Hey folks. ScaldingHotSoup here.

I recently picked up TFT after getting an itch for MTG booster draft (my main hobby) but burning out on Arena. Prior to TFT, I maybe had 10-20 hours of experience on Dota Underlords about a year ago – that game had horrible balance issues at the time so I figured I’d try TFT (lol). It took me 135 ranked games to learn TFT and climb to diamond.

Although I don’t have much experience with TFT, I have thousands of hours of practice playing MTG and Eternal drafts, many with professional players and streamers. That core skillset is key to understanding some of the fundamentals of Teamfight Tactics. Here are seven of the central assumptions that served me well during my climb.

1 - Don’t get overly attached to your first pick.

• This is by FAR the single thing people do wrong most often in any drafting-based game. Ex. You grabbed a Rod at carousel. Chosen Nami shows up on 2-2! You go all in on double bubble. But a tear never comes. You finish 8th. Or, you grab chosen cultist TF. You get off to an early winstreak! But two other players grab chosen cultists. You’re ahead enough at 4-1 to sell TF and roll for another chosen. You don’t. You and the other cultist players finish 6-8.

• Remember - No battle plan ever survives contact with the enemy. You have eight enemies: the seven other players at the table, and variance. The key to overcoming this problem is flexibility.

2 - Flexibility is powerful.

• What’s more powerful, a card that is an A in one composition and a F in all the others? Or a card that is a B in every composition? Most of the time, it’s the latter. Flexibility is powerful. If you had to pick between grabbing Veigar or Irelia (neither of which fit into your current composition), which would you choose? Irelia, of course. Veigar is powerful in the right composition, but Irelia is a strong component of many team compositions and has higher value as a result. This is especially true when it comes to building items. Given the option of building Gunblade or Guardian Angel, GA is much better since it is great for most carries, whereas gunblade only really shines on a few of them. Yes, Gunblade is also more "expensive" since it uses two damage dealing components instead of one, but even if they had the same recipe I think most people should choose GA.

3 - Maximize your luck by paying attention to what people are doing around you.

• People love to complain about luck in drafts. Yet the best players consistently outperform lesser players. Two players of equal skill might have luck affect the outcome of their games a significant % of the time, but make no mistake - skill matters more. Skilled players recognize their opponents’ plans and change their own accordingly. Grab negatron cloaks when the win-streaking player is playing Ahri. Build Giant Slayer because the win-streaking player is building Warlords. Switch to Elderwoods when no one has taken an elderwood chosen. Luck is malleable. It is easy to complain about luck. It is better to make your own.

4 - Have a plan – but re-assess your plan at regular intervals.

• Have a plan that guides your actions. This is most obvious when you have a slowroll@5 comp like Moonlight or Nami. However, sometimes the plan might be “I want to dominate the early game”, so the action should be “prioritize strong early game defensive champions and try to find a damage dealing synergy. Level aggressively if I have a winstreak.” However, sometimes plans need to change. Again, flexibility is powerful. “I was TRYING to winstreak, but I got cheesed round 1 and lost.” Re-evaluate – is it still best to try to restart the winstreak? Or should I switch to a more econ-based strategy? You might not change your plan, but make your decision decisively when you do. Avoid half-measures unless you are strategically taking a wait-and-see approach.

5 - Early aggression buys you time to draw to your outs.

• Crush your opponents early. Level aggressively, build strong early-game compositions, and force your opponents to bide their time and salvage a mediocre economy. Early advantages snowball into late-game dominance. If you have 80-90 health going into round 4, you’re probably not going to finish 8th even if you lose continuously from there on out. This buys you time to maintain interest gold, see more shops, draft from more carousels, and fight more neutrals. All the while softening up your opponents so that even if you can’t finish them off, your other opponents can.

6 - Rank your priorities heuristics appropriately for each stage of the game.

• A heuristic is a logical shortcut you use to accelerate your decision-making. One such heuristic might be “sell off extra units to achieve interest gold milestones”. But heuristics are not laws of the universe. Sometimes, maintaining your flexibility to switch to other compositions might render this economy-focused heuristic obsolete. Make sure you have ranked your priorities appropriately for each stage of the game. I frequently see people at 15 health die with 50 gold remaining in the bank. These people forgot that “not dying” is more important than “making money”. A useful lesson for life, incidentally.

7 - Play to your outs.

• It’s down to top 2. Your opponent has 60 health and you have 20. You have 40 gold in the bank. It’s 50 gold to level 9, so if you want to level you’ll have to wait another round OR sell off the Lee Sin and Azir you have on your bench, which you are trying to 2star. What should you do? Probably the best plan is to roll down and 2star the Lee Sin and Azir. You don’t have time for a power spike in 2 rounds. By then you’ll be dead. And if you level to 9, you won’t have any gold to roll with anyways. Better to roll down now and try to hit the 2star Lee Sin and Azir. Perhaps they will be enough to stabilize your board. If you miss, you lose, but you have zero outs if you sell them and level up. Play to your outs.