If you have the confidence to manipulate the panels to your liking, but don’t know how to efficiently win against the various CPUs, then this guide is for you. I have seen the various modes of this game be difficult to optimize for even the best players in the community.

Below are my approaches to each of the game levels in VS based on my past experiences with the game. These strats work best when you have the ability to make chains as fast as you want. As the leaderboards suggest, these methods have served me well. Still, almost nothing in this game is 100% consistent (even when RNG manipulation is a thing, which will be covered in a future guide, but working it out for Panel de Pon is currently a higher priority) so feel free to experiment.

One thing is certain, though: it’s faster to create two rows of garbage at a time than just one.

Protip: if you feel that your initial chain is short of a kill, spam combos on top of your attack to fill in the gap. You cannot die while the screen is shaking and the screen shake from the new combo garbage on screen is minimal. This is good practice to do after your initial attack, anyway, so long as you wait for the garbage indicators to disappear before starting your next attack. Otherwise, your combo garbage from the first chain will not land until your second chain finishes. Protip2: The faster you are able to make chains (especially via "Lag Chains," aka what this game calls “Time Lag”—see the ingame tutorial), the less garbage you will need since the opponents won’t be able to clear as many panels. In addition, the more combos you are able to make during your chain, the smaller your chain needs to be.

--Easy & Normal

Your goal should be to make something resembling an x5 chain and three rows of combo garbage. I have found that 7 lines of garbage is a good number to aim for if you are able to go as fast as possible. (This is mostly because the starting stack is always configured to fill 5 full rows.) Take more time than 15 seconds, and you will need more lines. This is generally the way you approach V-Hard and here is the place you should practice it.

The particular importance of three lines of combo garbage is explained in the V-Hard section.

--Hard

-Stage 01 Lakitu through Stage 06 Gargantua Blargg – x4 chain + three rows of combo garbage 6 lines is the sweet spot for this area as the natural rise of the stack can fill in an extra line before these opponents can clear enough out.

-Stage 07 Lunge Fish & Stage 08 Raphael the Raven – x5 chain + three rows of combo garbage These foes are fast enough to flatten the stack to five lines with some consistency and may even have time to raise their stack afterwards.

-Stage 019 Hookbill the Koopa through Stage 12 Bowser – x4 chain + three rows of combo garbage These foes will raise their stack two rows at the beginning. If these foes weren't fast enough at making clears, you could always win with 5 lines. It's not always possible.

--V-Hard

-Stage 01 – x6 chain + three rows of combo garbage In my experience, it takes anywhere from 5-9 lines of garbage to kill these foes in a majority of these stage layouts. I have found that 7 lines is a good number to aim for. However, since Lakitu does not raise his stack at the very beginning, extra rows may be required. Personally, I go for 8 rows. The three rows of combo garbage are important for when, not if, the opponents manage to clear some of your garbage. Those combo garbage blocks will, mostly, fall on top of the chain garbage. When your opponent clears them, they will turn into regular panels that the CPU will look for first (since they prioritize the top of the screen for matches) and, considering they will have largely been working on the bottom of the screen, they will likely not have time to get to the top before they die. When you’re building the rows of combo garbage, you simply have to keep in mind that multiple combos of 4-in-a-row during a chain simply fall next to each other and will not stack. Since 4-combos are the easiest combos to come by for most during a chain, I recommend starting your chain with at least a 5-combo.

-Stage 02 Bumpty through Stage 06 – x5 chain + three rows of combo garbage From here, the CPU’s normal tactic is to raise their stack two rows, flatten their stack, and then start making clears top to bottom left to right. These foes are just slow enough overall that 7 rows of garbage will generally result in a kill.

-Stage 07 & Stage 08 – x6 chain + three rows of combo garbage These foes… not so much. By the time you get around to making the typical chain, these foes can be fast enough at clearing things that their stack is too low for the standard chain to kill—that is, if they don’t simply flatten their stack at the start and then raise it three rows before getting to work. The extra row of chain is typically necessary if they do the same tactic as the previous stages. These two stages are much more unpredictable than the six previous.

-Stage 09 through Stage 12 – x4 chain + three rows of combo garbage From this point onward, two significant things happen to the CPUs’ tactics. First and foremost, these foes actually know how to chain and will waste A LOT of your time if they are able to start chaining. You can mitigate the odds of this by dropping your chain earlier. Secondly, these foes raise their stack three rows at the start of every match, also reducing slightly the amount of garbage you need to send. Expect minutes of your life to be lost on a single stage at this point, especially on Kamek and Bowser. Their movement patterns and ability to chain feel particularly unfair sometimes. The sooner you can drop garbage of any worth on top of them, the better off you are more likely to be.

Again, this is my personal guideline that is far from fool-proof. Feel free to experiment and see what works for you.