Play SALVO on Paper

Press Ctrl+P (Windows, ChromeOS or Linux) or Cmd+P (Mac). Only the battle sheet prints, on one portrait page.

• Choose Letter or A4 to match your paper, and leave the scale at Default or 100%.
• If the page address and date appear along the edges, switch off Headers and footers.
• On a phone or tablet, Print is in the browser’s share menu or main menu.

Paper SALVO plays like the online game: both captains fire every round, and both salvos land together. (SALVO grew out of the Salvo variant of Battleship: one shot per ship afloat, not one shot a turn.)

1. Draw your fleet. On My fleet, draw a Carrier (5 squares), Battleship (4), Cruiser (3), Submarine (3) and Destroyer (2), each across or down. Ships may touch but never overlap. Keep your sheet hidden.
2. Write your salvo in secret. On the next line of the salvo tracker, write one square, such as C5, per ship you have afloat: five to start. Specials go on the same line, and once a shot is called, nobody changes a line.
3. Call out and answer. Take turns reading out your shots. Answer each one “hit” or “miss” without naming the ship. The shooter marks Enemy waters (X hit, dot miss); you mark My fleet and tick that ship’s box.
4. Name a ship only when it sinks. When every square of a ship is hit, its owner says which ship and where it lay (“cruiser, D4 to D6”).
5. Fire fewer shots as ships sink. Lose two ships and your salvo drops to three. A ship sunk this round shrinks your next salvo, not the one already written.
6. Win, or draw. Both salvos count, even if one sinks a whole fleet. Sink all five enemy ships to win; if both fleets go down in the same round, it is a draw.

For SALVO on screen, see how to play SALVO and the full SALVO rules.

All five work on paper, with the game’s costs and areas: each once a game, while its ship is afloat, paid with shots from your salvo.

Specials can share a salvo, one per ship: with five ships afloat, a heavy shell and a recon flight leave two shots. A “passed over” gives the submarine away, so mark the square S and fire there again next round. Areas stop at the edge (recon over A1 checks four squares), and recon and sonar count a diving submarine too.

Three things stay online, and on paper you are your own referee.

• Loot. Online, each ocean hides three supply crates (+1 shot next salvo), two mines (−1 shot, never below one) and two radar buoys (each reveals an enemy ship square). Loot must stay hidden from both captains, so paper leaves it out. A friend who isn’t playing can add it as quartermaster: once the fleets are drawn, they secretly mark loot in each player’s open water, say what a missed shot finds, and for a radar buoy point to a random enemy ship square not yet hit.
• The clock. Online, you get 60 seconds to deploy and 25 to aim. On paper, take your time or set a phone timer.
• Ratings. Paper battles don’t touch your SALVO rating; only finished online battles move it.
• Honesty. Online, the game server keeps both boards. On paper, swap sheets at the end and check each other’s answers.

SALVO on paper is good practice with grid coordinates: every shot names a square by column and row (C5 is column C, row 5, like a spreadsheet cell or a map grid reference), and every answer means finding it on another grid.

• Play in pairs, one sheet each, with a folder standing between partners.
• Salvos add some counting: shots equal ships afloat, and a recon count of 2 means two ship squares hide in a block of nine.
• Nobody has to use the specials, so first-timers can leave them out.
• The tracker holds 20 rounds; half of 20,000 simulated battles between SALVO’s computer players were over by round 17. A longer one carries on on the back.