The rules, as they apply to the Magical Drop characters, are as follows:

• You will begin with 3 rows of 7 balloons
  
• Balloons burst when a balloon is thrown into (or lands on) two or more balloons of the same color in the same column
  
• If two or more sets of balloons are burst one after another without delay (NOT simultaneously), it will be treated as a combo.
  
• any combo, regardless of length, will send some "attack lines" to your opponent, dropping balloons into their field. The exact columns these balloons are added to is determined by the character you are using.
  
• Whenever there are less than 21 balloons on the field, new lines will be dropped unless balloons are being burst (or a "combo" is active)
  
• If any column has more than 12 balloons and they are not bursting, you will lose by overflow.
  
• You are permitted to move the jester, pick up balloons, and throw them while balloons on the field are bursting. You cannot, however, pick up bursting balloons, and you cannot pick up the balloons immediately above (up of) bursting balloons until after the balloons have finished bursting.

The most important thing to develop is precise control over your jester. Speed is important, but without accuracy and precision, you'll just be making a mess of your field over and over again. More often than not, the game will hand you some basic patterns easily turned into a 4 combo (or even a 6 combo).

Pattern recognition is also fairly important. For the most part, newbies should be looking for a series of vertical columns of 3 or a group of 2-by-2 blocks, as these are easy combos. Broken blocks (a 2-by-2 block with one balloon missing or of a different color) can be burst in more or less the same way as a complete block, and a fairly common pattern has a 2-by-3 chunk consisting of two broken blocks, which is another easy 2-combo.

Combos are, to an extent, similar to Chains in Panel de Pon (also known as Tetris Attack) with two major differences: First, a vertical series of 3 balloons of the same color is what initiates a burst (which will extend to all touching balloons of the same color), and secondly, balloons cannot start bursting while other balloons are actively bursting. This is how you sustain your combos: You burst one set of balloons and then throw a balloon so that it lands (or will land) and makes a set of 3 balloons. When the first balloon set finishes bursting, any balloons thrown onto it will fall and potentially burst (just as if you threw it yourself, with one exception). This moment of falling is considered part of the combo's time and you can set up another set of balloons to burst during this. The next set(s) of balloons (if any) will then burst, and the combo continues.

One thing to note: If you are actually too fast, you can actually end up shortening your combo due to having multiple sets of balloons burst simultaneously instead of in succession. If you find yourself doing this, start keeping a better eye on the field and don't throw balloons up if you see that a balloon on the field is about to burst and continue your combo. wait until it does burst and THEN throw the balloon. If two or more sets of balloons burst simultaneously, it only counts as 1 combo, not 2. (This isn't an oversight or a bug, this is how it's been since Magical Drop 2)

With regards to the actual moves themselves, moves basically fall under three categories:

• Defensive moves - moving balloons to flatten the field and prevent any one column from sticking out too far
  
• Preparation moves - moving balloons ahead of time before you trigger a combo to give you some breathing room at the start of a combo or to make the combo easier to continue. (Some of these can count as defensive as well)
  
• Combo moves - moving balloons that trigger or continue a combo.

For the most part, you'll be doing defensive and combo moves. very rarely will you have the opportunity for a preparation move without worrying about attack lines.

If you can recognize patterns, you'll be able to find "solutions" to maximize your combos. Once you get really good at it, you can bend apparent junk into a series of quick 4-combos while working your way through your field to a good pattern.

So, let's run through a couple examples, shall we?


This is a typical start-of-match situation. Careful observers will notice a pattern here, but it's not immediately obvious, so let's drop a couple lines down (you can manually do this to give you more balloons to work with, but you can't do it during combos and it can put you close to being taken out by an attack)


There we go. Now, the first four lines (counting up from the bottom) seem to all be their own little pattern. You can easily see that each line is the same as the line below it, but with the colors of the balloons "shifted" by one. The only difference is that left green balloon in the fourth row, which looks like it's there to help you finish off that pattern. (note that taking any of the balloons at the start before dropping lines would've resulted in the first line being dropped anyways because of the number of balloons on the field at the time)

The four rows behind them are not as immediately obvious, and I see no easy method for clearing them out in one combo, so just clear them out as you can.

Now, let's look at another example:

First off, this is as full as you can make your field by manually dropping lines. You don't have a lot of wiggle room until you start clearing lines, but the potential for large combos is very high.

Secondly, this setup is what I like to refer to as an "unfavorable" setup. No immediately obvious patterns in the first few rows. So what do we do?

It's actually not as bad as it seems at first glance, but the amount of precision needed for clearing most of that in one combo (without shortening it by bursting balloons simultaneously) makes it infeasible, but let's entertain that idea for now.

Making a stack of two blue at the second column from the left sets up the second link in the opening combo. Then you burst the broken green box by throwing the right-hand green balloon at it (2 combo, blue bursts afterwards). While the green is bursting, take the red balloon at the far right and shift over two columns to where you could throw it onto the red. wait for the blue to fall and start bursting, then throw red (3 combo), pick up the yellow just to the right, and wait at the right. Red bursts, throw yellow (4 combo), grab blue, shift RIGHT (not left), throw blue onto the soon-to-be-bursting yellow (5 combo), grab the now-exposed green in the middle column and throw that onto the right-hand column (6 combo, and by now, yellow will probably be bursting). grab the left-hand yellow balloon and prepare to throw it at the center column of yellow balloons. once the green balloons at the right burst, throw it (7 combo) and pick up the red balloon just left of center. Burst the red broken box at left (8 combo) and grab the blue left of center. Burst the blue right of center (9 combo). Burst the red broken box immediately left of where the blues you just burst are and you'll have just pushed your combo to 10 (if you timed everything right). Clearing the remainder of the field is an exercise left to the reader.