Late Folding (後折り, latter fold) Setups

Note:

This is an advanced topic. If you are a beginner, I recommend learning a transition like GTR and the concept of tailing first before you continue.

Late folding, also known as an Late Transition, is the act of building your chain starting from the back end. Instead of starting at the transition and then building the tail end later, you start at the tail end and then build the transition later.

Early Folding (Transition First)

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Late Folding (Tail End First)

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It is important to remember that Late Folding is not a form itself, but a set of forms that make up a building strategy. Each form is related to a different set of the first two Puyo pairs.

Note:

This guide refers to the order of colors as "A", "B", "C", and "D". A refers to the first color that comes out, B refers to the second color, C refers to the third, and so on.

For example, "AA BC DD" can refer to the Puyo order "Blue-Blue, Green-Yellow, Red-Red". This is because Blue is the first color to come out, Green is the second, Yellow is third, and Red is fourth.

AAAB

There are two ways to start with the AAAB pattern.

Afterwards...

If the piece can be placed on the left side, then use it to build the tail.
If the piece can't be placed on the left side, then use it to build the transition.

Tail

When it comes to building a tail for AAAB, you can pair it with a Y-shape:

Y-shape

Y-shape (Variant)

Here are some recommendations to place your third piece.

From here, you will want to build the rest of the Y-shape. Some tips:

You will want to place a Puyo so that after the Y-shape pops, the bottom layer will pop as well.
If you are using the Y-shape variant, don't forget you have a lone Puyo on the fourth column.
Feel free to experiment with tailing! Here are some examples:

Transition

The transition is placed on the right side of the board. The transition should be built with pieces can't be placed on the tail.

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Examples:

Here are some examples by the player yuta (ゆた in game, left side).

Do you want to see a breakdown on one of the examples?

Click here to expand.

This is a breakdown of the AAAB pattern at 00:53 on the video above.

First, yuta places their first two pieces down.

Next, yuta has a Red-Blue piece. Since that piece can be placed on the left without popping anything, he places it there.

Now, yuta has to place the two Red-Yellow pairs. At first, it looks like the two pairs can be placed on the left side. But look at where the Blue and Purple Puyo are on the board. In order to let yuta set the chain off, the first and third columns will also need to have blue next to them. This is because yuta will not be able to build the regular Y-shape and will have to build the variant instead.

yuta will not be able to place the piece on the left. Instead, the two Red-Yellow pairs will have to be placed on the right side. These will start to make up the transition, which happens to be GTR.

yuta then uses the next two pieces to finish the Y-shape variant...

...and then uses the next four pieces to build the Blue-Purple tail.

Following up after that, yuta adds the Yellow-Purple pair to the transition, and the Blue-Purple pair to the tail.

The next Purple-Yellow and double Red Pairs are used to complete the GTR. The Red-Blue pair afterwards is used to connect the tail and transition to each other.

yuta then places more pieces down to extend on top of the transition. While the final example is incomplete, here is what a finished chain could have looked like.

Unfinished Example

Example of Complete Chain

AABB, ABAB

With the AABB/ABAB pattern, you can place the first two pieces down like this:

Like AAAB:

If the piece can be placed on the left side, then use it to build the tail.
If the piece can't be placed on the left side, then use it to build the transition.

Tail

There are three recommended tailing forms. Similar to the AAAB form, you can build the Y-Shape and its variant. You can also build the Lateral-I.

Y-shape

Y-shape (Variant)

Lateral-I

Here are some recommendations to place the third piece:

After that, you will want to build the rest of the tail. Here are some examples:

Transition

In addition to the ones in AAAB, you can also start a transition like this:

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Examples:

Here are some examples by the player yuta (ゆた in game, left side).

AABC, ABAC

The best way to start with this piece order is to build a "Kuma Stack". It looks like this:

Tail and Transition

AABC/ABAC is special because it is hard to separate the tail and transition. In some cases you are building both with the same piece.

That being said, there are two tail forms that you can build with AABC/ABAC. Those are the Y-shape and the Lateral I.

Y-Shape

If your third pair has the order of AC, BC, or CD, you can go for a Y-shape pattern. Place the third pair like this:

Y-Shape

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Also...

Placing your pieces in the middle fourth and fifth columns help build both the GTR and the tail end at the same time.

After that, place your next pieces so that they can complete the entire base. Here are some examples for the fourth piece:

Because AABC/ABAC starts do not have a fixed build order after the third piece, it is not possible to list all placements of the fourth piece and above. For this reason, please look at the video at the bottom of this section.

Lateral I

If your third pair has the order of AB or AD, you could place the pair like this:

Lateral I

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Also...

If your piece has the order BB, you could place the piece in the third and fourth columns as so:

Like with the Y-shape, use the next pieces to build the rest of the base. If you are confused on how to do this, watch the videos below.

Examples:

Here are some examples by the player yuta (ゆた in game, left side).