Schedule

Tag claims: through June 25

Tag suggestions: June 21–25

Nominations: June 23–ongoing (please nominate before the game as much as possible; nominations will be checked once daily during the game)

Prompting: June 30–ongoing

Sign-ups: June 30–July 9 (or until the cap of 280 sign-ups is reached)

Team assignments: no later than July 11

Game begins: July 12

There is no set schedule for the game; it all depends on how quickly the teams surmount their challenges. We estimate it will last about three weeks.

After one team wins the game and another comes in second by accomplishing all their board 3 goals, there will be a 48-hour editing period, and then works will be revealed. Authors will remain anonymous for two weeks.

Links

Battleship Discord Server (not required to play, but strongly encouraged)

Freeform Tag Claims and Suggestions | Fandoms and Ships Tagset

Sign-Up Form (coming when sign-ups open)

Prompt Collection (AO3) | Prompt Collection (Automagic App)

Grape Collection | Lemon Collection | Pear Collection | Strawberry Collection | Main Collection

Mod contact email: battleshipexchange@gmail.com

Go to this page to view the rules with the expanding sections collapsed.

( FAQ )

( Nominations )

( Sign-ups )

( Prompts )

( Playing the game )

( After the game ends )

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battleshipex

Community tag suggestions

Each round of Battleship has a set list of freeform tags that must be used to win the game. To help build this list, we need your help! If you won a tag claim last year, please use it now. If not, or if you want to suggest more tags in addition to the ones you're claiming, please do that too. Both tag claims and tag suggestions close June 25.

Tags won last round

Tag choices were won in one of five ways last round:

Member of Team Tunnel
Member of Team Crystal
Member of Team Volcano/Mermaid AND posted 2+ treats during anon period
Posted 2+ works for giftless/treatless people
Correct guess in Battleship 2024 Board 2 logic puzzle

Tags that were won are guaranteed to appear in the game, as long as they follow the guidelines below.

If you aren't sure whether you won a tag, please file a ticket on Discord.

Tag requirements

Requirements for a freeform tag:

It is either a canonical OR 1 to 3 words long.
It is a freeform tag (not a category or an archive warning).
It is not fandom-specific.
It does not refer to the format (e.g. "podfic" "works in English") or structure ("POV 2nd Person" "Readerfic") of the work.
It is equally applicable to fic, podfic, and art.

Try to avoid tags that would require longer fic to fill (e.g. casefic).

"Canonical" means that AO3 has marked the tag as commonly used. To check whether a tag is canonical, go to https://archiveofourown.org/tags/search, enter the tag in Tag Name, and select "Freeform" under Type and "Canonical" under Wrangling Status. If this search doesn't bring up that exact tag, it's not canonical. Please check all tags of 4 words or more before putting them in the spreadsheet.

All freeform tags must meet these requirements, whether they're won tags or community-suggested tags.

How to suggest or claim a tag

Please put community-suggested tags in the 2025 tag suggestion spreadsheet. You can add as many tags as you like. These tags are not guaranteed to get into the final tagset, and we may add tags that aren't in this list, but we're likely to take a lot of tags from this list as we build the boards.

Please claim won tags on the won tag choices spreadsheet. Enter your AO3 name, tag choice, and tag claim reason. If you have multiple claims, put in one tag per line. Tags without a corresponding name will not count, so make sure to enter your name on the same line as the tag. If your AO3 name has changed since last year, please let us know!