Star Battle Strategy Guide(work in progress)

Strategies for Solving Star Battle Puzzles

Basic Strategy

Step 1: Try to identify regions that take up an entire row/column.

(insert example 1 here)

For example, in the image above, there is a region that lies entirely on a column, so we can use direct rule #2 to mark the tiles not in that region but in that row as places you cannot put stars on.

(insert example 2 here)

Step 2: Try to identify an X amount of regions that ONLY lie on X rows/columns so you can mark spaces not in the X amount of regions.

(insert example 3 here)

For example, in the image above, there are 3 regions that lie on 3 rows, and we know that there are 3x stars in those regions, but this also means that 3x stars are in those 3 rows, so x stars from those regions would be in each row. This would mean that any other region that has a space in those 3 rows would have no stars, so we can mark those spaces as places you cannot put stars on.

(insert example 4 here)

Step 3: Try to identify spaces that, when a star is placed on it, another region would not have enough spaces to put the right amount of stars in.

(insert example 5 here)

In the image above, there is a space where, when you place a star on it and after you use direct rule #1, makes a region have one available space. but what if this is a puzzle where you need to place two stars per region, row, and column, then there would be a contradiction, as it violates contradiction rule #1. So, after creating a branch where that space is a star and then using that rule to eliminate the possibility that that space is a star, then proceed to the other branch.

(insert examples 6 and 7 here)

Step 4: Whenever you place a star, remember to use direct rule #1 to mark all adjacent spaces and direct rule #3 if placing the star satisfies the puzzle number.

(insert example 8 here)

Step 5: If you don’t know any stars to place down, start branching off with the smallest region, or the region with the least amount of available spaces left, to reduce the number of overall branches.

(insert example 9 here)

In the image above, there is currently with 3 possible places to put down 2 stars, which means there are 3 possible combos to put the 2 stars. So we can create 3 branches, one for each combo of 2 stars, then proceed to use steps 1-3(not exclusively in that order, those are more like tips than steps with order) repeatedly.

(insert examples 10-12 here to show each branch)

Have fun solving!