Board manipulation - 1

I made a little promise on reddit to share my techniques on doing combo. Obviously my thought process isn't perfect, but fellow new Horus users, or Ra, or Kirin, or DQXQ, may have found the following guide a bit different from other pics that tells you to how to solve orb patterns.

I'll try to keep the post less word and more gif (or gfycat). And as always, excuse my poor English :)

Spotting the orb ... pattern

Basic of the basic. Before you move any orbs, take a look on the screen and mark out the orbs that are located next to each others. 4 seconds of orb movement is not very long, often you will lose a lot of time try to re-locate and arrange some orbs that is not the very best choice of combo.

Take a look on the following

Let's set the colors we needed aside. Obviously there are lots of combo on this board, but which will save you most time? Take a look on the red orbs:

Yeah you won't choose the top one and move that one to the bottom.
Now take a look on yellow orbs:

Now that's a harder question. There are eight yellow orbs. How do you choose which matches to which? For simplicity, and practically, I choose the one that need least and simple movement.

(dark red denotes the movement of orbs I am holding)

This one is the no brainer because you could just pull it down in one single step. That left out the top four yellow orbs. But also mind that there are three blue orbs around it. We could use the pattern of movement here.

That leaves the yellow orb on the left unused

"Unused" means that you can freely fuck around with the orb without caring where it will finally land. Now if I start from the bottom left orb, we could quickly finish four combo:

(if the iframe doesn't work for you blogger, click here)

Another example:

Spotting the orbs we needed (deliberately chosen):

Now the right side is a bit messy.  How to make that simpler (at least in my mind)?

Give orbs a place to rest

Or technically, where I want the orb to be placed. Knowing where your orbs will be finally placed (or how'd you want them to be placed) can speed up your orb movement because you have a "target" to achieve. Cascade is the answer to this tricky question, but for now let just set aside the cascade stuff.

For the purple orbs, the best place for them is both three of them sitting on the bottom row because I've got orbs to move on top of them and I don't want your purple orbs to block my way. Also the purple orbs should be settled down first so I won't accidentally move the purple orbs away while comboing on the top.

For the yellow orbs, since there are two aligned, I would just move the bottom yellow one below them ([5,1] → [4,2]). Also removing the yellow orb from the bottom will auto align the purple orbs (I will talk about this later).

For the blue orbs, it's my choice where to settle them. But since the yellow and purple orbs formed a L-shape, the blue orbs should be in a I-shape unless I am going to more diagonally or do a cascade. I would just align them on the rightmost.

Joining the arrows:

Now everything is set, I can start moving the orbs. I will start with the yellow on top left and the heart combo.

(if the iframe doesn't work for you blogger, click here)

Now let's do it in a 5 color move!

Take a look on this board. We have five colors ready and they are arranged pretty nicely.

Spotting the 5 combo:

I didn't chose the red on top because, for simplicity. The yellow and green orbs are clustered on the top left. Leaving already no room for blue orb on the right. If I choose the red orb on top, I would have to have a lot of movement for the blue and purple orbs. Also, a 7-shape to －shape is a very simple move. Considering this:

Click here to see my solution

Now I choose where the orb will stay. For the green orb I will put them on the left because I expect I will have lots of unknown movement in the middle. The red obviously stays at the bottom. The blue will turn in a straight row, and the purple will sit underneath it. Whatever the yellow goes isn't important because there are lots of space in the middle.

Which goes to where

How to actually move them.

Looks nice. Now manipulating green, yellow and red orbs should not move any blue and purple on the right. And moving blue and purple orbs should not move any set orbs. This is particularly important that you want orbs set untouched when they are set in stone, well, 60% of the time this is 100% true.

How it turns out:

(if the iframe doesn't work for you blogger, click here)