this is really interesting. thanks for this perspective.
for me (and i suspect us) it's very different and i personally find shields to be one of the least useful seed sorts with nearly all other weapons preferable to thorns. i wonder if that's because you don't get time/opportunity to practice with these other seeds and so you'll never risk trying them out enough to feel comfortable whereas you get to try thorns out every run guaranteed.
that said, i'm going to try and give this strategy a shot. my guess is that it's a very survivable build while i think we try to maximize and "thrive" by getting tons of crystals, buying up a lot of suits, hearts and etc.
the more of these looks into "this is my strategy" the better we can reveal our complete blindspot of what it's like for an intermediate/advanced TumbleSeed player, so if this changes please update us! hmmm, maybe this warrants a fresh thread about this specifically...