Luna vs Twilight and Co: For those keeping score...

Since there was alot of illusion involved in the latest fight scene, here's what really happened. Spoilers below.

Twilight and co hit Luna with two solid magic blasts and a Rainboom. Luna is knocked unconscious.

Luna is Princess of Dreams. She manifests her dream self in reality. Her magic is significantly weakened in this form.

Luna knows she'll lose a straight fight, so she uses some illusions of herself and a silence/darkness spell to freak out and disorient Twilight. It works, and Twilight throws up a powerful shield to hunker down. By luck, Tempest also jumps into it to help Twilight.

Luna summons guards, and begins moving her body to a safe location.

Tempest feels Luna, and blasts her body through the wall of a nearby store.

Cadence casts Roselight, letting Tempest see by Cadence and Twilight's love and letting Twilight see by everyone's. Tempest is hurt the others don't consider her friendship that close. Luna is shaking it off, and letting Twilight deplete her mana reserves holding up the shield while the cavalry comes in.

Luna decides she's waited long enough and attacks, shattering Twilight's shield with magic-resistant swords, and makes a dramatic presentation.

Luna fights Tempest with a few spells, while using her swords telekinetically to fight Cadence. She also maintains an illusory copy of herself by those swords, to make it seem more impressive. All this takes alot of concentration and skill, but not much actual power.

Luna again goes for the drama and demoralizing the opposition with a big speech and looking like Nightmare Moon, while conjuring a storm cloud to use for further attacks. Dash discharges the cloud first, knocking her down. Applejack follows with a kick to the head and takes her hostage. The cavalry arrives, a single small squad.

Luna uses her body's horn as a casting focus to secretly give orders to the troops, have the snipers set up, and conjure a great deal more illusory soldiers.

In the resulting standoff, Luna 'lets them go' and then secretly has her body hauled to the hospital to deal with her life threatening injuries.

Comments

[Reese]

Ah, thanks for the additional information/clarification. :)