By the look of it, you need 3 loops. (for) will work fine.
1. The first loop can take care of the vertical component.
2. The second can out put the white spaces. (decrease)
3. The third loop can output the *.(increase)
it will probably look something like this...
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
loop1
{
loop2
{
Loop3
{
WHITE SPACES
}
That Star Thingy.
}
ENDl;
}