I'll quote myself again on the general gameplay rules that I think I've figured out. I'm pretty confident that I understand the targeting rules at this point but am less sure about the general strategy.
- Each time you send garbage that tops out an opponent, you're credited for a KO and it gives you some EXP toward your badges in the corner.
- Each badge you earn increases your attack power by 25%, up to a maximum of 4 badges for 200% power.
- So, an early game tactic could be to rack up as many KOs as quickly as possible by specifically targeting for KOs so that you increase your power quickly. Either use the "KO" targeting selection to snipe people in a poor position or manually select players that are at risk of topping out.
- Once you've either maxed out your badges or gotten a significant power boost early, consider switching the targeting to the other players who are leading in badges in order to eliminate the biggest threats.*
- If at any point you're being targeted by too many opponents to ignore, switch to targeting Attackers until you're out of trouble, then resume the previous tactics afterward. When you target multiple Attackers specifically, it seems to give you an additional power boost. Like when I've got 4+ people throwing garbage at me, selecting Attackers targets all of them and sends back way more garbage than normal.
* This can backfire against really adept opponents. If they have an empty field, and you send over 10 lines of garbage, there's a decent chance that the garbage will form a long well for them to fire Tetrises right back at you. So pick your shots accordingly.
I've seen some posters suggest to play it slow and safe because attacking less means racking up fewer KOs and staying low means you're at less risk of topping out, each of which reduces the odds of you getting targeted, but being under-powered is a quick recipe for failure once you're in the final 10 and can't hide anymore.
I also suspect that at least one of the targeting modes has a bias towards high-level opponents. Ever since I hit level ~20 or so I've had about 4 or 5 people targeting me at the start of each match.
