Efficiency 1: Color Decisions

In previous guides, I mentioned that you should try your best to make good color decisions, because otherwise, your second floor ends up being really crappy. Color-Decision Making is a thought process that involves sorting where certain colors can and cannot go. Unfortunately, a lot of players don't play with any sort of thought process at all, so in this guide, I'll show you the right way to think.

Let's say you're trying to make sandwich and your next piece is a Green-Yellow pair. Where would you put it in this set-up?

Your first instinct is probably something like the following chain, right?

"I will need a garbage puyo."

This is a common beginner mistake. Instead of thinking ahead, some players will mindlessly add to the trigger without considering any surrounding color conflicts. The only way to continue the chain is to waste a Puyo like this:

But now that your column 3 is at a higher elevation, you have to waste Puyo in column 4 to match it. Or use Rising Dragon, but that's not the point of this guide.

Anyways, to make good color decisions, you must first determine where certain colors will actually work. Let's look back at the initial example again.

First, which color would work in Column 3? It can't be Green, obviously, and it can't be Yellow because it will conflict with the yellows on the bottom. It can't be Blue, because that will conflict with the blues in Column 1. Thus, the only color left is Red (if you say purple I will punch you in the face). I'll add the Red Puyo to this chainsim as a hypothetical placeholder so you can follow along with my logic, but keep in mind that you're still trying to place a Green-Yellow piece.

Now, what color works in Column 4? It can't be blue or red, so that leaves yellow and green. What if you choose Green for Column 4?

The only way to complete that is to build it like this:

Due to the color choices, there's no way to switch sandwich forms in order to make building it more efficient. You're going to need a lot of Red-Green pieces, but you shouldn't count on the RNG being that nice. You should always choose to build in a way that leaves open the most options. It'd be safer to put a Yellow in Column 4 instead.

Now, back to the original problem. Where would we put a Green-Yellow piece in this setup?

Since we know we're going to need a yellow in Column 4, why not place it like... this?

(Yes, it's completely fine to have a sandwich that pops five Puyo instead of four. I see a lot of players being neurotic about this when it's perfectly acceptable to make your chains a little "bulky.")

Well, that's the gist of it. Once you play a lot of matches, this thought process will become automatic. And once you learn some new forms, a lot of the issues I presented in the above chainsims can be circumvented with clever building.

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