League of Legends regularly receives new game modes aimed at shaking up the classic experience. The latest mode focuses primarily on casual battles without important objectives. However, one team managed to win the game without leaving their base.
Which mode is it about? Since May 14, 2025, players can play the limited mode Brawl. Instead of important role distribution and objectives, it is mainly about fighting.
A player on Reddit wanted to see how far he could exploit the mode with his team. He managed to win a game without ever leaving his base.
A nasty but clever tactic
What did the player do? In Brawl, the goal is to reduce the opposing team’s points to 0. This can be achieved either through kills or by minions passing the opposing goal. As a user describes on Reddit, he and his team primarily used the minions. He aimed to win without interacting with the other team.
They succeeded. They eliminated the minions from their base with the right champion selection. This means you cannot win as long as the opponent takes out your minions, but the opponent cannot kill the other team, so you are in a stalemate situation. Points for eliminating minions are limited.
Since you cannot surrender, the opponent has to run into the base and get eliminated, or you let the minions simply run into their goal. However, as a developer from Riot confirmed, they want to allow surrendering in such cases again (via Reddit).
The Reddit user emphasizes that several attempts were needed before the tactic worked. Thus, you can assume that you need some luck with the opposing team for it to succeed.
How does Riot respond? What sounds like a nasty exploit does not seem to be a problem for Riot. In the Reddit thread, Riot Phlox also weighs in. He is the design lead of the modes team, so he handles the various fun modes. He comments on the strategy:
Good find, gamer! We thought that might happen! (Kudos to the GAT team for pointing out the risk to us). We didn’t want to add tailor-made rules before we saw if it was actually possible to minimize every possible risk. Additionally, you can have fun with the new mode and try to crack it ;D We will introduce some fixes for this strat with the next patch, so that you can no longer force a permanent hostage situation, but let us know if you find something else that could ruin the fun. I hope you have a lot of fun in Brawl!
Riot Phlox on Brawl and winning without leaving the base (via Reddit)
Apparently, this strategy is not a big problem in the new mode; he even encourages players to experiment with it. However, he also mentions that they will fix this in the next patch. The next patch is set to be released on May 28, 2025.
Is this a good approach? In the past, Riot quickly released hotfixes as updates to resolve serious issues rapidly. Since they are waiting for the next patch here, it seems that this strategy is not a big problem. It also shows that it is probably more difficult to implement them perfectly.
Additionally, Brawl is a fun mode. It is not about ranks, and the matches are quite short. Such a mode naturally lends itself to giving players more freedom to experiment. Another mini-game from LoL was also well received: LoL is introducing a new mini-game in the style of a Steam hit, but to unlock everything, you have to play the real League of Legends
