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Description

Playing battleships using (in our case) poker chips on a 1:25k map. Could be fun to dress these up as UFOs (especially with other UFO themed activities).
This can also be used to practice simple message passing for Communicator.
This has worked very well with both Cubs and Scouts.

Resources

For each pair of teams, two identical 1:25k maps. The laminated ones are good if you want to use whiteboard pens to mark out the area.
Paper and pencil for note taking. Grid paper could have helped if our Scouts had worked out how to take advantage of that.

Teams sit at tables opposite eachother in the scout hut. Some kind of shield is useful to ensure they cannot see the other team's map.
(If you want to practice radio comms procedure and phonetic numbering then you can add this in)

Instructions

Split into an even number of teams, arrange opposing pairs opposite eachother in the hut apart from eachother so that they cannot see the other team's map.
Find a 10x10 grid square on the map to work in. This can be marked out if you can draw on the maps, or write up the bounding box where it can be seen.
For example (96,04) to (06,14) gives a bounding box made up of the 96 and 06 vertical grid lines and the 04 and 14 horizontal lines. The bottom left corner is 9604. The top right corner is 0313.

Each team has 10 UFOs (we used 40mm poker chips which are heavy enough to stay put and fit nicely inside a grid square). These are placed on the map.

As for battleships - take it in turns to pass coordinates to the other team. The other team reports whether or not it is a hit and the number of near misses. Near misses are in the 8 grid squares surrounding the target square.
When a location is hit the chip is removed and placed alongside. (Placing it in a pile not protected by the shield allowed the opposing team to see their winnings which heightened the contest)

This can also be used as an exercise in communications using phonetic number passing (ZeeRo, Won, Too, Tree, Fower, Fife, Six, Seven, Ate, Niner) if you want to teach radiocomms. I used this notation when relaying coordinates to raise familiarity. For example
"Scott from Richard, Firing Coordinates Numbers Niner Six Zeero Fower Over",
"Richard from Scot. Roger. Niner Siz Zeero Fower. No Hits, Near Misses Two, Over".
You could take this to full procedure if you want, maybe adding to the military feel, but it will slow things down. Use walkie talkies if you want.

We played until we ran out of time then scored based on number of hits.

The Scouts could have increased hit rate by using grid paper for note keeping and writing near miss counts in the grid (like Windows Minesweeper). None thought to do this. In future we could help hint at this by giving them pre-printed 10x10 grids to work on for note keeping. They can then mark hits, misses and number of near misses in each grid they try.

Tags

• grid references
• Phonetic numbers

Badge Links

• Communicator - Procedure
• Navigator - 4-figure reference