Have you ever wanted to command an army in battle, outsmart your opponent with strategy, and play with a little bit of gambling, all in one game? Maybe you love the strategy aspect of chess, but the excitement of fantasy? Then Teamfight Tactics (or TFT) might be the game for you. 

Developed by Riot Games, the minds behind Summoner’s Rift and Valorant, TFT stands as an alternate gamemode under the League of Legends banner. 

You, along with seven other players, have an individual board to work with. Every round, you are given several units—or champions—to choose from, and they will be found in a shop. Using the gold that you have garnered depending on a win or a loss in the previous round, you need to buy units to get stronger. As the game progresses, you will gain experience points and level up. The higher your level, the stronger (and more expensive!) the units will be in your shop. The goal of the game is to gradually get stronger and eventually outlast every other player in the game..

While it may sound like your ordinary contender in the tabletop-esque auto-battler genre, there are a few things that set this game apart from other games. Teamfight Tactics loves to throw a random cog in the machine, so to speak, in order to shake things up.

First, the “with a bit of chance” of the game comes from the in-game shop. There is no guarantee that you will get the units that you need in your shop, so the game forces players to adapt to whatever the game gives them. Rather than playing the same set of units per game, each one that you play will always be different from the last. It’s an exciting way to make every game familiar but so different at the same time.

Then, there’s the whole idea of “augments”. These are power-ups that players can choose from at different points during their game that could change the entire game with one choice. Some of these could increase your units’ damage, while others could generate items that could potentially give you an edge over the rest. You could either get augments that improve your chances of winning drastically, or you could get an augment that ruins your game entirely. 

Finally, the final quirky playing cards that each player has to change the game are traits. Each unit in the game has a certain “trait” or, if compared to a game like Pokémon, a “type”. Some traits—just like types—work well with others. If you put two or three units of the same trait together, they get stronger. The synergy of the same-trait units has tiny little impacts on the strength of your team that may snowball into the key factor in separating a win from a loss.

This really is one of Teamfight Tactic’s most endearing features. It sets an interesting precedent, knowing that every game is going to be different.

Strategy games tend to lose their appeal when it becomes a race to see who can make the winning moves faster. With TFT, however,  there’s never a guarantee that you will win your game. Augments, trait synergies, and shop probability all work together to make sure that anything can happen at any point in the game. It truly is a breath of fresh air to know that players are tested not just by their ability to select the right units at the right time but also through their ability to adapt to whatever is thrown at them.

It should be noted, however, that the efforts that the developers make to keep the game new and exciting are also the things that make the game a challenge to pick up. There really are a few things that you can only learn through experience, which makes it not so beginner-friendly. Unless, of course, you’re a fan of a trial by fire, which makes this a great game for you!