What are some tips or guides for setting up 
hits on the AI. I know there are some moments where you have no choice in the matter (Magneto creating 
for Storm’s Windstorm,) but sometimes I know I won’t have enough for the 11 required so I want to optimize the critical tile damage as mush as I can for that turn. What are your thoughts on the matter?
It’s a good idea to practice optimizing damage either way, as it’ll help you defeat higher level nodes where you need more than 1 windstorm to win.
Basic:
- The critical resolution has changed so that all matches using the critical are counted. This means that you can get up to 4 matches on a single crit, eg:
However, if you have characters with a matching passive, eg, OBW, Daken, sometimes crits resolve mid-air and inefficiently.
- I believe, (but haven’t confirmed) that the position of the critical tile in a match doesn’t make a difference in the damage. Eg:
does the same damage as
and the same as
- If you have a choice between making a 4-line clear and a 5-crit, even though the 4-line clear might do more damage initially, it’s usually better to go for the crit and the extra turn.
Patterns:
4. Learn to recognize patterns. I’m assuming that you’ve seen the basic single move 5’s, but don’t forget these:
Matching yellow will give you a green crit.
Matching green will give you a yellow crit.
Matching the lower right purple will give you a black crit. This is usually better than going with the black line clear and purple match.
Polarity:
5. Don’t forget that 5’s give you an extra turn, and Polarity Shift doesn’t end the turn. For example, if you have
A common mistake (or underoptimization) is to use 2 of the blue like this:
However, you can place it like this:
giving you both green and blue AP. This of course assumes that your other moves don’t shift the board in this location.
What? how? If you swap the bottom left purple with the black above you’ll end like this:
and this is not a crit.
If you swap the upper left purple with the same black you’ll end like this:
And this is still not a crit (both the purple and the black rows will resolve at the same time without letting you make a black cross for the crit)
Crap, thanks. I truncated the example mistakenly. Have fixed it now by adding the 4th column.
I used to think like you until I noticed it made absolutely no difference. The crit tile will be on exactly same place. The only difference is that you will have to move the tile while making it automatically match will not.
Auto match will deal damage and generate a crit on said place; moving to match will deal damage and make a crit tile on exactly same place, but you will have to match it manually.
Either way you will still have your turn because PS doesn’t ends it anyway.
But auto match is better because you can’t screw it up accidentally. Sometimes clearing a row with a 5match can bring a 3 match in a place that unset a crit in a second place in the board that you prepared with PS.
Safer and easiest (laziest too) way it to just auto match crits when possible.
I do think it’s conditional, and depends on the rest of the board and who else you’re using, eg what AP you need.
I really should have originally provided an example like this:
Where the team-up blocks you from making a straight forward 5, but you can make it like:
in this case I agree, but the other one, in L shape, it’s different. Also sometimes the L shape one or T shape will alredy have two or three tiles where it’s better to use less placed tiles to complete a crit, but if you can make it automatic with same number of placed tiles just do it.