Some days you wake up, check the headlines, and realize we’re doing the “is reading allowed” debate again. This week’s flashpoint is the phrase Battleship rulebook included, which is apparently now a political statement instead of a normal thing you’d expect in a box that costs money.
In Washington, the newly rebranded Secretary of War Pete Hegseth (a title the administration brought back because “Secretary of Defense” sounded like homework) is demanding Hasbro remove the Battleship rulebook from future releases. His argument is simple: instructions are for cowards, and paper is basically socialism.
Hasbro, a company famous for many things including sometimes acting like it’s allergic to consumers, drew the line here. Not at pricing, not at shipping, not at the “what do you mean my kid ate a peg” issue. The rulebook. That’s the hill.
Battleship rulebook included and the war on knowing things
According to sources who were present for the incident and definitely did not just make it up for attention, the whole mess started when Senator Mark Kelly “humiliated” Hegseth in a game of Battleship.
If you’ve ever played Battleship, you know it’s less “naval warfare simulation” and more “polite mutual guessing until someone gets lucky.” It is a grid, some little ships, and the creeping suspicion that your opponent is lying because they said “miss” way too fast.
Still, Hegseth took the L personally. He reportedly sank zero ships, accused the concept of probability of being “woke,” and stormed off to do what all serious strategists do after a tactical failure: film a rant from a bathroom.
In the video, he demanded Hasbro stop including the rulebook because it “stands in the way of a True Alpha Mentality,” which is a sentence you only say out loud if you’re trying to sell supplements or avoid reading your own email.
Hasbro’s bold stance: please stop making us pretend rules don’t exist
Hasbro CEO Chris Cocks responded with the corporate version of a sigh. The company’s statement was basically: yes, we see the tantrum, no, we are not turning Battleship into a vibes-based experience where the strongest chin wins.
And honestly, you can mock Hasbro for a lot, but “a game with no instructions becomes a disaster” is one of the most true things anyone has said this year.
Because once you remove the rulebook, you don’t get “freedom.” You get a room full of people arguing for 45 minutes about whether ships can touch, whether you get another shot after a hit, and whether “I said B-7” counts if you meant “D-7 in your heart.”
It’s the same energy as showing up to a potluck with raw pasta and telling everyone to “figure it out like men.”
Also, the irony is painful: Battleship’s rules are not complicated. They’re basically: place ships, take turns, track hits and misses, sink ships, feel smug. That’s it. The rulebook is mostly there to stop the one guy who insists “my family always played it with airstrikes.”
The Pentagon’s new doctrine: no rulebooks, more “Salvo,” less shame
This is where it gets fun, because Battleship already has an “advanced play” thing in some versions. There’s a Salvo option that lets you launch multiple shots based on how many ships you still have, which is a neat way to speed the game up and make it feel slightly less like spreadsheet bingo.
Naturally, Hegseth’s camp loves this. They want Salvo mode only, all the time, with no written explanation, because learning by losing repeatedly is “character building.” Which is also what people say right before they reinvent the wheel in the worst way possible.
One leaked proposal allegedly suggested replacing the instruction sheet with a single card that reads:
“REAL PATRIOTS DON’T ASK QUESTIONS. PLACE BOATS. YELL COORDINATES. ACCEPT DESTINY.”
The same proposal also requested “adult assembly required” be changed to “adult masculinity required,” which feels like a label you’d find on a protein tub that tastes like drywall.
If you’re thinking “this can’t be real,” correct. But it’s the kind of fake that feels emotionally true, which is basically the national brand now.
Senator Kelly’s classified strategy: read the box, don’t peek, stop yelling
Kelly, for his part, wasn’t exactly sympathetic. He described Hegseth as “just bad at the game,” and if you’ve ever watched someone lose at Battleship, you know the specific kind of bad he means.
There’s a special flavor of failure where a player gets a hit… and then guesses the exact same square again next turn. Not as a joke. Not as a mind game. Just a full system reboot happening in public.
Kelly also accused Hegseth of cheating by leaning over to peek at ship placement. Hegseth denied it, explaining he was “gathering intel,” which is a nice way to say “I forgot this is a children’s board game and not a Tom Clancy paperback.”
If you want more practice reading rules without your brain trying to escape out the window, Kraken Opus has other articles that may help you stay calm in the presence of written instructions, like What Are Utility Artifacts in MTG. It’s not Battleship, but it’s still about tools, choices, and the quiet power of not panicking.
The real victims: parents, pegs, and the rulebook economy
The weirdest part of this story is how plausible the consequences are.
If Hasbro ever actually shipped Battleship without instructions, customer service would become a full-time crisis hotline staffed by people whispering, “no, your destroyer cannot teleport.”
Parents would be forced to improvise. Teachers would send passive-aggressive notes home. And somewhere, a kid would decide the red pegs mean “super hit,” and the white pegs mean “psychic hit,” and now you’re raising a tiny war criminal.
Also, let’s be real: rulebooks are doing work. They keep people from turning every game night into a debate club. They are the last thin paper wall between “family fun” and “my uncle is explaining maritime law again.”
If you need a place to store all the things you swear you’ll organize one day (rulebooks, spare parts, regrets), you could do worse than building a binder system. There’s even a guide for that: What to Put in a Magic: The Gathering Trade Binder. Different hobby, same human problem.
So yes, Battleship rulebook included, and the republic survives another day
In the end, this is what the fight is really about: whether we admit that rules exist, or keep pretending everything should be “intuitive” while we scream at each other across a plastic grid.
Hasbro will keep selling Battleship with the rulebook. Hegseth will keep performing outrage like it’s a cardio routine. And the rest of us will keep doing what we always do: trying to enjoy a simple game while someone nearby insists the instructions are “optional.”
Which is a cute belief, right up until they start firing at “the vibes around C-4.”