ITT: I rank the Tetris pieces

[Rodykitty]

Line Piece

Only way to score a Tetris. They aren't good for setting up combos except for placing to the side or being placed in your Hold Piece, though. Still, how central they are to scoring and how easy it is to place them somewhere that doesn't ruin your setup makes it a top piece.

9/10

L Piece (both directions)

The L Pieces I used to favor highly, but in the realm of higher level Tetris play, they are the worst piece for completing lines with. The reason for this is because you must have a gap in your setup that's exactly shaped as it is in order to score a triple, otherwise you end up with a gap you cannot fill until you clear out the upper two blocks with a single.

L-Blocks are still good for building your wall setups though, and are the most valuable at the beginning when you need to set up places for your Z and S pieces to fit.

7/10

T Piece

T Pieces fit pretty much anywhere you want and it'll never screw you up, and can be used to fix places that you couldn't find a good place to fit a Z or S block especially when you know how to T-Spin. There are also setups to mandate performing T-Spins which are just as important as getting Line Blocks to score Tetrises.

10/10

Square Piece

Screws up setups and often doesn't fit in complex areas. They're the best in the beginning when you need to fill your blank space quickly when setting up your wall.

4/10

Z and S Pieces

These are required for setting up T-Spins, AFAIK, and once you know more advanced ways of using them they aren't as problematic as they may seem.

8/10

Edited July 2, 2011 by Rodykitty

[Fia]

lolol, so true.

[TheEnd]

This sounds about accurate.

[Scarlet]

Wtf @ the square block's rating. I usually find it to be just as annoying as the Z-blocks, if not even more than them. They always come as the same, but you can't even rotate them, and you cannot fill single block gaps with them, which actually are quite common once the game has advanced a bit, so they mess up the field much more often than they help set up combos. And aside from that, the square can only clear up to two lines at a time, and even that requires very good planning, so usually, it will clear a single line at most. Even Z-blocks can usually do two lines without too much trouble.

I for one would give it a 5/10 at most, but more like a 4/10.

[Rodykitty]

Square blocks don't really solve problems, but they don't create them either unless problems already exist, and these ranking are assuming a good player that is building Tetris' and keeping mistakes minimal.

[Ein]

I always hated those Z-blocks.

[Scarlet]

@FE3 Player: Well, that much is true, but they quantify already existing problems (keeping places even in the lategame is pretty difficult, especially if you're trying to set up one or multiple Tetris, which I always do) while not solving any. I don't think that's worthy of a rating as good as 7.5 when L blocks only get an 8.

[Rodykitty]

You are right. Changing L-Block to 8.5. I did not want to give them a 9 straight off since they themselves are occasionally problematic.

Square block dropped to 7/10

Edited October 1, 2009 by FE3 Player

[Ercdouken]

This is very true. Z blocks are annoying.

[Zkirsche]

I always liked the Z block, it works with the L block quite well and perhaps even the T block and I blocks, depending on the positioning. They don't do much good for other Z blocks, yes, and not the square block neither, but not many things can work well with the square block in the first place, aside from L blocks. I'd say that at the very least, the square blocks and Z blocks should be moved closer together.

My two cents.

[Colonel M]

Square blocks don't suck, but yeah they are pretty bad in some situations.

Good rankings. I like Tetris. Play it all the time on break @ work.

[Rodykitty]

Bump.

The rankings needed to be updated. T Piece is now top tier.

[Aleph]

L is definitely > Z/S.

Also, I've done spins with Ls and shit too (though I don't know if that's allowed in standardized Tetris, but the version I play most is Magical Tetris Challenge which has blocks shaped like stairs and shit that you can spin into place with some finesse).

In some incredibly rare cases I've even done spins with the 4x1 and, in MTC, 5x1 pieces.

Z and S are the hardest to spin for sure.

Getting more than a couple of them in a row can screw you unlike the other pieces. MTC loves to spam them.

(Then again MTC also has a T piece that has a 3x1 with a 2x1 sticking out instead of a 1x1 like the traditional 4 block T piece and loves to spam that too, so I guess it trollin' 'n' imad?)

Edited July 2, 2011 by Obviam