. Most people score two or three times better by the third round without getting any better at Battleships.

Facilitating

About twenty minutes with a group, ten on your own

The game takes ten minutes. The half worth booking the room for is the conversation between the rounds.

  1. Start a session and share the link, or tell everybody the same eight-character board code. Either way the whole room plays identical layouts, which is what makes the scores comparable at the end.
  2. Explain round one only. Do not describe rounds two and three yet — somebody who knows the feedback is about to get better plays round one differently, and round one has to be played in good faith for the rest to land.
  3. Start round one together and say nothing while it runs. Thirty shots placed blind is uncomfortable and people will ask you for a hint. There isn't one; that is the round.
  4. Stop after round one and ask what they would do differently. Collect the answers before anybody knows what round two is. Almost all of them will be about wanting to know sooner.
  5. Run rounds two and three back to back. The jump from two to three is the one people feel, and it lands hardest when nothing is said between them.
  6. Debrief on the scores. Ask what got better, and keep asking until somebody says out loud that nobody got better at Battleships. That is the sentence the exercise exists to produce, and it is worth waiting for rather than supplying.

If you have twenty minutes rather than ten

Ask the room to predict their round three score before they play it. People underestimate it by a long way, which makes the reveal do the arguing for you.

Credit and licence

Somebody else's game, and the terms come with it

Adapted from Agile Battleships by James Scrimshire, CC BY 4.0. Built from the published rules — the ship sizes, the thirty shots and the five-minute clock match the browser version by Box UK, which is where I first played it. None of its code, markup or artwork is used here.