The Multispin

                    

Multispins: multiple T-spins. Setups which allow us to place multiple T tetrominos via T-spins, and setups which require us to T-spin multiple times for the placement. There's a lot of overlap.

Why?

• T-spins do significant damage. In Tetris vs Tetris, non-mini T-spins do 2*lines cleared, plus a one-line back-to-back bonus. So a T-spin double can do 4 or 5 damage. Put two of them together for 10 damage, and you have a game-swinging midgame move. Put two triples together for 14 damage, and you might have an instant kill.
• They're beautiful. Multispins put Tetris rotation mechanics, Tetromino tiling,  and human imagination together in a way that's both aesthetically pleasing and mind-expanding.
• Some multispins can be set up very fast, allowing us more pieces on the board and more ammunition to send damage.
• Multispins allow us to delay our attack, limiting damage blocks sent that could be weaponized to send damage back to us until we're ready to kill them. In Tetris DS, with its Star item and easy counter-tetrises, this was an extremely important advantage--less so in Puyo Puyo Tetris.
• Practicing various multispins allows us the insight to improvise equivalent and new ones in midgame for devastating and beautiful effect.

Why not?

Frankly, I'm not sure any of the example openings are particularly viable as openings in an optimal metagame sense for Tetris vs. Tetris, though the Jail and the Left-O may be worthwhile a proportion of the time for some decks (see below), and the Izzy-dubdub is a worthy followup to a strong opening. Multispin openings typically hit late, allowing countering by Ace and Long Combo openings, and typically waste the first T piece and thus are less efficient than early T-spin openings that can lead to T-spins with every T in every deck. But just because they're not the best openings, doesn't mean you can't apply these to your midgame.

How?

1. The Jail

        

If I was to learn only one opening in all of Tetris, I would learn this one. It can be done with almost any deck, including hard ones like SZT, and allows for quite a lot of very educational followups. It can back-to-back T-spin triple, T-spin triple into double T-spin double, all-clear, move into a normal mid-game, and start a long combo. That said, its waste of the first T makes it weaker in an optimal metagame than a host of other openings for most decks.

I so call the Jail because its characteristic feature is the J stacked on the L (for the left version) or J beneath the L (for the right hand version.) Thus, the JL->Jail.

The example shows the Zesty variant of the Jail. The heart of it is the ZST formation, which both forms the T-notch and provides a covered hole to help form the second T-spin. We independently fill in the JL and IO parts. The Zesty Jail is the most seen variant as it allows us to do a T-spin opening on decks where we must place S/Z very early, that otherwise would not allow an easy T-spin opening.

    

We should note other variants of the jail, the Ziot and the Tiz. These use the O and I in place of the S (or Z in the right-hand version) to form part of our central notch. They are less often seen in opening than the Zesty since in most decks where one can do one of these in hard-drops, one will instead prefer a quick T-spin opening. But they are very useful to bear in mind as examples when doing a midgame Jail.


After filling in the right a bit, we can get a first T-spin triple.

        

It should be noted that we either need no wall here, or a wall at least 2-high. A one-high wall means we can't T-spin into the hole. How does the 2-high example get the T into the hole? A quick step-by-step:

        

We orient the T left, drop it in, then hit A twice. We pan spin into the hook, then hook spin into the triple slot. If you find these spins surprising, see the previous post on possible T-spins.

How shall we follow up? We could just take a T-spin double:



We can set up another triple with, for example, an I and a Z, or a J and an L, or an O and a Z:

            

We can set up a double-double, for example with a Z and an S:



From a second triple with the O and Z, or J and L, we can fill in columns 5-10 to a reasonable height and go into a Long Combo:



The possibilities abound.


2. Right-O! The Left-O

    

Above is the Left-O setup, and its almost-never-used evil twin, the Right-O. On the lower levels of the online ladder, the Left-O and its variants are seen incredibly frequently, even for decks it is obviously wildly inappropriate for. Why? I'm guessing Youtube videos and `articles like this one that don't write enough caveats, but, not having reviewed existing writings, I'm not sure.

Here are the first seven pieces:



Note the isolated O on the left, from which we get the left-O name. When we look at how we build this, we see the power of this opening for certain decks. Suppose your deck starts L, S, T. Then if you just tap up three times for three hard drops, you get this:



To fill in the I, hit right once and hit A (clockwise rotate). Then hit up. So in just two dpad motions, I is placed.

Similarly, J and Z can be right-dragged and hard-dropped for two dpad motions, and O can be left-dragged and hard-dropped. So the initial deck is placed very rapidly. We see from this example why the Left-O is so much more popular than the Right-O: instant hard-drops make for a very easy, very much faster setup.

    

Now we fill in the second deck. The important things here to note are the inverted L and J pieces which form our T-spin entry, and the vertically placed I on the right which smoothly fills in needed space. The rest, i.e. the O, Z, and S, can largely be improvised in the remaining space as necessary. In the example below, I do the T-spins before placing the S.



Now we have the setup. We hit A (clockwise rotate) to orient the T right while putting it on the left. We hold down and, as it reaches the bottom, tap B (counterclockwise rotate) three times, and optionally hit up to hard-drop it in place and save a fraction of a second. What is going on here? Well, maybe a step by step diagram will help:

                

First spin, the pan spin, orients us flat and hooks us on the top hook. Second spin, the hook spin, orients us left and moves us downward into the T-hole. In between the second and third spin, we fall down one square into the T-spin double hole. Then the third spin, the basic rotation, gets us our T-spin double. Again, if you find the motion of the T in these surprising, see the previous post on possible T-spins.

Once we've executed this (whew!) we end up in the good old T-spin triple hole you should be familiar with from the Jail, and we get into it with just two counterclockwise spins this time:

            

How do we followup? Well, here we are, with an S in hand and most of deck 3 to play:

    

Notice there's the pan setup and 3 squares of material in columns 1-4. So like in the Jail trip-trip, we can fill in columns 5-10 and do a Long Combo:



Note that we're vulnerable in the middle during this build. We would want to do this if our opening attacks canceled out with our opponent to limit our vulnerability. Of course, we can force our attacks to cancel out by leaving our T-spin triple setup and holding the T piece until he attacks, and doing our own T-spin in response.

Also note the formation on the left looks a lot like the start of the Jail. So we can fill in the J and L, and do the midgame Jail:



I don't recommend doing this, though, as it needs more than one deck, and seems slower and thus weaker than just going for a quick T-spin and playing a normal midgame:

        


3. The Izzy dub-dub



Let's wander away from semi-useful openings, to an actually strong opening followup. If you remember the Izzy we can end up here after the T-spin at 6:



From there we have a J in hand as well as one in the next 7 pieces. We form the double-double hole using the two Js, the I, and the S and Z as follows:

    

We fill in the area on the left with what's left. To execute our first T-spin double we slide into the hook and, as in the Left-O, hit B (counterclockwise rotate) three times:

            

We hook spin into the hole, then basic rotate twice to get the correct orientation. This breaks the first and third row, giving us our first double and leaving us with a clean T-spin hole:



We've now used up our first and second deck. With our T in the third deck, we can get another double, but we need not stop there: the remaining space isn't too hard to fill up for an all-clear:

    

I'll discuss the details of the various all-clears here in a later post; for now I leave it as an exercise for the reader.

Of the setups in this post, this is the most viable to use, unchanged, in top level play. It has the potential, even, to kill a height-11 Long Combo before it starts, with the 10 all-clear damage lines on top of the existing 14 T-spin damage lines. Against it, well, be sure to shoot some damage before they get to the all-clear.


4. The Initial D

        

This gets us two T-spin doubles in opening. Kind of meh for an opening, but one advantage over other setups is that we are not required to use up our first T--so we could go ahead and hit early if we see an Ace being built.

This is much more viable as a midgame play, building up then opening up a side combo with two T-spin doubles.


5. The Johnny

I name this after the player who used it against me, Johnathon. You might recall after an Izzy, we can end up here. Many openings end up in similar places:



Note the single square in column 1 and empty columns 2 and 3. Well, with the Z and I, we can build something that looks remarkably like the Initial D:



It's one square too tall to T-spin into right away. But if we just form the triple hole with J and L, and fill in the right, we now have a T-spin triple into a double-double courtesy of the Initial D.

            

Generally, I think this too weak to use in early-game play, as we're quite vulnerable until we build to height 6 to unleash our first attack, and in that time, we probably are forced to waste a T unless we're absurdly clever with leaving later-fillable gaps in rows 1-3. But a few T-spins in, when we have more material to work with, doing this setup isn't too bad and can often be completed before we need to play our next T.

Also note that if we have an S instead, we can just mirror-image the setup:




I should also mention a very closely related build here instead of giving it its own section: the Trips. Suppose instead we start here:



Notice the empty column three and single squares in columns 1 and 2. If we just do exactly the same build as the Johnny, we get here:

            

Gives two back-to-back T-spin triples. This has the same concerns as the Johnny, but is slightly safer since we only require two Ts instead of three Ts before we can start clearing our garbage. Hopefully, by the time we've built to row 6, we have both Ts raring to go and can follow up our 13 or 14 damage with an epic garbage clear combo. Also note that unlike the Johnny, we can instead take our T-spins early as doubles if we don't place the I and L immediately.


6. The Music



I named this after the player who used it on me three rounds in a row, Musukaman.

The first 7 pieces are played as follows:



The second deck can be played a couple ways:

    

We then get this beautiful T-spin double into T-spin triple:

    

        

We accomplish this by sliding into the hook and hitting A twice for a hook spin into a bellyflop to get into the T-spin double hole. Then we T-spin triple as usual. Nice! But I don't think this is actually viable as a top-level opening. Not only do we waste the first T, but the second deck usually doesn't get placed by pure hard-drops. In 3 rounds, Musukaman required a soft-drop every time to get the setup.

I should point out a point of viability, though. After placing 5 of the first deck, we're over here:



This can also be used to for alternate Long Combo setup, as follows:



I'm not sure the ability to flip between a multispin and a Long Combo is sufficient to give this opening metagame viability, given the weakness of this multispin and the strength of quick T-spin openings against both. But, it's food for thought.


Conclusion

Multispins are beautiful. Learn to bust them out in midgame and awe your opponents. But, don't plan on opening with them all the time.