Tips bug

• Don’t eat opponent critters when unnecessary. It’s almost always better to delay eating to the last moment. When you eat your opponent’s critter, you also give your opponent more flexibility.

• While it can be fun to capture multiple opponent bugs at once, it’s dangerous, because it gives your opponent a lot of flexibility to counterattack.

• Try to minimize the number of moves you have left to play and maximize your opponent’s. In the late stage if there is no tactical advantage to be gained, fill the cells that only you can fill before the ones that both you and your opponent can fill.

• Ultimately, you want to make captures that don’t lead to opponent counter-captures. At first this is impossible. So early, you need to build your position, so when it becomes possible to prevent counter-captures, you can do so better than your opponent. It’s all positioning, and it takes a while to learn this skill.

• The difficulty of building shapes, and therefore the difficulty of defending and attacking shapes, is governed by a hierarchy. Over time and experience, it's possible to understand this hierarchy. Doing so will better help you decide which shapes to build, and which shapes to keep your opponent from building.

• On smaller boards, controlling a large amount of the second-most outer ring may be key to victory - it ensures you won't have to fill the outer ring, while your opponent will.