Armada rules
Armada is sea battle with a small stock of weapons. The board, the fleet and the aim are the classic game's: ten hidden ships each, and the first to sink the other fleet wins. The difference is in what you may do on your turn. Besides the plain shot, each player carries two torpedoes, two air strikes and one radar, and choosing when to spend them is most of the game.
The board and the fleet
Each player has a grid ten squares by ten, with columns A to J and rows 1 to 10. The fleet is the same ten ships: one battleship of four squares, two cruisers of three, three destroyers of two and four boats of one. Ships lie horizontally or vertically and may not touch, not even corner to corner.
The sea battle rules cover placement in more detail, and everything there holds here too.
Taking turns
The first player opens, and then the turn passes back and forth. Each turn you do one thing: fire a plain shot, or use one weapon from your stock.
- Any attack that hits at least one deck earns another turn. A plain shot, an air strike or a torpedo alike. You keep going until an attack finds nothing.
- An attack that hits nothing passes the turn.
- The radar always takes the whole turn, because it attacks nothing.
Plain shots are unlimited. You may not fire at a square that is already marked on your chart.
If your move timer runs out (15 seconds per move at a friend's table), the game fires a plain shot at a random open square for you. Whoever opens the table can turn the timer off before the start, and then nobody is hurried.
The weapons
Every player gets the same stock in every game; no setting changes it.
| Weapon | How many | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Torpedo | 2 | Runs along a row or column from the edge and hits the first unmarked deck in its way |
| Air strike | 2 | An aircraft drops five bombs on five random squares of a 3×3 square |
| Radar | 1 | Shows for a few seconds which squares of a 3×3 square hold a deck |
The torpedo
You choose a row or a column and a direction: →, ↓, ← or ↑. The torpedo is launched from the opposite edge and travels square by square.
It passes over squares already marked on your chart — misses, hits and wrecks — and stops at the first unmarked square that holds a deck. That deck is hit exactly as by a plain shot: a hit, or a sinking with its ring. Every unmarked square of water it crossed on the way is marked as a miss. If there is no ship in its path at all, the whole unmarked part of the line becomes misses.
So a torpedo never comes back empty-handed: it strikes a deck or clears the rest of the line, and usually clears some water on the way. A line with no unmarked squares left cannot be chosen.
In the game you aim it by hovering over a square. The torpedo runs along that square's row (→ or ←) or its column (↓ or ↑), and the R key turns the direction.
The air strike
The air strike comes in from the air: an aircraft crosses the square and lets its bombs go as it passes over them.
You choose the centre of a 3×3 square. The whole square must lie on the board, so the centre cannot be on an edge row or column, and at least one of its squares must still be unmarked.
Five shells fall on five different squares out of the nine, picked at random by the game, and nobody can work out in advance where they will land. A shell that lands on a square already fired at is lost. That is deliberate: if the game aimed only at open squares, you could pick a square with exactly five left and be sure of hitting every one of them.
The shells fall one after another. If one of them sinks a ship and its ring closes a square another shell was headed for, that shell is lost too. If the last enemy ship goes down mid-strike, the rest do not fall. Any hit earns another turn.
The radar
You choose the centre of a 3×3 square, again wholly on the board. The radar does no damage and marks nothing on your chart.
For about three seconds the square lights up and shows which of its unmarked squares hold a deck and which are water. Then it disappears.
After that you have only your memory: reloading the page does not show it again, and you act on what you saw on your next turn.
Your opponent sees a faint outline of the swept square on their own board. They know they have been scanned — they know their own ships, after all — but they are not told what you found.
When a ship sinks
When the last deck of a ship is hit, by a shot, a torpedo or an air-strike bomb, it sinks, and every square around it is marked as a miss, corners included. Because ships may not touch, nothing could have been there.
The ring matters more here than in the classic game: a torpedo passes over marked squares and an air-strike bomb that lands on one is lost, so every ring changes where your weapons are worth aiming.
Winning and draws
Sink all ten enemy ships. You may also resign at any time.
At a table with a friend, either player may offer a draw, and the other accepts or declines. Firing instead of answering declines it too. You can offer once per move.
Playing a friend
Open a table and send your friend the link. You each lay out your fleet; when your friend has placed theirs, they press Ready, and whoever opened the table presses Start once their own fleet is down. Nothing is fired, and no clock runs, until then.
After a game, Play again sets up the next one at the same table and keeps the score. The seats swap, so the other player moves first. There are no table settings to choose: every game has the same stock.
Playing the computer
The computer comes in three levels — easy, medium and hard — as in classic sea battle. It has the same weapons as you, and like you it sees what its radar showed only until its next move.
Ready? Play Armada against the computer, or read how to win at Armada first.