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The origin of the game
Battleship, the war of sight against strike
Battleship was born in the early twentieth century as a pencil-and-paper game. In the years of the First World War, soldiers and young people drew hidden fleets on squared paper and hunted each other's ships by calling out coordinates blind. It was sold as printed pads in 1931, and in 1967 it entered millions of homes with its plastic boards. Its essence never changed: to find an enemy you cannot see, with reason and probability alone.
This is why the game sits so surprisingly well on a mythic opposition. In Greek thought war had two faces: the metis of Athena, the cunning intelligence of strategy; and the bia of Ares, raw force and blind fury. Athena sees before she wins; Ares only strikes. All the tension of Battleship lies exactly between these two: to read the hidden knowledge, or to charge upon it.
At House of Zij you play out this ancient opposition. You choose to be Athena or Ares and enter the war against the other. The board is the same, but your god grants a different power: Athena sees a region, Ares strikes a wide field. Wars are won not by the arm but by the will that guides the force, the ancients said. Here you put that to the test.
Wars are won not by the arm but by the will that guides the force.