Shrine of Conflict/Reflection

Gaze into a reflecting pool to gain insight into this elegant game of spatial reasoning. Connect floating bubbles into thin sheets, but take care never to break an existing sheet.

Overview

The goal of the game is to be the last person to make a move. If it is your turn, and no move is available to you, you are the loser.

To move, pick 3 bubbles to form a triangle. You may not intersect another triangle, or reuse a bubble.

The second player may, on their first move, choose to switch sides.

If the game reaches 2 bubbles remaining, the player who won my claim the victory instead of waiting for their opponent to concede.

Strategy

At first, it appears there is little strategy involved, but there is. At the start there are (usually) 32 bubbles. The bubble count goes down by 3 each turn, as a triangle is completed. Therefore, by subtracting 6 from the current count repeatedly, you can see where the current player will end up.

If it will be your turn at 2 bubbles, then you will lose at 2. So, you must try and block off 3-5 bubbles so that when there are 5 left, there is no possible triangle.

If it will be your turn at 5 bubbles, you can either:

1. Try to keep at least 3 bubbles unblocked, so a triangle can be completed at 5 left.
2. Try to block a very large ( 6-8 ) amount of bubbles, so that no triangle can be completed when 8 bubbles are left.

It is unlikely that all triangles can be blocked when 11 bubbles are left, so you are limited to the above strategies.

Tips

• Try to start out with large Triangles that split the board roughly in half. This will limit the amount of moves that can be made by your opponent. Be warned, this can backfire.

• Try to split up groups of three bubbles, to reduce the possible moves. Be careful with this in the endgame, it can come back to haunt you.