One of the key strategies is of course to hit the ball as fast as you can without losing control of it. Think about it; if you hit the ball hard and your oppenent plays it easy, you're clearing 1.5 times as many bricks and getting 1.5 times as much power. However, you must be careful hitting the ball very hard until you have fully developed the pro reflexes (which I haven't yet).
Another strategy is hitting opponents with your attacks (obviously). The real key to doing this, though is timing. If your oppenent has his ball up on the top, not using his paddle, don't send off a round of six-shooter bullets, that would be stupid. However, this would be a good time to send a brick bot his way. When your opponent is at the line, he is much more vulnerable, but don't overdo your attacking and leave yourself with too little power to clear your own blocks. And, of course, multiple attacks are almost always better than one. However, attacking as fast as possible is not always the best way to go. With Mr. Man I have noticed that brickbots tend to follow one another, and that results are better if you hit, charge, hit, hit, charge, hit, etc.
There are more different strategies on how you clear blocks. Charge it up full, hit it at a huge angle as fast as you possibly can? Don't charge up at all and carefully magent to the exact spot you want bricks cleared? Try and blast through to the top and clear from top to bottom? All the brick-clearing styles are different, and I can't really tell you which is best. A cool strategy to use is half-magneting (as I call it). Half-magneting involves using the magnety but letting go before it sticks to your paddle. You can use this to change the angle of a ball that is going way to wide, bring the ball downwards but not actually to your paddle, and many other things. One of my favorite tricks that was actually invented by my little brother is to get the ball on top of a huge block of bricks, then magnet it down into the middle, and let go. The ball, trapped in a big square of bricks, quickly clears out a lot of your screen from the inside of the mess. Unfortunately, I'm really bad at this trick :frown:.
These are just some of the many base strategies of pop-pop. I'm sorry if my post was too long for you, I got a little carried away. And, though I may sound authorative, these are just my personal views, feel free to develop your own.
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