1. No rolling up each one. You're making a tamale pie here, so you won't need corn husks and you won't be assembling each one separately. 2. More meat than masa. This is my biggest beef (pun not intended!) with most tamales. A smidgeon of meat and LOTS of masa. Not with this pie. LOTS of yummy meat. 3. Superfast. You're not making 12 tamales, one at a time. You're assembling one pie. Now, this is super fast if you have leftover meat from recipes I will link to. If you don't, you can still do a shortcut version for the filling which I will explain below. 4. Tastes EXACTLY like tamales. I kid you not, it tastes exactly like the tamales you spend hours assembling. I had five taste testers for this, 3 of whom grew up making tamales. Unanimous agreement on the taste issue.