Our author Schuhmann has fallen into the free strategy game Teamfight Tactics during a year-long vacation. This does not suit him at all, as he had mocked a colleague for years about this Free2Play game in the world of LoL.
In my defense: I have always liked Teamfight Tactics, back in the beta around 2019. I liked it back then, just not for very long.
For 4 years, I found it really silly that my colleague Leitsch still constantly wanted to impress upon me how great and relevant it is and that we urgently needed to create more guides and articles about the latest patch notes.
“No way,” I said. “Look at the clock, it’s 2023 – nobody cares about that anymore, please write about stuff that people care about today.”
Teamfight Tactics was totally hyped – in the summer of 2019
Teamfight Tactics is a so-called “auto-battler”, which was once a short hype in 2019 that I also fell for. Back then, everyone wanted to create one. The idea is:
- You don’t fight yourself, but assemble a team of characters that fight for you: It’s a mix of chess, Pokémon, and a collectible card album like what Panini used to have.
- If you have “3 of the same character”, it gets upgraded to a stronger version.
- The heroes also have teams, and there are bonuses if you have multiple heroes of one team.
- Additionally, there are items you can give them and special perks; bonuses for winning streaks and losing streaks and interest if you have a lot of gold in the bank.
Teamfight Tactics is exactly that game, but with heroes and items from the League of Legends universe.
Either you are totally into it or you don’t care at all
The thing is: Teamfight Tactics is a game where you are totally into it when you play it yourself. Your head is full of a myriad of tiny detail information about the game. For example, that Annie is a very small hero, but totally strong when you have collected her 9 times, she then has 3 stars and you equip her with a certain item combination because then one of her abilities is permanently active.
At that moment, Teamfight Tactics is the dominant theme in your life; you dream at night about drafts and constantly think about what you should have done differently in the last game.
But if you are out of it, you completely don’t care about the game and look at anyone playing it wondering what they find interesting about it.
And that was how it was for years with Alexander Leitsch, who firmly claimed to be among the best 0.7% of players in Europe and who told me about new sets.
As my annual vacation approached, which I, like any sensible gaming author, used to expand my already vast knowledge about games, I decided to play Teamfight Tactics again.
Actually, it was just one item on a long list of things I had always wanted to do whenever I had time for things I just couldn’t fit into my daily life.
And the game is exactly the same and completely different than it was 4 years ago: While almost all the mechanics – except for a clever new “headliner” feature – remained the same, the meta has completely changed.
However, the whole “meta” thing is not so easy: Because while you have the team in mind that you ideally want to play and which is somehow the best, random chance must also play into your favor, and the game must offer you the heroes you want to play.
After 4 years of break, I only lost
Now, the “really good” player is of course able to keep multiple plans in their head and apply whichever one the game and the opponents offer them. However, I am such that regardless of what I decide on, I seem to be magically drawn to the same team that can either work wonderfully or fail miserably.
After spending the first hours really getting beaten up, which scratched my ego quite a bit, I sat down, read up on the game (i.e., kept tier lists and cheat sheets open alongside the game) and then fully succumbed to the game’s pull.
The games from Riot exude an incredible fascination with Battle Pass, constant rewards, and a ranked system: In Teamfight Tactics, you don’t even have to win to rank up; you just need to: not lose.
8 people play against each other in every match; as soon as you reach 4th place or higher, you gain points and everything is fine.
I have completely fallen for that damn Teamfight Tactics
Throughout my vacation, I immersed myself so much into the damn Teamfight Tactics, ranked up, and got into a groove that I hardly did anything else.
Two days before the end of my vacation, the salvation came: I won two games in a row, heroically declared the end of my Teamfight Tactics career, and have never logged in again since.
I immediately sent Cortyn the screenshot as proof that I was not a “dirty casual who unjustly snatched the Overwatch key from them 7 years ago.”
And that Leitsch has, admittedly, perhaps a bit of understanding of what people really want to play today.
More about my adventures in strategy games: Steam: I started as a lonely Viking – 400 years later, I have half of Europe, 12,300 descendants, and a problem
