I call this the WumbOJ or the WumbOL; I got it from Wumbo using it against me a few times. Curiously, I haven't noticed anyone else using it against me. This could mean that it's weak unless you're one of the fastest players, or it could be that it just hasn't caught on in the current metagame. (Note: since I wrote the draft of this article and started using it a month and a half ago, I have seen two high rated Japanese players and one high rated American player other than Wumbo use it against me. So it's getting some metagame catch-on.)
We get a T-spin single with our first T, a T-spin triple with our second T, and an easy way to T-spin double with our third T. Unlike the standard OL/OJ, we have fewer dependencies to do the opening in hard drops: only one piece is placed on the O, and one on the J, in the first deck. So we can open with this faster on average.
A nice property of this opening is that all-clears just aren't effective against it. An Ace gets stuffed by its opening T-spin single, and an Izzy15 or Izzy20 gets stuffed by the triple getting damage through any T-spin double. It also appears to have a lot of points to drop off and return damage given favorable damage blocks.
Let's look more closely at how we build this.
1) First deck.
Here we see the constraints: O < S, J < L.
Only two constraints. So we can do this without piece swapping whenever these hold, placing every piece other than the T as soon as we get it, or we can use piece swapping to do the opening anyway if only one of S < O and L < J applies and we don't need to hold the T early.
We then do the first T-spin single, and now we're here:
2) Second deck
Above are three variations for the second deck, in order of desirability. The constraints on these are as follows:
v1: J < O
v2: I|O < J
v3: O < J
As v1 and v3 have opposite constraints, we can always do at least one of these. We'll do v1 the majority of the time as it is marginally stronger than the other two. We get a T-spin triple in all three variants. Here we are after taking the triple in v1:
3) Third deck.
We have a number of possibilities with the third deck. The most obvious, and generally the one you want to do, is a quick T-spin double:
This can hit as early as piece 16, with L and T at the beginning of our third deck.. Combined with our triple on piece 14, it's a quick 1-2 punch for 12 damage that can often catch an opponent off-guard.
We can also do a triple here. While this usually doesn't lend itself to counterpunching as well as the double does, if we have damage blocks with the hole in column 9, this gives us some strong followups. Alternately, we could do a Long Combo afterward.
Given doing v1 in the second deck, we can all-clear at 20 in a couple ways:
The third all-clear, a no-S, is highly constrained. It requires T < J < L. The second all-clear, a no-J, is rarely useful. We can only do it if we can play the S last, i.e. only if J or S is the last piece in our third deck.
The first all-clear, a no-I, is surprisingly awesome, especially against Puyo. The constraints are T < J (hard) and S < L (evadable via S last + S-spin), so we can always do it once we've played our T and S. The reason it turns out to be awesome is two-fold: first, it provides excellent option coverage. If we have an early L, we can generally do a fast L+T double, the main variant seen above. If we have a late L, we can usually do the all-clear instead. Second, our hold-piece after this all-clear is the I. This means we can always do an Izzy variant as our pseudo-opening after the all-clear for some quick followup T-spins. Note that we don't get a third-deck T-spin with this all-clear, but against Puyo, that hardly matters--the two-line clear we usually get is almost as good versus Puyo, generally slowing them down with a 4 damage drop a move before we drop the all-clear hammer on them.
4) Beyond.
From the third-deck T-spin double, the most common variation, we can place a S on the right and set up a quick Trips (two T-spin triples) to kill all those pesky attempts to Long Combo one often sees after third deck:
Note that this takes a couple pieces past the fourth deck (for example the highlighted J and S in the sample fill above), so if the T comes in the first couple pieces of our fifth deck, we may end up having to either waste a T, waiting for our sixth deck, or take a T-spin double instead.
We also can start a repeated T-spin pattern, either in column 8 (from a double):
Or in column 7 (by taking a single):
I'll talk more about repeated T-spin patterns in a future post.
Beyond the third-deck no-I all-clear, we enter the fourth deck with a clean board and an I in hand. As I've alluded to, this allows you to always Izzy. Less obviously, it means we are now guaranteed to have all the pieces to all-clear 15 moves later via an I-fill of an Izzy15, though we're not guaranteed to have the right order. This is because we have precisely two full decks to work with, plus the I in hand. The I-fills you can do are as follows:
The one on the right is fairly unlikely, as it involves keeping the I in hand until quite late. The one on the left, however, seems to be achievable roughly half the time, often getting two T-spin doubles in the process. The sequence is something like this:
Of course, this assumes you can avoid taking damage while dropping the next 15 pieces. It does sometimes happen against Tetris via our T-spins canceling their attacks, and it's reasonably likely against Puyo. If you do manage to pull it off, you enter the sixth deck with an empty board and a clean slate, and can do the opening of your choice. If you want to get crazy fancy, you can do the all-clear opening of your choice for a THIRD all-clear, assuming your opponent lives so long.
Comparison to the OJ.
Constraint-wise, we're strictly better. For the first deck, O < S and J < L is clearly better than O < S, J < S|L. And we always get the second deck triple, so we better counter possible all-clears.
Speed-wise, we get our third deck double way faster. Getting a triple on 14 and a double on 16 makes for a very nice explosiveness to this opening, and zones out attempts at Long Combos quickly. We sometimes need an extra soft-drop to get the S into place in deck two, but the OJ pretty much always needs a soft-drop for its deck three T-spin, which doesn't generally happen till 21.
We have all-clears available to us at 20 in contrast with the OJ. But since these involve giving up a T-spin, they're mostly useful when you know you won't take damage during the third deck--pretty much against Puyo or against a Long Combo which is still building, though occasionally also against someone building Tetrises or multispins.
Damage-wise, therefore, we're a bit behind the OJ and the Izzy. We don't have an all-clear with T-spin like the Izzy, and we single our first T instead of double like the OJ. But it may be advantageous to single here against counterpunchers, since we're not giving them a possible free Tetris.
Counterpunch-wise, we don't really open things up for counterpunching until after the second deck, but then we have lots of lanes open. This is strictly better than the OJ, which doesn't really get to counterpunch until late third deck, but worse than other fast T-spin openings.
Enough talk! Let's grade:
Damage: A-
Speed: A
Followups: A
Counterpunch: B
All-clear: C+
Anti-all-clear: A+
Flexibility: A
Explosiveness: A
Now let's look at TvT opening matchups, theory-Tetris-wise. + is "slight advantage", +++ is "major advantage".
Tetrises: ++ We damage better, and starting with a single limits their immediate counterpunches.
Izzy: = The triple zones out their all-clear advantage, and we end up even on damage and in an equal position going into midgame.
OJ: + See above. Our advantages in speed, flexibility, followups, and counterpunching trump their meager two extra lines of damage.
Ace: +++ If we play our first 7 pieces fast enough, they can't all-clear.
Long Combo: ++ If we have a fast third-deck LT, we stop the build in its boots. We can also 20 all-clear to kill them outright.
Left-O: ++ Two extra damage to start plus far better followups and counterpunch. What's not to like?
Jail: + We just hit a bit harder.
Wow! We're not - against anything in TvT. That settles it; I'm practicing and using it. We'll see how well it works in practice instead of theory.
No comments:
Post a Comment