【東方】 Yet Another Touhou Draft

[Scarlet]

Ninjas, ninjas everywhere

Personally, I'm kinda surprised nobody picked MarisaA for UFO. She's like the anti-UFO shot type!

@ZM: Alright, good luck, but don't push yourself. ^^

[ZemZem]

Haha, don't worry. I'll do my best. ^^

[Scarlet]

EoSD - ReimuA: I haven't played EoSD in months, but this is one I always went with when I played. Maybe I can finally get past Meiling. NO. I WILL get past Meiling. And Patchouli. AND Sakuya. AND REMILIA. Maybe not Flandre.

PCB - SakuyaB: Haven't played. Lead me to victory, Sakuya~

IN - Magic Team: Haven't played. Marisa/Alice tag-team. Surprised Kalas didn't pick this. This should be fun.

MoF - ReimuA: Sanae's debut game~ Haven't played, though. Reimu should do fine.

SA - MarisaC: Haven't played. Marisa/Nitori tag-team. Proto said this should be difficult, but hey, I like a challenge. Bring it on.

UFO - SanaeB: Haven't played, but SANAE~ I'LL DO FINE.

TD - Sanae: Played a little bit, but stopped so I could focus more on EoSD last year. Again, I have Sanae. I'LL DO FINE.

DDC - SakuyaB: Haven't played. Sakuya rocks, though. I got this.

And that's that. Advice would be appreciated, however.

Well, less advice and more a general assessment of your picks:

ReimuA in EoSD is kinda weak (like most homing types are), but it's pretty useful for the stages themselves and allows you to ignore boss movement and still deal damage. Not a good shot type for scoring, but it allows you to focus on dodging, which despite the low damage output can help with 1ccing if you have issues trying to mimic boss movements.

SakuyaB in PCB is pretty quirky. One of the best shot types for scoring, but it's somewhat difficult to actually 1cc with.

The Magic Team in IN is all damage, no spread, which is pretty much the polar opposite of Reimu's homing type. Marisa in particular is extremely strong, but you'll have to mimic boss movements well, as otherwise you'll completely miss your target.

ReimuA in MoF is very similar to her EoSD self, except you can spam bombs. MoF is a fairly easy game, so even though ReimuA's damage output is pretty bad, you should be fine. Note, however, that you need power for your homing shots - if you bomb yourself down to 0 power, you lose your homing shots as well. Careful with that.

MarisaC in SA is the second-weakest shot type in terms of damage output and has to mimic boss movements due to non-existent spread, but her shield bomb is useful if you're not good at bombing. Overall, however, Proto is right in that it's not exactly a good shot type, and it's probably the worst in terms of scoring.

SanaeB is easily the best shot type in UFO by a long shot for pure 1ccing, although maybe not quite the best for scoring. Very much a solid pick, though.

Sanae in TD is kinda weak damage-wise, but her ability to accumulate trance more quickly can be useful if used well, although the difference isn't very big. Reimu and Youmu are better for scoring purposes, though.

SakuyaB in DDC is one of the best shot types for scoring, but one of the worst for actually beating the game. A solid pick if you can overcome her difficulty of use, though. (Again, very narrow attack range when focused.)

[Komeiji Koishi]

Evaluate my picks? :>

[ZemZem]

Well, less advice and more a general assessment of your picks:

ReimuA in EoSD is kinda weak (like most homing types are), but it's pretty useful for the stages themselves and allows you to ignore boss movement and still deal damage. Not a good shot type for scoring, but it allows you to focus on dodging, which despite the low damage output can help with 1ccing if you have issues trying to mimic boss movements.

SakuyaB in PCB is pretty quirky. One of the best shot types for scoring, but it's somewhat difficult to actually 1cc with.

The Magic Team in IN is all damage, no spread, which is pretty much the polar opposite of Reimu's homing type. Marisa in particular is extremely strong, but you'll have to mimic boss movements well, as otherwise you'll completely miss your target.

ReimuA in MoF is very similar to her EoSD self, except you can spam bombs. MoF is a fairly easy game, so even though ReimuA's damage output is pretty bad, you should be fine. Note, however, that you need power for your homing shots - if you bomb yourself down to 0 power, you lose your homing shots as well. Careful with that.

MarisaC in SA is the second-weakest shot type in terms of damage output and has to mimic boss movements due to non-existent spread, but her shield bomb is useful if you're not good at bombing. Overall, however, Proto is right in that it's not exactly a good shot type, and it's probably the worst in terms of scoring.

SanaeB is easily the best shot type in UFO by a long shot for pure 1ccing, although maybe not quite the best for scoring. Very much a solid pick, though.

Sanae in TD is kinda weak damage-wise, but her ability to accumulate trance more quickly can be useful if used well, although the difference isn't very big. Reimu and Youmu are better for scoring purposes, though.

SakuyaB in DDC is one of the best shot types for scoring, but one of the worst for actually beating the game. A solid pick if you can overcome her difficulty of use, though. (Again, very narrow attack range when focused.)

MarisaC for SA probably wasn't a good idea, after all. Ouch. That won't be too fun. Everything else sounds decent to great, however, and I can't wait to try out UFO. Thanks Scarlet. :D

[Kriemhild]

EoSD - ReimuA: I haven't played EoSD in months, but this is one I always went with when I played. Maybe I can finally get past Meiling. NO. I WILL get past Meiling. And Patchouli. AND Sakuya. AND REMILIA. Maybe not Flandre.

Patchouli is the hardest boss, imo. ReimuA is nice since she has the easiest time getting the Stage 5 1up without wasting a bomb.

PCB - SakuyaB: Haven't played. Lead me to victory, Sakuya~

Sakuya gets more bombs than anybody else, and abusing your bombs and Cherry Borders can allow you to easily clear PCB with little challenge.

IN - Magic Team: Haven't played. Marisa/Alice tag-team. Surprised Kalas didn't pick this. This should be fun.

Rapidly alternating between Marisa and Alice (by rapidly tapping Shift) leads to abnormally high damage outputs, I've heard. You may want to abuse that.

MoF - ReimuA: Sanae's debut game~ Haven't played, though. Reimu should do fine.

As RAYKITTY~ once said, MoF can be renamed to "Touhou: Bomb Spam Edition". ReimuA has homing shots~

SA - MarisaC: Haven't played. Marisa/Nitori tag-team. Proto said this should be difficult, but hey, I like a challenge. Bring it on.

I have yet to even clear Stage 5 with my preferred shot types. Good luck with this one. You'll really need it.

UFO - SanaeB: Haven't played, but SANAE~ I'LL DO FINE.

SanaeB is the best in this game imo. Her bomb is the best in this game.

TD - Sanae: Played a little bit, but stopped so I could focus more on EoSD last year. Again, I have Sanae. I'LL DO FINE.

Sanae can abuse Trance more often iirc, so you can take advantage of that to get more resources. By that, I mean you should go into Trance mode whenever you see a lot of goodies (purple spirits, especially, which provide life pieces) because their value doubles in Trance mode.

DDC - SakuyaB: Haven't played. Sakuya rocks, though. I got this.

You sure do. If you haven't played it though, um... well, let's just say that it took me more than a week to get over my trauma of fighting Seija for the first time.

And that's that. Advice would be appreciated, however.

Don't be afraid to bomb. Don't be too greedy; Greed is like, the most common reason for deaths in Touhou. Survival is the top priority, so focus more on staying alive than doing damage. That being said, do try to be aware of and avoid situations where you're never hitting the boss while dodging, since timing out is usually not recommended for non-timeout spells.

[Scarlet]

Evaluate my picks? :>

ReimuB in EoSD is very good for 1ccing (awesome damage output) and decent-ish for scoring. Not a bad pick.

ReimuB in PCB is the very opposite of the former despite being the exact same shot type - good for scoring, but rubbish for 1ccing because her damage output was nerfed to oblivion and she's incredibly slow in this game.

The Border Team in IN is pretty balanced. A solid pick.

ReimuC in MoF has awe-inspiring damage-output up close (she beats MarisaBroken's when sitting on top of the boss during a bomb, for damn's sake!), and okay-ish when at a reasonably safe distance. Avoid camping at the bottom of the screen and you should be fine.

ReimuA is the best shot type in SA for both survival and scoring, no questions asked. Best damage output, best bomb, best special ability. What more could you want?

ReimuB in UFO is the homing type. I have yet to actually try her, but I can very much imagine that her homing amulets going everywhere but where you want them go while UFOs filled with hundreds of items are making their way to the edge of the screen is gonna be a pain in the ass.

Reimu in TD is again one of the best characters, well-balanced with no weaknesses. Youmu rivals her, but she's definitely a very good choice.

ReimuB in DDC has some shades of her PCB self. By not using her bewitched weapon, she trades homing shots for... ...less damage output. Yes, I'm not even kidding. Honestly not a good pick.

[ZemZem]

Patchouli is the hardest boss, imo. ReimuA is nice since she has the easiest time getting the Stage 5 1up without wasting a bomb.

Sakuya gets more bombs than anybody else, and abusing your bombs and Cherry Borders can allow you to easily clear PCB with little challenge.

Rapidly alternating between Marisa and Alice (by rapidly tapping Shift) leads to abnormally high damage outputs, I've heard. You may want to abuse that.

As RAYKITTY~ once said, MoF can be renamed to "Touhou: Bomb Spam Edition". ReimuA has homing shots~

I have yet to even clear Stage 5 with my preferred shot types. Good luck with this one. You'll really need it.

SanaeB is the best in this game imo. Her bomb is the best in this game.

Sanae can abuse Trance more often iirc, so you can take advantage of that to get more resources. By that, I mean you should go into Trance mode whenever you see a lot of goodies (purple spirits, especially, which provide life pieces) because their value doubles in Trance mode.

You sure do. If you haven't played it though, um... well, let's just say that it took me more than a week to get over my trauma of fighting Seija for the first time.

Don't be afraid to bomb. Don't be too greedy; Greed is like, the most common reason for deaths in Touhou. Survival is the top priority, so focus more on staying alive than doing damage. That being said, do try to be aware of and avoid situations where you're never hitting the boss while dodging, since timing out is usually not recommended for non-timeout spells.

Bold: Eek. I think I can do it, though.

Thanks Proto. :D

[Kriemhild]

RAYKITTY~, what about me and Zaaaak? Aren't you going to evaluate our picks?

[Komeiji Koishi]

ReimuB in EoSD is very good for 1ccing (awesome damage output) and decent-ish for scoring. Not a bad pick.

ReimuB in PCB is the very opposite of the former despite being the exact same shot type - good for scoring, but rubbish for 1ccing because her damage output was nerfed to oblivion and she's incredibly slow in this game.

The Border Team in IN is pretty balanced. A solid pick.

ReimuC in MoF has awe-inspiring damage-output up close (she beats MarisaBroken's when sitting on top of the boss during a bomb, for damn's sake!), and okay-ish when at a reasonably safe distance. Avoid camping at the bottom of the screen and you should be fine.

ReimuA is the best shot type in SA for both survival and scoring, no questions asked. Best damage output, best bomb, best special ability. What more could you want?

ReimuB in UFO is the homing type. I have yet to actually try her, but I can very much imagine that her homing amulets going everywhere but where you want them go while UFOs filled with hundreds of items are making their way to the edge of the screen is gonna be a pain in the ass.

Reimu in TD is again one of the best characters, well-balanced with no weaknesses. Youmu rivals her, but she's definitely a very good choice.

ReimuB in DDC has some shades of her PCB self. By not using her bewitched weapon, she trades homing shots for... ...less damage output. Yes, I'm not even kidding. Honestly not a good pick.

Thanks for the info, looks like I'm not gonna do too bad.

Well crap, my copy of EoSD is kinda eh... might have to redownload it.

[Scarlet]

RAYKITTY~, what about me and Zaaaak? Aren't you going to evaluate our picks?

I will if you ask me to. :V

Yours, Proto:

MarisaA in EoSD is the best type in terms of raw damage output and thus automatically good at scoring, although MarisaB beats her in terms of scoring because Master Spark.

SakuyaA in PCB is the best shot type for survival and the single worst for scoring (...actually, ReimuA might be worse, but I'm not sure). Not a bad pick if survival is a concern.

The Nether Team in IN is the best for scoring (or rather, solo Youmu is), but not terribly impressive otherwise. Good pick still.

ReimuB in MoF is pretty good, although MoF honestly has a lot of great shot types. Scoring in MoF is mostly independent of shot type, so very much a solid pick.

MarisaB in SA is probably the next best shot type after ReimuA if you can use the quirkyness of her shot type to its fullest extent. If you can't, it's meh at best. Pretty solid pick, but requires practice.

ReimuA in UFO lacks SanaeB's incredibly broken bombs and MarisaA's UFO-destroying piercing lasers, but is balanced otherwise and has no real weaknesses. Decent pick.

Youmu in TD is a little quirky, but not hard to understand and very effective when used well. Very much capable of rivaling Reimu in terms of scoring and still decent survival-wise (in fact, she does exceptionally well against Yoshika), so she's a very good pick.

SakuyaA in DDC is one of the best shot types survival-wise and pretty decent scoring-wise, although aside from ReimuB, there aren't really any "bad" shot types in DDC. Pretty good pick.

(Also, as a side note, if irrelevant to this draft: her shield bomb is insanely useful for the Extra Stage, as Raiko does not turn invincible for the entire duration of the shield, only when you actually activate it.)

[Komeiji Koishi]

So I had to redownload EoSD (And maybe the other games) but it's worth it!

[Scarlet]

So I had to redownload EoSD (And maybe the other games) but it's worth it!

Well, as long as it works now. ^^

Also, might as well do Zak's while I'm at it:

MarisaB in EoSD is kinda eh damage-wise, but she's the best at scoring because she can kill a lot of enemies with Master Spark that no other shot type can kill before they go off-screen with all the precious point items they're carrying.

MarisaA in PCB has excellent damage output and has be the best shot type for scoring.

Unless you bomb.

If you ever bomb, you can pretty much kiss your score goodbye (even more so than other characters). Marisa has the highest Cherry penalty for bombing by a long shot - Lunatic and Hard offer a discount on that, but on Normal (and thus this draft), you lose about 40% of your Cherry. So yeah. Very good choice, but requires the skill and confidence to back it up.

The Scarlet team in IN is my personal favorite because it can essentially "shotgun" the boss from across the whole screen. So broken. Remilia is extremely effective with strategic placement of her familiars; Sakuya on the other hand, however, is kinda weak, even during the stage portions. Overall a good pick if you don't try to use Sakuya solo.

MarisaC in MoF is very similar to Remilia in use, although Marisa's familiars have a much shorter range. Still decent, but a bit more difficult to use effectively (but very good if you do pull it off). Decent pick.

ReimuC in SA is a little quirky, but overall very flexible as she can fire in any direction at will, and her damage output is... ...inferior to ReimuA's (just like everyone else's), but not terrible. Her bomb is also pretty good; possibly the only one to rival ReimuA's in usefulness. Not for scoring purposes (ReimuC can't graze while bombing whereas ReimuA can), but moving on top of a boss with it is very damaging. Solid pick.

I've never used MarisaB in UFO so far and honestly have no idea how good or bad she is.

Marisa in TD is kinda terrible (compared to the other characters, at least). She'd be decent if her lasers still pierced things, but ZUN felt like trolling and nerfed them, so yeah. Worse still, Master Spark slows her down and doesn't auto-collect items in this game, so you'll probably miss a lot more items than other characters would. She also has the most useless special ability. Probably the worst pick, although TD is not a difficult game.

MarisaA in DDC is pretty okay-ish. Master Spark is Master Spark (and auto-collects items again, so yay), and her normal shot is... ...pretty damaging up close, but it's very difficult to stay close to bosses in this game, and the flames deal unimpressive damage at best when at a reasonably safe distance. Furthermore, the flame particles are pretty distracting and tend to obscure bullets, which I personally find annoying to deal with. Not terrible, but there are definitely better choices.

[Kriemhild]

I made my picks based on how easy they are to 1cc with my playstyle, so I wasn't really concerned about scoring. Alyhow, I think I'll start EoSD soon, since I'm a little more free now. And since the hitbox patch and V-sync patches are allowed, I might as well link them for everyone to access: http://en.touhouwiki.net/wiki/Game_Tools_and_Modifications#Game_Specific

Also, RAYKITTY~, for the DDC replays, you can upload them here: http://threplays.appspot.com/replays

[Scarlet]

Also, RAYKITTY~, for the DDC replays, you can upload them here: http://threplays.appspot.com/replays

Thanks, will add it to the OP!

[Kriemhild]

Is there a reason why there's a start time for each round? Like, I can perfectly understand why there is an end time, to set deadlines for the final submission. But why can't we send in replays that were achieved before the start time but still after the draft began? It seems more inconvenient, having to wait until the start time to achieve a valid run, and requiring dedication towards this draft for every week for eight weeks. I'm not really seeing the point of having a start time...

[Scarlet]

Well, the biggest reason would be "because that's how it worked in Nag's draft", I guess. xD

I guess another reason would be so that the time allowed to get a valid run for each game is consistent. If I were to accept replays of all games instantly, each subsequent game would have a longer valid timeframe in which to achieve a run, which... ...just seems odd.

I'm not completely against allowing entries of the later games to be sent in early, but on the other hand it just doesn't seem right.

[Kriemhild]

"That's how it worked in Nag's draft" resulted in zak and even Naggy often being too busy to complete their runs. And it's not like we can't practice those games before their respective rounds start anyway. I see no reason to render those runs as invalid for the draft. An individual player's actual available time to complete a run would be mostly governed by irl factors. The quality of submissions might be affected by these timing restrictions e.g. somebody might be particularly busy during the time frame of a specific game, so they might not be able to make a lot of attempts, or won't be able to concentrate quite as well, resulting in a relatively poor run for submission.

Of course, we have to keep deadlines for each game, since we can't have people keep retrying forever. But if somebody submits an entry early, should they not have the right to spend their surplus time in officially attempting the next game, rather than spend it on invalid practice runs? After all, this draft is supposed to be a competition on score and on whether or not the game is cleared. It's not meant to be a race or anything, so I don't think there should be any extra timing restrictions for the sake of consistency.

[Scarlet]

Yeah, you do have a point.

Alright, how about a compromise: I still require you to beat the games in order, but I will accept replays of the next game once I have received a replay of the previous, regardless of how much time there's left. I will, however, no longer accept improvements of previous games once you've sent in a replay of the next.

So if you have sent in a replay of EoSD, I will accept a replay of PCB next, and if I receive a replay of PCB, I will accept IN next and stop accepting improvements of EoSD.

In other words, you can schedule your time however you want (up until I announce the result of a particular game), but you still progress by rounds. That alright?

If that sounds dumb, do tell me!

[ZemZem]

Sounds good to me!

[Kriemhild]

Yeah, that's what I was thinking. Once a replay for a game is sent, no replays for any previous games will be accepted from the same player. And each game will still have a deadline of one week after the previous game's round ends.

Now we just need Zak's and Kalas-chan's approval and it'll be good. Thanks, RAYKITTY~!

Edited February 9, 2014 by Railgun

[Scarlet]

Well then, if nobody expresses their disagreement by tomorrow, we'll go with that.

[Scarlet]

Double post for great justice!

'aight, we'll roll with that. I'll change the OP accordingly.

[Scarlet]

Just a reminder, you guys have one week left to send in a replay for EoSD~

[Komeiji Koishi]

Oh crap that's next tuesday.

Okay, after tomorrow, I will kick ass and stuff.