Boothook's Rumbling Guide

	Not everyone puzzles the same way.
	Developing a unique approach to a puzzle or challenge that works for the individual is the most important aspect of mastering the craft. These pictures and/or suggestions derive from personal opinions and are meant as guidelines only. They are in no way hard and fast rules as to the "correct" way to do this puzzle or game action.

This guide to the Rumble game is the product of Boothook's study of the game.

Striking Strategies

What Strikes can do

Strikes do a couple of things...

They flatten the board, which sometimes makes it harder for the opponent to build sprinkle attacks
They sometimes turn your opponent's charged balls into bruises
They can scramble the balls that already exist on your opponent's board
They are sometimes harder to clear than sprinkles
They sometimes push the other balls around the screen

The downside to strikes is that they take longer to build than sprinkles, and it can get really bad if your opponent interrupts the strikes that you are building.

Also, if you do too many strikes, a turbo-sprinkle opponent might be able to easily break through your strikes. This is because it takes a long time to make strikes, which means that your opponent has a long time to clear their board. This is also because strikes will sometimes form large groups if you make too many of them. I know it sounds unintuitive that a couple strikes can scramble the board, but too many strikes can unscramble the board. However, too many strikes can be just as bad as too many sprinkles.

What your Strike attacks look like

This is a bit confusing. Strike attacks vary in width, from very narrow (3-wide), to very wide (full width). Strike attacks are generated from the top section of your drop pattern. These attacks might weave in-between balls that are already on your opponent's board, so your attacks sometimes look much different from your drop pattern.

If you pop a combo with your left launcher, then your strike will appear on the top-right corner of your opponent's board. If you pop a combo with your right launcher, then your strike will appear on the top-left corner of your opponent's board. The strike pattern is the top-section of your bludgeon's drop pattern, but it generates strikes from the bottom-up. For example, if you send a 1-row strike attack, then it will use the bottom row of your strike pattern. If you send a 3-row strike attack, then it will use the bottom 3 rows of your strike pattern. If your strike attack is larger than the number of rows in your bludgeon's strike pattern, then it repeats the top 4 rows until it has enough rows.

The drop pattern that is shown for each bludgeon is misleading, as the drop pattern is shown as a rectangular even though the game board is hexagonal. The diagonal lines in the drop pattern might actually form a solid line, or they might be completely separate from each other. You see, strikes actually stagger when they are pushed onto the board. For example, strikes coming from the left side of the board stagger down and to the right. This means that if a diagonal line is oriented down and to the left, then it might form a solid line if it is pushed from the left side of the board.

Beginning the charge as soon as possible

In all the Rumble videos I've watched, people are aiming before they start charging. This is bad. Here is what you should be doing...

Charge the 1st ball
Launch the 1st charged ball
Hold down a mouse button while the 1st charged ball is in the air
The 2nd ball will now charge at the earliest possible moment

Basically, the 2nd ball will charge the split second after the 1st ball resolves its turn. Having the 2nd ball automatically charge is faster than manually clicking the mouse as fast as you can right after the 1st ball resolves its turn.

Charging even if you don't need to

Unless you are trying to turbo-sprinkle, you should start each turn with the mouse button pressed (as opposed to the mouse button unpressed). If you don't know if you need a charged ball, then randomly pick a mouse button to hold down. If it turns out that you needed that ball charged, then you saved yourself some time. If it turns out that you didn't need that ball charged, then you can always release the mouse button to fire the ball before it finishes charging. In the worst case scenario, you fully charge the ball before you launch it, and it turns back into a normal ball when it lands.

Launching the charge as soon as possible

This is what happens when you charge a ball...

The ball makes a low-pitched noise
The ball starts making a high-pitched noise
The ball makes a bright flash
The ball starts glowing (alternates between dark and light)

In all of the Rumble videos I've watched, everyone waits for step 4 before they let go of the ball. This is BAD!

This is what the ball sounds like when people charge it... bbrrrrrrrrrrrrEEEEEEEEEEEEE ("bbrrrrrrrrrrrr" is the low-pitched noise, and "EEEEEEEEEEEEE" is the high-pitched noise) This is what the ball should sound like when you charge it... bbrrrrrrrrrrrrE

You should let go of the ball the split-second after you hear the high-pitched noise start. Don't wait for the bright flash to finish, and definitely don't wait for the ball to start glowing.

Holding a strike trigger in one of your hands

If you are making a combo, and one of the balls in your launchers matches one of the groups in your combo, then you might want to hold onto it. This will allow you to quickly set off your combo when needed. Keep in mind that this still has some risk to it. If your opponent sends you a combo while you are charging a ball, then you won't have time to use the ball you have saved.

If you want to hold onto a combo for a while, then it is safer to make sprinkle attacks until you are ready to pop your combo. You'll still be in trouble if you receive an attack while a ball is flying through the air, but that is a much lower chance than receiving an attack while a ball is charging.

Not using the full combo that you have been building

Due to the random nature of the game, it sometimes will take a really long time for your launchers to get a ball that matches the color of the first group in a combo. You should try to memorize as much of the combo order as possible. At the very least, remember where the first and second groups of the combo are. If your launchers aren't getting the color of the first group, then you might want to pop the second group instead. This is especially important in the beginning of the game, due to the fact that the board is flat, which means that your charged groups are probably blocking you from doing anything besides build a combo.

Building Strike attacks

In the beginning of the game, you want to build your combos in the middle of the board. The reason is because you want to attack with sprinkles and strikes, and the easiest place to make sprinkle attacks is on the sides of the board.

There are a couple of alternate strategies that are used to determine where you want to build your combos. Some people choose the largest groups on the board, as this can add more volume to their strikes. Some people choose the smallest groups on the board, as this will leave the larger groups for future sprinkles attacks. Some people just pick whatever is the first group they can find. All of these strategies are valid.

This next part might be a bit confusing... If your board has a long-and-thin group (like what you get from leather glove strikes), then you want to get rid of that group as soon as possible. The reason is because the next strike you get might scramble up that line, which would make it much-much-much harder to clear. If you think there might be enough time to pop the long-and-thin group in a combo before you receive your next strike, then do that. Otherwise, you want to mash your mouse button, so that you can quickly clear the long-and-thin group as a sprinkle attack.

If you are shooting a charged ball at a group of 2, then you usually have multiple spots where the ball could land. These spots are generally right next to each other, but it is still important to be aware of them. Even though these spots are right next to each other, they block slightly different parts of the board. This is where you think ahead... Look at the balls in your launcher queues. You generally don't want to block part of the board that matches a ball in your launcher queues, because you could be using that part of the board in the near future to add a group to your combo.

Building combos that can't be interrupted with strikes

This might be confusing too... Pretend that the board has a "sea level", which is the highest row on your board that is mostly empty space. If the opponent sends you a strike attack that is 4-rows high, then the lowest row that strike can scramble is about 4 rows lower than the sea-level.

If the sides of your board are much lower than the middle of your board, then you can safely build combos on the sides of the board. If the opponent interrupts you with a small strike, it won't destroy the combo you have been building because the strike won't be able to reach the parts of the board that has your charged groups. This is the best way to make strike attacks in the late-game. I think that this strategy is often overlooked because people are quick to turn the sides of their board into sprinkle attacks.

Keep in mind that this strategy can be countered if the opponent sends you a large-narrow strike. Fortunately, large strikes that happen in the late game are almost always wide. So the solution is that you don't want to take so long building a late-game combo that the opponent has time to make a large combo.

Also, if you launch a charged ball at the middle of a large group, then it will be really-really hard for your opponent to interrupt this group with strikes. Keep in mind the key idea is that you are launching a charged ball at the MIDDLE of a large group. If you launch a charged ball at the EDGE of a large group, then it still might be easily interruptable.

If possible, the early groups in your combos should be hard to interrupt, because they are on the board for the longest amount of time. The later groups in your combos can be the more fragile ones, especially if one of your launchers has a ball that can pop the whole combo.

Turning your opponent's sprinkles into strikes

The easiest way to make strikes is to form charged groups out of the sprinkle attacks that you get. Sprinkle attacks tend to form large groups, and it is hard for the opponent to stop you from building a combo with large groups. If the opponent makes a strike that pushes your charged balls, then your charged balls will probably land next to some other ball in the same group.

The more colors that are in your opponent's 1-row sprinkle pattern, then the easier it is to build strikes off of your opponent's sprinkles. The brass knuckles have all 5-colors in their 1-row sprinkle pattern, which is why it is the worst bludgeon in the game to use against a strike-heavy opponent. 4-color sprinkle patterns aren't really going to slow down a strike-heavy person either. 3-color 1-row sprinkle patterns are the ideal number of colors to slow down a strike-heavy opponent. This is the reason why the Fist sprinkles are better than many of the other sprinkle patterns in the game. This is also why the bone sprinkles aren't as good as many people think they are.

Placing a strike trigger in sync with your opponent's sprinkles

This is an extension of the 1.10 lesson. You can't always build entire combos from opponent sprinkles. However, you can usually line-up the first group of your combo with your opponent's sprinkle pattern. If you do this, then your opponent won't be able to bury your combo with sprinkles.

You must be aware of your opponent's sprinkle pattern! For example, against Skull Rings, you don't want to line up your first group with column 1 of your board, because column 1 of the Skull Ring sprinkle pattern alternates between colors in multi-line sprinkle attacks. Look at the drop pattern for your opponent's bludgeon. Notice which columns have the same color in both rows of their sprinkle pattern. Those are the columns you should use when lining-up the first group of your combos.

Most importantly, notice the Hammer's sprinkle pattern. Columns 1, 3, and 7 of its one-row sprinkles get buried by its multi-row sprinkles. This means that you might not want to use those columns as the first group of a combo!

Your opponent can still interrupt your combo with a strike attack, so you don't want to take too long to build these combos unless you think that your opponent has given up on making strike attacks.

Letting part of your strikes get buried with other strikes

If you are building a large combo, then you will probably have to bury parts of your combo under other parts of your combo. In this case, it is important that the first group of your combo stays unburied, so that you can eventually pop the combo! Ideally, the first group of your combo would line up with your opponent's sprinkle pattern. Keep in mind that having only 1 unburied group is risky. It is much safer to have 2 unburied groups. Also, note that when an opponent's strike attack scrambles your board, it usually scrambles an entire section of your board. Therefore, you shouldn't have these two unburied groups next to each other, because if one of them gets scrambled, it is very likely that the other group would also get scrambled.

Separating your opponent's sprinkles into separate groups

An example of how you can use carefully-placed blocks to create multiple groups out of monochromatic sprinkle attacks.

This is an important strategy if you want to make large combos out of the opponent's sprinkle attacks. As in example, let's pretend that the opponent is using his Fists. His Fist sprinkle pattern has red in columns 1-3.

Now suppose that he just sent us a sprinkle attack. Launch a charged red ball at columns 1-3 to create a red charged group. Now launch any non-red ball at column 2. When you get your next sprinkle attack, the new red balls will get stuck on the non-red ball, which means that you will now have 2 separate groups of red balls. Now you can launch a charged red ball at this new red group. You can repeat this process until you are done making your combo.

If you launch a non-red ball in column 2, then it will catch any sprinkles that land in columns 1-3. If you launch a non-red ball in column 5, then it will catch any sprinkles that land in columns 4-6. With practice, you'll be able to separate any bludgeon's sprinkle pattern into separate groups.

Exception: The Skull Ring sprinkle pattern is special in the sense that it has a 5-wide group in its 1-row sprinkle pattern. Since each ball you launch only catches sprinkles in 3 of the columns, you will actually need to launch 2 balls if you want to separate the 5-wide group into 2 separate groups.

In the picture on the right, I launched non-red balls onto the left side of the screen to separate my opponent's Fist sprinkles into 3 red groups.

Using the normal 1-row board drops to help your strikes

You know how after you shoot a couple of balls, your screen shakes, and then 1-row of balls appears at the top of your screen? These 1-row board drops can be used to make your strikes more useful.

We already learned that strikes are more effective if they can weave in-between balls that already exist on your opponent's board. It turns out that it might not be very useful to have your strikes weave in-between your previous strikes, espically if your strike pattern has columns that are a single color. This is because you don't want to risk that your strikes might combine to form large groups that are easily dropped.

The best idea is to space out your strikes so that your opponent receives a 1-row board drop in-between your strikes. The 1-row board drops are very different from your strike pattern, so they scramble up the board very well.

The problem is that there isn't a good way to know when your opponent has received a 1-row board drop. If your opponent is building combos, then it will take them much longer to receive a 1-row board drop than if they were turbo-sprinkling. You can guess how fast your opponent sprinkles from how often you receive sprinkle attacks, and you can guess how fast your opponent strikes from how often you receive strike attacks. The hard part is guessing if your opponent is currently build strikes or sprinkles. If the opponent mysteriously stops sending you sprinkle attacks, then they are probably building a strike attack. If the opponent is sending you regular sprinkle attacks, then they are probably doing 100% sprinkles.

Counting the number of rows in your strikes

Some bludgeons are only good at certain strike sizes, so it is important to calculate the number of rows that each of your attacks will make.

Small attacks usually have height equal to "number of groups in combo - 1". Large attacks are usually "number of groups in combo - 2".

Our first example is the blackjack. If you look at the blackjack's pattern, you will notice that it is really-really horrible if the strike size is 6 or higher. It generally is a really bad idea to make blackjack strikes this large unless you really-really think that the opponent won't be able to clear it.

Our second example is the gaff. Notice that the bottom two rows of the strike pattern are the same. The worst case that can happen is we send a full-width 6-row combo, quickly followed by a combo that contains at least 2-rows. In this case, the top of the 6-row combo is the bottom 2 rows of the strike pattern, AND the bottom of the other strike is the bottom 2 rows of the strike pattern. This means that we would send a giant block of 4 identical rows, which is really-really-really bad.

This is where the 1-row board drops can really help you. If you send a strike with the rope coils that ends with the bottom 2 rows of its strike pattern, then you can safely follow it with another strike after your opponent has received a 1-row board drop (see section 1.15 for how guess if the opponent has received a 1-row board drop). In the case that the top of your 1st strike matches the bottom of your 2nd strike, you will be safe from unavoidable death if your opponent has a 1-row board drop in-between these strikes.

Large strikes versus small strikes

Small strikes are harder to interrupt than large strikes. Small strikes are also better at giving constant pressure to your opponent. Unfortunately, small strikes might not be very good at bruising your opponent's charged groups, and too many small strikes might cause giant groups to form on your opponent's board.

The main problem with large strikes is that when you are building a large strike, there is a lot of time that you aren't attacking your opponent. If you opponent is trying to clear their board as quickly as possible, then you might have a problem because they can shoot many more uncharged balls than you can shoot charged balls.

The advantages of large strikes is that only large strikes can interrupt the combos build from section 1.09, and very large strikes will generally cause you to win the match if made in the late game.

Wide strikes versus narrow strikes

Strikes made entirely of 3-ball groups tend to be narrow, and strikes made with mostly large groups tend to be wide.

Injecting bruises into your strikes

This dangerous strategy can be used to make your strikes harder to clear. You know how sometimes when you pop a group, loose balls fall, which makes the "crash" noise? If loose blocks fall during a combo, then they turn some of your strike attack into bruises. I don't think that this increases the volume of your attacks, but it can increase the quality of your attacks.

You can add bruises up to 1/2 of the total strike volume. This is the formula that I use.

max bruises = (number of groups - 1)* 4.5 For example, if the number of groups in a combo is 4, then we have... (4-1)*4.5 = 3*4.5 = 27/2 = 13.5 = 13 (I round down if my answer isn't a whole number) This means that if I want to have the maximum number of bruises in a 4-group strike attack, then I will add 13 loose blocks to my combo.

This strategy is dangerous for 2 reasons:

If the opponent interrupts you with a strike while you have a bunch of loose blocks on the board, your whole board might get very messed up.
It takes longer to make a strike with maxed bruises than it takes to make a strike with no extra bruises. This means that unless you are really fast, your opponent will finish their strike before you finish yours, which means that there is a high chance that your strike will get interrupted. The hammer's highest quality attacks are when you max the bruises in every strike, making the hammer the most stressful bludgeon in the game.

Also keep in mind that if you are building strike attacks with max bruises, then you probably have long periods of time that you aren't attacking your opponent (which can be really bad). Constant pressure can be better than quality attacks.

Creating bruises instead of sprinkles

This is really important strategy that people should be using. If you can make a really big sprinkle attack, you probably should be making a strike instead. The balls you were about to drop as a giant sprinkle attack would probably be better used for injecting bruises in a strike. If you think that a giant sprinkle attack will quickly defeat the opponent, then go for it. But if you are making too many sprinkle attacks, then you are probably just making giant groups on the opponent's screen that are easily clearable.

Basically, all you do is drop a large amount of loose blocks IN A COMBO, which will cause you to send a strike attack with many bruises.

This is the best way to fight turbo-sprinklers. If you have a problem defeating turbo-sprinklers, it is probably because they are better at sprinkling than you are. They want you to send them large sprinkle attacks, because they know that they are better than you at sending back the sprinkle attacks that they receive (this is called "sprinkle tennis"). If you send them bruises instead of sprinkles, then your chances at winning will increase.

It might be argued that the Chain wants to send large amounts of large sprinkles, especially if the opponent's board is very uneven, but the other bludgeons really should be doing this. This is also the ultimate anti-Fish-bludgeon strategy, as it allows you to attack your opponent while avoiding "sprinkle tennis", which is important because you shouldn't sprinkle tennis against a Fish bludgeon.

Making a bruise farm

This is an extension of section 1.13. Let's use a Fist opponent as an example. This might be an over-complicated example, but it should be helpful. Let's assume that the opponent's sprinkle pattern is Red/Yellow/Orange (RRRYYYOOO).

Make an orange charged group somewhere in columns 7-9.
Make a red charged group somewhere in columns 1-3.
Drop a non-red block in column 2, which will separate your red charged group from future sprinkle attacks.
Make other attacks, while you wait for columns 1-3 to collect a large amount of sprinkles. Make sure that you don't turn this new red group into a charged group! This is a "bruise farm", and it is a good way to generate a very large amount of loose blocks that can later be turned into bruises.
When you have a large amount of loose blocks in columns 1-3, add a couple of more groups to your combo, and then pop the orange charged group that is in columns 7-9. You will now send a combo that contains many bruises.

In the worst case scenario, your opponent interrupts you with a strike, which might cause the 2 red groups to fuse together. This doesn't really hurt you at all, since it should bes really easy to clear the giant red group.

In the above picture, I started the bruise farm by making an aqua charged group in columns 1-3. Then I launched balls in column 1, to separate the aqua group from future sprinkle attacks. Then I made other attacks while I waited for columns 1-3 to get filled with sprinkles. My bruise farm collected 11 red sprinkles, then I popped the combo by shooting the aqua group.

However,

Hiding your strikes

In the late game, if you completely stop making sprinkle attacks, then you're obviously trying to build a large strike. Which means that I'll quickly send you a couple of strike attacks to bruise your charged groups.

The solution is to continue making sprinkle attacks while you build your late-game strike.

Varying the times between your strikes

If you are predictable with the times between your strikes, then this is what I'll do...

Build a couple of charged groups that are hard to interrupt (see above)
Wait for your small strike attack
Build the rest of my combo
Guess when you have started a new combo, and send you my combo. I have to send the combo early because there is a delay that occurs before my attack reaches your screen. I'm basically guessing that you will be in the middle of a strike attack when my attack reaches your screen.

The solution is "vary the time between your strikes".

Refraining from making strikes when the opponent is likely to make a strike

If your opponent is being predictable with the times between their strikes, then you can do this strategy. If you think that your opponent will be sending you a strike in the next couple of seconds, then you probably shouldn't start a new combo unless you can make charged groups that are difficult to interrupt. In this case, wait until you receive your opponent's strike, then start a new combo.

What to do if you are about to receive a strike attack

On the turn before you receive a strike attack from your opponent, the game makes a warning noise. A low-pitched warning noise means that you will be receiving a small-to-medium strike, and a high-pitched warning noise means that you will be receiving a large strike. The game also has a picture of a fist, that flashes over the corners of the screen from which the attack will appear. For example, if a picture of a fist appears over the top-left corner of your screen, then you will be receiving an attack from the top-left corner of your screen.

If you receive a strike warning while you have charged groups on the board that might get interrupted by this strike, then you might want to break your combo early (if you can). If there is part of the board that you can drop as a sprinkle attack, and you are afraid that it will get horribly scrambled by the attack that you are about to receive, then you might want to pop that (if you can).

If you receive a strike warning, and you decide to continue making a strike, then you should form a charged group on the side under the picture of a fist (if you can). The first reason for this is because the side opposite of the fist picture appears to get interrupted more often than the side of the fist picture. The second reason is because if the strike attack is narrow, then it might bury the side opposite of the fist.

I heard that the number of fist pictures varies, and that this number is meaningful. Personally, I think that it is a waste of time to count fist pictures, so I never investigated this idea.

Breaking a combo early if the right ball color appears

Your charged groups will sometimes bury other parts of the board. If there is a ball in your launcher that matches a buried group that you want to clear, then you might want to pop your combo early so that you can reach the buried group.

Sprinkle Strategies

What Sprinkles can do

Sprinkles do a couple of things...

1) They cover the board, which can make it harder for the opponent to clear your strike attacks.

2) Even though they are often much easier to clear than strikes, they usually leave behind a couple of stray blocks that are harder to clear. Eventually, these stray blocks can build up so much that your opponent can't handle it.

3) They can be created by clearing the board, which means that you can attack while trying to make your board easier to manage.

4) They are usually faster to make than strike attacks.

What your Sprinkle attacks look like

The game stores the number of loose blocks you drop in a "sprinkle queue". When your sprinkle queue is large enough, then the game will send at least one full row of sprinkles at your opponent. This means that you won't send a sprinkle attack every time you drop a loose block. Unlike Swordfighting, this game only sends full rows of sprinkles.

Your sprinkle pattern is generated from the bottom section of your bludgeon's drop pattern. To be completely confusing, the game starts generating sprinkles from the TOP row of your sprinkle pattern (as opposed to strikes, which start generating from the BOTTOM row of your strike pattern). Your 1-row sprinkles will always be the top row of your sprinkle pattern. If your sprinkle queue has 2-rows of blocks in it, then it will use both rows of your sprinkle pattern.

Certain bludgeons (i.e. leather gloves) might have strange things happening with their large sprinkle attacks.

Building your own sprinkle attacks

1) Make a group of two balls of the same color

2) Drop about 20 balls on this group, making sure that they are only connected to the two-ball group (they can also be connected to each other)

3) Pop the two-ball group, and watch as the giant clump of balls fall off the screen. You should hear a "crash" noise. Your opponent might receive one row of sprinkles.

Around 20 balls for 1-line of sprinkles? Welcome to the sprinkle scaling system! Perhaps it's not a good idea to build your own sprinkle attacks, but it is still a good idea to sometimes make drop off attacks with the balls that are already on the board. What might be a drop off attack now might turn into a jumbled mess if you don't get rid of it right away!

Creating sprinkle attacks from the board

This is how most of your sprinkle attacks will be generated. Imagine a line drawn from your right-hand launcher, to the top-left hand corner of the board. Notice that if you keep clearing balls along this line, that you would drop a section of the board as loose blocks. Imagine a similar line drawn from your left-hand launcher, to the top-right corner of the board.

The middle of the board is a bit more tricky. In order to make sprinkle attack from the middle of the board, you need to somehow triangular cuts into the board with both launchers. This is less effective than making strikes on the sides of the boards. This also means that it's very important to keep the middle of your board clean, because it is harder to clear the middle than it is to clear the sides.

A common strategy with the Blackjack is to make a bunch of small attacks, and often alternate which launcher (left or right) makes the attack. This causes the middle of the board to be lower than the sides! This is not what you want if you are a turbo-sprinkler, and will be annoying to clear.

Placing a sprinkle trigger in sync with your opponent's sprinkles

This is similar to section 1.11, except that now we are dealing with strikes.

A sprinkle trigger is a group of balls that will drop a sprinkle attack when hit. If you line up a sprinkle trigger with your opponent's sprinkle pattern, then they won't be able to interrupt your strike attack with sprinkles. This only applies when you are manually building a combo (section 2.03) because you don't really get a choice of where color your sprinkle triggers are when you are creating sprinkle attacks from the board (section 2.04).

If you line up a sprinkle trigger with your opponent's sprinkle pattern, then you could probably leave it there for a while so that it collects future sprinkle attacks. Then you could either pop it outside of a combo to drop a large sprinkle attack, or pop it in a combo to inject a large amount of bruises into your strike attack.

Shooting balls faster than you can handle

If 100% of your balls land where they are supposed to, then you are clearly shooting too slowly. Speed wins this game, and it is usually better to shoot as fast as possible, even if it causes you to make mistakes.

Yes, there are shots they you want to carefully make, but most of the time it isn't a big deal if you miss a couple of shots.

Spacing out your sprinkle attacks

Part of the strength of sprinkle attacks is that it might cause the opponent to get balls stuck in-between sprinkle attacks. This can only happen if the opponent has a chance to shoot a ball in-between your sprinkle attacks! This means that if you pop 5 sprinkle attacks at once, that your opponent won't get a chance to get balls stuck in-between your sprinkle attacks, because he will probably get all of your attacks at the same time.

The best thing to do is to space out your sprinkle attacks if possible. Space them out by a couple of seconds. If you get lucky, your opponent will receive a sprinkle attack, waste a ball breaking your sprinkle attack, then get another sprinkle attack before he gets a chance clear the parts of the board your sprinkle attack was blocking.

Sometimes leaving a sprinkle attack for a long time later

You sometimes want to leave some of your sprinkle attacks for later. The worst thing that can happen is running out of attacks to make. If you pop every sprinkle attack in sight, then you might have a long time before you can make your next attack. This is bad, because you want to keep constant pressure on your opponent.

Sometimes clearing the board without dropping large sprinkle attacks

This scenario happens way too often...

1) The opponent sends me a large sprinkle attack while their board is low

2) I send the sprinkle attack back at them

3) They are defeated because they couldn't handle the sprinkle attack being sent back at them

Don't send a large sprinkle attack, if you would die if it is sent back at you! If you don't have much time to build combos, then try to at least build a 2-group combo so that you don't send a large sprinkle attack.

Dumping trash blocks to create large sprinkle attacks

Let's use a Fist opponent as an example. Assume that the opponent's sprinkle pattern is Red/Yellow/Orange (RRRYYYOOO).

Here is an example...

1) Drop two cyan blocks on column 2 of your board.

2) Make other attacks while you wait for your opponent's sprinkle attacks to get stuck on the cyan blocks.

3) Pop the cyan blocks, and hopefully a large amount of your opponents sprinkles will drop off the board, and turn into a sprinkle attack.

Basically, if you dump 2-ball groups around the board, then you can usually pop them later to send a sprinkle attack. The most important part is that your 2-ball groups need to separate your opponent's future sprinkle attacks from the rest of the board (see section 1.13)

Oops, I'm not ready to launch yet

Sometimes I'm launching balls too fast, and I realize that my mouse button is pressed, but my mouse position isn't where I want to launch the current ball. So I'll hold down the mouse button, which charges the ball instead of launches it. Then I'll aim the ball, and release the mouse button before the ball has completed charging.

General gameplay

Why keeping the board clear is important

The main reason why it is important to keep you board clear is because of opponent strike attacks. Opponent strike attacks can get much worse if you have balls on the board, because these balls can get scrambled into your opponent's strikes. Even though the balls that are on your board in the beginning of the game are easy to clear in the beginning of the game, these balls can get very hard to clear if they can scrambled into enemy attacks.

Why keeping the board flat is important

The main reason why it is important to keep the middle of your board flat is because of opponent sprinkle attacks. If your opponent sends you a sprinkle attack while your board isn't flat, then this sprinkle attack might break apart into many pieces, which can be very hard to clear. It is generally ok for the sides to stick out, because they can be cleared much easier than the center.

If your board isn't flat, then it is much better for the middle to be higher than the rest of the board, than it is for the middle to be lower than the rest of the board. If the middle of the board is higher than the rest of the board, then you get a "spike" of balls. If your opponent sends you a sprinkle attack at this point, the spike will be really-really annoying to clear. Due to the speed-strike blackjacks, this needs to be clarified. Speed-strike blackjacks can cause the middle of your board to be higher than the sides, but this is a rounded curve shape, that might be half the width of the board. The dangerous spikes most often occur if the lowest point on the middle of the board is only 1-3 balls wide (most often only 1 ball wide, very rarely 3 balls wide).

If my board is uneven, I will sometimes drop loose blocks onto the middle of the board so that it looks flat, regardless if these loose blocks are a color that is actually useful to that part of the board. This will keep sprinkle attacks from breaking apart into many pieces, which will make them much easier to clear.

If you have a spike in the middle of the board, and your opponent is sending a sprinkle attack next turn, then you might want to launch the current ball at the spike so that the part of the spike closest to the bottom of the board is 2-wide instead of 1-wide. This would hopefully make it easier to clear, as you will hopefully have at least 1-side of the spike that isn't a total mess.

If you have a spike on the board, and the opponent sends you a row of sprinkles, then that spike might cause you to lose the game. It is really hard to clear this spike while the board is high, because you can't really get a good angle to hit the spike at that board height. If you are really good at bouncing shots off of walls, then you make want to try that. But it would generally take multiple bounce shots (all done perfectly) to do this, which is a lot harder than it sounds.

If you have a spike in the middle of the board, and your opponent sends you a row of sprinkles, then you might want to ignore the spike until he sends you another row of sprinkles. If you have multiple rows of sprinkles on the spike, then it will be easier to clear. If you get lucky, your opponent will send you a narrow strike which flattens out the spike, which basically saves you a lot of work.

In the worst case scenario, you will be stuck with the spike until your board gets low, at which point you will have a good angle to clear the spike.

Above is an example of a spike in the middle of the board. The spike has been covered by a sprinkle attack made from yellow balls. Notice that I can't really do anything until I get a yellow ball to pop the sprinkles that are covering the spike. I think I had to shoot about 20 balls before I got a yellow ball, meaning that the spike put me at a horrible disadvantage.

The spike itself was completely my fault. I cleared my board unevenly, which left a spike behind. The lesson here is that it is not always a good idea to pop every group at the first chance you get. If popping every group would cause a spike in the middle of the board, then you might be better off dumping those blocks on the side of the board instead of using them to pop groups.

Why keeping the middle of the board clean is important

It is important to keep the middle of the board clean because it is much harder to clear the middle of the board than it is to clear the sides of the board. It is also important to keep the middle of the board clean because you don't want any spikes in the middle of your board (see section 3.02).

This means that if you have balls in your launchers that you can't use, then it is better to dump them on the sides of the board than on the middle of the board. Ideally, you would dump unusable balls in places such that they could later be turned into a sprinkle attack.

When to strike, when to sprinkle

Note that it is faster to clear the board by shooting uncharged balls (and making sprinkle attacks whenever possible), and it is slower to clear the board by shooting charged balls (and making strike attacks). To make things simple, we'll just say that it is much faster to clear the board with sprinkles than with strikes.

At some point in the first minute of the game, your board should be mostly empty. There are many different strategies you could be using at the beginning of the game, but whatever you do, the board should be mostly empty at some point in the first minute. If your board does not get mostly empty, then you are doing too many strikes. If your board is completely empty and you ran out of attacks to make, then you made too many sprinkle attacks. If your board is completely empty, then you need to fire balls as quickly as possible, so that the 1-row board drops will give you balls that you can use to make more attacks. In no bludgeon matches, some people will stall when their board is completely empty, which is only recommended if you can sprinkle fast enough to make up for the fact that you will have a large gap until your next attack.

Why you shouldn't understrike

You shouldn't understrike because it begs your opponent to defeat you with a large combo. Many people completely give up making strikes after the first minute of the game. Keep in mind that even Fist strikes can be deadly if the strike is large enough to push your board to the bottom of the screen.

Why you shouldn't overstrike

You shouldn't overstrike because you'll never be able to clear your board if you make too many strikes. Remember that your opponent's strikes can scramble up your board, and receiving multiple strikes can really scramble up your board very badly. If you strategy is "don't make sprinkle attacks until your board is 75% full", then your board might be so scrambled at that point that you might not be able to clear it. However, if you have been keeping your board clear (see section 3.01), then your opponent's strikes won't have a chance to super-scramble your board.

It is much easier to clear now and strike later, and much harder to strike now and clear later.

The other reason why you don't want to overstrike is because it completely flattens your opponent's board. The strength of sprinkle attacks is that in breaks into many pieces when your opponent's board isn't flat. If you keep flattening your opponent's board, then your sprinkle attacks will be very weak. Also, if your opponent has a spike on their board (see section 3.02), then you definitely don't want to overstrike, because that would flatten out his spike, which would be a major help for your opponent.

Why constant pressure is important

This is a debate between quality and quantity. It is often better to make constant attacks than quality attacks. For example, the best attack a hammer can make is 4-group strikes with at least 13 loose blocks. This will drop strikes that are almost 75% bruises. There are a couple of people that let me drop strikes with 75% bruises, and then proceed to clear these strikes faster than I can make them. Even though I can strike fast, there is still too much time in-between my attacks if the only thing I do is make strikes with 75% bruises.

Another example is the blackjack. One of the reasons why the blackjack is so popular is because it's the only bludgeon that can keep constant pressure by only making strike attacks. This is because the blackjack's 3-group strikes are much better than any other bludgeon in the game.

The main problem with the blackjack is that most people don't understand the quality of the blackjack attacks. Yes, a single blackjack strike attack is generally more powerful than a single blackjack sprinkle attack. However, the blackjack is much more powerful when you are sometimes making sprinkle attacks, because the blackjack strikes will be mashing the sprinkles into the rest of the opponent's board.

To summarize this section, you can still make quality attacks. Just remember that you need to be constantly attacking your opponent, which requires you to mix your quality attacks with quick attacks.

Strikes/Sprinkles are different depending on board height

Sprinkle attacks are faster to make than strike attacks. This is especially true as the board gets lower, because the balls don't have to travel as far, which means that you can fire balls more often than you could if the board was high. This is why it is easier for small strikes to push your opponent's board from 1/4 full to 1/2 full, than it is to push your opponent's board from 3/4 full to completely full.

There is a special case when you are so late in the game that the 1-row board drops are almost entirely bruises. In this case, it might be much easier to push the opponent's board from 3/4 full to completely full, than it would be to defeat them with sprinkle attacks. When the opponent hits a giant bruise wall, and you repeatedly send them sprinkle attacks, then the bruises will turn into normal balls when they pop your sprinkle attacks. However, if you don't send sprinkles when they hit a giant bruise wall, then it will generally take them more than 8 balls to clear 9 bruises, which means that they will receive 1-row board drops faster than they can clear the bruises that are already on the screen. This means that the opponent ends up defeating themselves if you don't feed them sprinkle attacks. If your board is too low to make strikes in this case, then it would be better to just clear the board without making sprinkle attacks.

Tricks

The umbrella

Sometimes you want to work on part of the board, but you don't want that part of the board to get messed up with your opponent's sprinkle attacks. Perhaps you are setting up a combo that is not in sync with your opponent's sprinkle patter. Perhaps you are trying to clear a spike on your board.

The umbrella is a (mostly) horizontal line of balls that will catch any sprinkle attacks that try to land on the part of the board you are trying to protect. I say that the line is mostly horizontal, because it is very hard to make a completely horizontal line of balls. As a bonus, the sprinkles that land on the umbrella can be used in your attacks. Sometimes you might want to make an umbrella even if you don't need to protect part of your board, because you just want to use your opponent's sprinkles against them.

This is an example of an umbrella...

1) Launch about 5 balls, in a vertical line, on column 1 (with the left launcher)

2) Launch about 4 balls, in a (mostly) horizontal line, that are attached to the bottom of the vertical line. What you should have now is an 'L' shaped line of balls. Sprinkle attacks that try to fall on the left side of your board will get caught on the umbrella. If you make the umbrella correctly, you should be able to shoot over the umbrella with your right launcher.

If the horizontal part of the umbrella is much lower than the rest of your board, then your opponent won't be able to mess it up unless they can make a large strike attack

If you get really good at making umbrellas, then you might use them to help you get rid of spikes in the middle of your board.

In the above picture, I have used an umbrella to protect the left side of my board from enemy sprinkle attacks. In this case, opponent sprinkle attacks will not be able to bury any of the charged groups in the picture. I built an umbrella in this picture because my opponent's sprinkle pattern sends red balls in columns 1-3, which would be able to bury my combo if I did not have an umbrella.

The charged ball sprinkle trigger

Sometimes you want to build your own sprinkle attack (see section 2.03), but there aren't any groups on your board that stick out enough to build a sprinkle attack off of them. In this case, find a group of 2, and launch a same-colored charged ball at this group. You should now have a charged group of 3, that will hopefully stick out enough to let you build a sprinkle attack off of it. Remember that you can't make any charged groups after this one, because you don't want this charged group to pop in a combo!

It is a bit strange to use charged groups to build sprinkle attacks, but it is very useful if you need a quick way to keep constant pressure on your opponent.

When the above game was started, there were only 2 yellow balls in the group on the left side. Neither of these balls stuck out enough to build a sprinkle attack off of them. Notice that the charged yellow ball allows me to make a sprinkle attack from this yellow group.

Reading your opponent's board

Although your opponent's mini-screen doesn't tell you exactly what is happening on their board, it is still very useful.

If the opponent's mini-screen looks very uneven, then you need to make a sprinkle attack.

If the opponent's board has a spike in the middle of it, then you need to make a sprinkle attack right now!

If the opponent's mini-screen looks very flat, then you need to make a strike attack, with groups of 3 if possible, and hope for a narrow strike attack that will cause your opponent's board to be uneven.

If the opponent's mini-screen has a bunch of holes in it, then they are probably building a strike attack, so you need to make a quick strike right now!

If the opponent's mini-screen has a bunch of triangle shapes and/or a bunch of finger shapes, then they probably have too much sprinkles, so you probably want to make strike attacks.

If the opponent's mini-screen looks like a diagonal line from top-right to bottom-left (looks like / ), then you made too many strikes with your left fist. So you need to make a strike with your right fist.

If the opponent's mini-screen looks like a diagonal line from top-left to bottom-right (looks like \ ), then you made too many strikes with your right fist. So you need to make a strike with your left fist.

If the opponent's mini-screen has diagonal cuts in it, then your opponent is trying to clear large sections of the board. You need to make a quick strike attack to fill the cuts they made in their board.

If the opponent's mini-screen has PART of it near the bottom of the screen, then they are are probably struggling with a large amount of sprinkles. You need to make sprinkle attacks and hope that this will cause them to lose. You don't want to make strike attacks, because this will delay their 1-row board drops, and because strikes are not very effective at scrambling up parts of the board that are much lower than other parts of the board.

If the opponent's mini-screen has MOST (or all) of it near the bottom of the screen, and they have stopped attacking, then they are probably stalling because they are about to lose. If you are also near the bottom of the screen, but higher than your opponent, then you might want to stall too. If you are not near the bottom of the screen, then you might want to make strike attacks. The opponent is probably dumping unusable blocks in places that will be dropped off as sprinkle attacks. If you make strike attacks, then you can ruin the sprinkle attacks that they were trying to create.

Reading the time between your opponent's attacks

If the opponent hasn't attacked for a while, and they aren't at the bottom of the screen, then they are probably building a large strike attack. So you need to build a couple of quick strikes to interrupt their combo.

If the opponent is making constant sprinkle attacks, then they probably aren't making any strike attacks. So you should build a combo until they stop sending constant sprinkle attacks. If they stop sending constant sprinkle attacks, then they are probably building a strike to counter your strike, so you need to pop your strike right now.

Double-fist attack

If you send a strike attack with your left fist, and a strike attack with your right fist, and these two attacks are really close to each other, then you might send a double fist attack. In order to do this, you need to have a combo ready, then pop part of it with one fist, then quickly pop the rest of it with the other fist. You can't pop a combo, then quickly build a new combo, because the new combo will take too long to build.

If these two attacks are close enough to each other, then they will be in the same attack. Your opponent will get a strike coming from the top-left corner and the top-right corner, at the same time. Double-fist attacks seem to scramble the board a bit more than it would if those two attacks hit the opponent at different times. However, they don't seem to be so much better that you should try to build a double-fist attack. I might send a double-fist attack if the right colored balls happen to be in my launchers, but I won't ever try to build a double-fist attack.

Indeed, it seems like if two attacks are received as a double punch, it affects the board EXACTLY THE SAME than if those two attacks were two separate attacks that were received 1 second apart from each other.

Double fist attacks can also be made by popping two combos with the same launcher. This isn't very practical due to the fact that it is very difficult to get both colors you need in the same launcher, and you generally need that to happen if you want both combos to pop close enough in time to make a double-fist attack. However, it might be useful in the rare cases that you really do get both colors you need in the same launcher.

sprinkle -> strike attack

This is similar to section 3.05, except that you made a sprinkle attack, then quickly made a strike attack. Both of these attacks will hit your opponent at the same turn. Your opponent will get hit with sprinkles, and then a strike will immediately hit your opponent. This is most effective if your opponent's board is UNEVEN, because the sprinkles will break apart from the uneven board, then the strike will mash the sprinkles into the board, and the result is usually very hard to clear.

strike -> sprinkle attack

This is similar to section 3.05, except that you made a strike attack, then quickly made a sprinkle attack. Both of these attacks will hit your opponent at the same turn. Your opponent will get hit with a strike, and then sprinkles will immediately hit your opponent. This is most effective when you opponent's board is EVEN, and when your strike attack is created mostly out of 3-ball groups. If you are lucky, then the strike will be narrow (which makes the board uneven), and the sprinkles will fall on the uneven board and create a spike in the middle of it. It takes more luck for this to happen than it would take for the best result of a sprinkle -> strike attack. However, being lucky with a strike -> sprinkle attack result in a much better attack than being lucky with a sprinkle -> strike attack.

It is important to note that none of the attacks in the past 3 sections are guaranteed to happen. You need to make the attacks very close to each other, and hope that they land in the same attack.

the one-two punch

This is how you pop a combo when the first group is buried under a different color of sprinkles. One of your fists (Fist A) needs to hold the color that matches the first group of the combo. The other fist's (Fist B) "next ball" needs to hold the color that matches the sprinkles that are burying the first group of the combo. Note that the "next ball" isn't the ball that is currently in your launcher. It is the ball that will be in your launcher after you shoot the current ball.

Suppose that your opponent is sending you constant sprinkle attacks. You need to wait for a sprinkle attack (this is why Fist B is holding the ball you need in the "next ball" slot). Immediately after you get a sprinkle attack, shoot the current ball in Fist B (the useless ball), shoot the "next ball" in Fist B at the sprinkle group that is burying the first group, then shoot the current ball in Fist A at the first group. You should be able to do all of this before your opponent sends you another sprinkle attack.

The result is that you pop a combo, even though the first group was buried under sprinkles of a different color.

In the above picture, the first group in my combo is the orange group on the left side of the board. Notice that it is currently buried under red sprinkles. If my opponent is sending constant sprinkle attacks, then I will hold onto the cyan ball until I receive a sprinkle attack. I will then very quickly launch the cyan ball (it can land anywhere except on the cyan charged group), then quickly launch the red ball at the red group, then quickly launch the orange ball at the orange charged group (the orange group on the left side of the board).

Using strikes to help you break through the board

This might be risky, but I sometimes do it. If the opponent is sending you a constant amount of sprinkles, and you are getting so many sprinkle attacks that you can't break through it, then you might want to do this...

Turn their sprinkle attacks into a combo, then stall until their sprinkle attacks slow down. Then pop the combo, then proceed to clear the parts of the board that were buried by the sprinkles.

8:2:2 punch of doom

This is a bit hard to set up, and it takes a bit of luck to work, but if you do this, then you can scare just about everyone into completely giving up making strikes for the rest of the game...

1) Build an 8-group combo

2) Pop 4 groups of this combo

3) Add 2 more groups to this combo

4) Pop 4 groups of this combo

5) Add 2 more groups to this combo

6) Pop 4 groups of this combo

What happens is that you make 3 strike attacks that are so close to each other, that it completely scares your opponent into thinking that you have super-human strike skills.

You would not be able to start this by making a 12 group combo as the first step, because it takes too long to build a 12 group combo.

The punch of doom can have a varied amount of groups in the 3 strikes. 8-group, 2-group, 2-group just seemed like the easiest example to give. The amount of variation that you can have in the punch of doom depends on your bludgeons strike pattern. For example, the blackjack can have a lot of variation here, because their small strikes are generally all good. Each combo should have at least 3 groups in it, because sending 1-row strikes aren't going to scare many people, especially after they figure out that 1-row strikes are very poor at interrupting their strikes.

Ignoring parts of the board if only 1-row of sprinkles is covering it

If your opponent covers an uneven part of your board with sprinkles, then the sprinkles might break into many groups, which is hard to clear. You might want to ignore these parts of the board until you get another sprinkle attack. This new sprinkle attack will hopefully make the sprinkles form bigger groups, which will be easier to clear.

Waiting for your opponent to make a strike that digs you out of a bad board position

Sometimes your board is a mess, and you think to yourself "if my opponent sent me a strike attack, then it would flatten my board and make it much easier to handle". In this case, you want to stop making strike attacks because making strike attacks might discourage your opponent from making a strike attack.

You might want to completely stop making attacks, which might cause the opponent to think that you are building a strike attack, which might cause them to build a strike attack. This doesn't work with everyone, since some people will completely not notice that you stopped attacking.

If your opponent stops attacking you, then they are probably building a strike attack. Give them a couple of seconds to build an attack, then send them a strike attack. This will hopefully scare them into sending their attack early, before it is too large to handle.

Exploiting people that can't sprinkle

This is a good strategy to use if you know that your opponent refuses to sprinkle unless their board is at least 50% full...

Make a bunch of small strikes. It doesn't matter if your bludgeon isn't as good with strikes as your opponent's blackjack, and it doesn't matter that your strikes are so small that they are easily cleared. Your opponent is determined to ignore your easily clearable attacks, and your quick strikes will turn many of their charged groups into bruises.

The game will eventually turn into a sprinkle-fest, because your opponent eventually won't be able to make anymore strikes because there are so many bruises on their board. At this point, you can take joy in the fact that you can clear their blackjack strikes quicker than they can clear your lame attacks. Your opponent will probably lose because you turned the game into a sprinkle-fest, and they are horrible at sprinkles.

Exploiting people that can't strike

Usually what happens is that you make a couple of quick strike attacks, and your opponent completely gives up making strike attacks for the rest of the game. Now is your chance to build a couple of large attacks (i.e. about 8 groups each) and win the game.

Breaking the rules

Tempo

Whoever has tempo gets to control the match. Whoever has the better board position has the tempo. If you do not have tempo, then you need to stop what you are doing, and yield to your opponent until you get the tempo back.

As a general rule, whoever is sending more attacks has the tempo.

If you have tempo, then you usually get to do whatever you want to do. If you do not have tempo, then you usually need to yield to whatever your opponent is forcing you to do.

For example, if you don't have tempo, and you want to build a large strike, and your opponent is quickly filling your board with sprinkles... then you might need to stop making that combo and deal with your sprinkle problem.

For example, if you don't have tempo, and you want to clear the board, and your opponent is repeatedly sending you strikes... then you might need to send some strike attacks, so that they will stop making strike attacks, so you can get back to clearing the board. If you don't make strike attacks in this case, then your board might get so messed up from the repeated strikes, that you won't be able to clear it.

Dumping many blocks to get the 1 you need

Sometimes you need a specific block color right now, but you aren't getting it in your launchers. In this case, you might want to quickly dump balls onto the board until you get the color that you want. Ideally, you would eventually turn these dumped blocks into an attack (for example, see section 2.03).

Making the board not flat

This is a dangerous strategy, but sometimes you might want to do it. If you are going to run out of attacks to make, then you might want to purposely make spikes near the edge of the board (probably not in the middle of the board, because that is really hard to clear). You can safely make spikes anywhere on the board if they are attached to easily droppable groups, because you could drop the spikes by popping these easily droppable groups.

These spikes will break up your opponent's sprinkle attacks, which can give you extra groups with which you can make attacks.

Letting all your charged groups get buried

In the middle of the game, you might not be able to start a combo in sync with your opponent's sprinkles. Or perhaps you forgot your opponent's sprinkle pattern. In any event, you might want to build a combo anyway. You can use the one-two punch (section 4.08) to pop this combo in the event that it gets buried in sprinkles.

Breaking the rules in general

If you always follow these rules, then you might get predictable. Being predictable is bad, so you sometimes want to purposely do something stupid just to make yourself unpredictable. Most of my unpredictability comes from the fact that I often shoot balls faster than I can handle, which means I'm often accidentally setting off attacks when I wasn't planning on setting off.

Aiming Guide

How to Aim

There are only 5 places where a ball can usually attach itself:

the top of the board
the bottom-left side of another ball
the bottom-right side of another ball
horizontally-left of another ball
horizontally-right of another ball

A ball can only attach to the upper half of another ball if it is flying at a very shallow angle. Otherwise, if a ball hits the upper half of another ball, then it will zig-zag up-and-around that ball until it can attach itself to one of the 5 above places. You might sometimes want to purposely hit the upper half of another ball, since it might allow you to make shots that otherwise would seem impossible to make.

If a ball hits the lower half of another ball, then it will figure out if it is closer to the bottom-left side or the bottom-right side, and will attach itself to whichever side is closer.

If a ball hits directly horizontal to another ball, then it will attach horizontally to that ball. Notice that this is very hard to do, because the upper and lower halves of a ball appear to be much easier to hit than the small horizontal spaces on a ball.

If you aim a ball with the mouse, then the game forms a line from the CENTER of the ball (while it is in the launcher), to the spot your mouse is on. This means that the center of the ball will travel along this line until it attaches itself to one of the 5 above cases. The problem here is that the ball is a circle, as opposed to a small point. This means that even though you might have aimed the center of your ball at a specific place on the board, the edge of your ball might prematurely hit another ball, which might cause your ball to land in an unintended place.

This means that you need to consider the radius of the ball when you make a shot.

The aiming method I use might be a bit strange. I don't aim my mouse at the blank spot where I want the ball to land. I find the first ball that my ball will hit in its path, and I will aim my mouse on a specific part of that ball. For example, if I want a ball to zig-zag up-and-around another ball, then I will aim my mouse on the upper-part of that ball. As another example, if I want a ball to land on the bottom-left-part of another ball, then I will aim my mouse on the bottom-left-part of that ball. I find it too difficult to aim my mouse at the blank space where I want a ball to land, so I almost always aim my mouse on parts of a ball that is on the board.

P.S. One important thing to remember is that it is much easier to make a ball zig-zag up-and-around another ball when the ball is launched in a partially-horizontal path. In other words, if the ball is flying in a mostly-vertical path, then is it very-very hard to make it zag-zag up-and-around another ball. This means that the easiest way to do a zig-zag shot on the left-side of the board is with your right launcher, and the easiest way to do a zig-zag shot on the right-side of the board is with your left launcher. It is difficult to make a zig-zag shot land in the middle of the board, so you might want to avoid making zig-zag shots land in the middle of the board.