Background: The informant loves games of all sorts: board games, drinking games, card games. He thinks they are a great way to be social, be involved and do something active with friends, so people aren’t passively on their phones.

KD: Battleshots is a large scale drinking version of the classic game Battleship. When we played we converted a ping pong table and some bed sheets into a Battleship game board, so on each side of the ping pong table we made a grid exactly the same as the Battleship. And using 2x4s we made larger versions of the game pieces and drilled holes in them so you could drop a shot glass in each spot. So, the aircraft carrier had five shots on it. The destroyer had four shots. The little petrol boat had two shots. It’s exactly like the game but with alcohol. So, we put a thick bed sheet in between the two sides of the ping pong table so you couldn’t see your opponent’s side. You orient your table however you want. And, different from the board game, we created sea mines, or something, it’s, we had some name for the, but, on your ships you had shots with whiskey, or tequila, or your alcohol of choice; in these sea mines we’d put a reed solo cup with beer or seltzer or wine or something and during game play, it’s, B4 hit, alright B7 hit and then your fill out, you sunk my battleship, whatever, uh, but, every time the other person hit your boat you took the shot that was in the place and you drink. In the event they call out sea mine coordinates, or like C12, somebody standing by the table would take that red solo cup filled with beer, hand it over to the other side, and the person calling the shot would need to drink it. Gameplay cannot continue until that solo cup is finished. Some games we’d play with seven sea mines, some games we’d play with one sea mine. And each player had a grid on, er, a little piece of paper with a grid so they can track where they were calling and how they were hitting, bu, otherwise it was identical to the classic board game… with alcohol.

Me: Do you think other people play this?

KD: Oh, yeah. It’s now on Pinterest but we were playing this a long time ago. It’s kinda like large Jenga; now it’s everywhere but we don’t know if wee invented it we just didn’t see it anywhere else

Context of the performance: This was told to me during an in person conversation.

Thoughts: It’s interesting that the informant and his friends though they were the first to come up with it. I had never heard of it so when they explained that now it’s all over Pinterest and has become popular, we can see that it exists in multiplicity. The concept itself is intriguing since it takes an existing game and transforms it into a drinking game. Their invention of a sea mine sounds similar to certain other drinking games, like Rage Cage, that have an exception cup that is completely full to a different gameplay otherwise in the form of shots are slightly filled cups. The red solo cup itself is so closely tied to drinking games that its use here makes a lot of sense.