Playing the early game properly in Teamfight Tactics is crucial to building your strategy and not falling behind other players. Making the correct decisions when the game starts can be the difference maker between finishing in the top 4 spots and finishing last and losing a lot of LP. For that reason, we’ve created a detailed guide where we’ll analyze and explain everything you need to know about the early game plays in TFT to secure a higher rank.
The first carousel
We’ll start our conversation where a regular TFT game starts, on the Carousel.
When you’re making the initial choice as to which unit you’re going to choose, you need to know which team comp/strategy you want to play in that game beforehand. You’ll either want to choose something you’re comfortable with, something fun to play, or simply meta at the given moment, depending on your ambitions in the game you enter. The point is that you need to have a plan or at least a general perspective of which team comp you’ll be building before you enter a game.
Next up, you need to prioritize the items that are placed on the units you choose over the units themselves. More often than not, the units you choose will be sold or just much less significant than the item component you pick up. Knowing the strategy you’ll be playing before the game starts also ties into knowing which item to go for in the carousel when the game begins. There are a lot of items that you can choose in the initial carousel so you need to be prepared to hunt for those your strategy depends on.
In conclusion, you need to have a planned strategy before you play a TFT game and as far as Carousel goes, you need to get the right items for your team comp.
Stage 1
When Stage 1 kicks off, you’ll start preparing your early game team comp that will face other players. Your focus should be put on creating a team that has a balance between the frontline and the damage dealers in the back. Additionally, you want to prioritize cheap 2 Star units as they’re much more likely to beat teams full of 1 Star units, even if the opposing team has more synergy.
At that point, you should also start planning for the latter stages of the game by creating some synergy of your own. For example, if you’re getting a lot of Skirmisher units that synergize well with your already existing Redeemed units, you might want to start buying them, as they’re probably uncontested by the rest of the lobby. Furthermore, you want to have a general perspective of which units you’d like to keep and how your mid-game is going to look like depending on those units.
Around 1-4, you also need to decide whether you’re going to go for a win streak that game or for a more patient scaling game. If you have an established board that you think can win against other players, you should level up to Level 4 before hitting Stage 2. By doing that, you’re more likely to roll two cost units that you desire and you can hit 3 cost units as well. Additionally, you’ll be able to put another unit on the board as well.
On the other hand, if you’re planning to play a patient game by playing a reroll comp, simply sit on your gold and wait for the latter stages of the game when the patience pays off.
Stage 2
When Stage 2 hits, you need to have a general perspective of the strategy you’re going for that game, be it a win streak method or a loss streak one.
If you’re trying to win streak, you have to be aware of the power of the lobby you’re playing against as well as the power of your own units and items you possess. There is a chance that the rest of the lobby is playing extremely passively or aggressively and you need to adapt accordingly. Furthermore, if you have no meaningful items on your carries, 2 star units on the board, or no synergy in your team at that moment, it would be optimal to play a passive game where you’ll save up gold and play for the late game. In contrast, if you have multiple 2 star units as well as some solid items, you’ll want to play aggressively and make sure you stay in the top 4 players in the end and gain LP.
The key to win streaking and loss streaking is to know how to win streak and loss streak properly.
If you want to win streak hard in the early game, these are some of the main requirements for your board:
Multiple 2 star units
Solid items
Synergy
Meta opening
If you can tick the majority of these boxes, you’ll undoubtedly go on a win streak and crush most of your lobby.
On the other hand, if your goal is to create a loss streak, you need to create a sustainable loss streak as you don’t want to take too much damage in the early game while you build up your financial lead.
If you want to create a rational loss streak that will help you scale and come back in the game, this is what you should focus on:
A lot of new TFT players are unaware of the fact that the damage you take is proportionate to the number of opposing units that are left on the field once the combat ends. If there are 4 units left on the field, you’re going to take much more damage than you would if there were only 1 unit left after you’re done fighting. Because of that, getting units such as KhaZix that isolate and kill single target units are much more efficient as you’ll end up saving more of your precious health.
To conclude the Stage 2 guide, you should focus on determining whether you’re going for an aggressive or a passive route in the game by playing for a win streak or a loss streak, depending on the power of your team and the rest of the lobby.
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