The Nexus of Video and Board Games
I like boardgames a lot – like A LOT a lot. I beg my friends to play virtually with me on Tabletopia. I am salivating at the kickstarter updates for the Dark Tower reboot: Return To Dark Tower. If you haven’t heard of Dark Tower, it was famous in the 80’s for its animatronic plastic tower that beeped and booped as it kept track of all your moves and randomly assigned monsters for you to defeat. It straddled the line between board game and video game.
The downside of most boardgames and what is probably a barrier to a lot of people is that sitting down and finishing a game can take way longer than you bargained for depending on the game and who you’re playing with. I have to resist the urge to break out the hourglass timer whenever I play. Spoiler alert, TFT’s rounds are ruthlessly timed so there’s no dilly-dallying.
An Abridged History of TFT
Alllllll the way back in 2019 a Chinese developer, Drodo Studios, created a mod for Valve’s Dota (Defense of the Ancients) 2 and called it Dota Autochess. What’s interesting is that the first Dota was itself a mod of Blizzard’s Warcraft III. So you could say Autochess was a mod of a mod. That’s really the start of the auto chess/auto battler subgenre. Drodo Studios has stated that the idea drew inspiration from Mahjong.
Then along came Riot Games mere months later with an entry in the genre called Teamfight Tactics. And it’s only been two years since and the mid-set release 5.5 just hit the servers within the past couple of weeks. In other words, they’ve released 5 full sets of characters along with gameplay, items and interface tweaks. There are also pretty substantial mid-set releases as well as patches to fix bugs and balance the gameplay. The point is the game is changing much more frequently than most games, so it never feels stale, or as the game theorists might say – the game remains unsolved.
This may be a drastic oversimplification, but if I got anything completely wrong please let me know in the comments.
The TFT Streamers I Watch
I highly recommend watching some of these streamers. I usually catch their videos on YouTube, but all of them are on Twitch as well.
K3soju – Currently the most watched TFT Streamer (according to Twitchmetrics.net) and he’s certainly the funniest to me. In terms of his play style he’s kind of like the Phil Ivey (famous poker player) of TFT. He plays to win. In TFT, winning can simply mean getting a top four placement because as long as you do that you gain LP i.e. rank up. But soju likes to say “1st or 8th” – meaning he plays aggressively, which comes with the risk of getting 8th place in the lobby. Bonus: You will learn almost as much Gen Z speak as you will TFT strategy. No cap.
BunnyMuffins – My favorite streamer to watch for explaining strategy. Is it entertaining? Depends on how much you like math I guess. He will get into the weeds of how attack damage stacking works and the math behind it so you can decide which item is better on a specific champion. His Discord channel is a great place to talk strategy with other players and he also offers coaching.
Mortdog – Mortdog is the current lead designer of the game, which obviously gives him a unique insight into its inner workings, but also puts him in the tough position of having to hear a lot of complaints about the game. Don’t be surprised if you see Mortdog lose his shit on someone in the chat who asks him why a particular champion is “OP” (over-powered). I would get tired of answering the same question hundreds of times too. Bonus: He also puts out official videos from Riot on his channel explaining patches and new sets like this one explaining the latest mid-set update.
Redox – My first foray into TFT streamers. Redox isn’t at the same level competitively as the previously mentioned but his videos are still very informative in terms of strategies. His videos have also been edited down to be 10-15 minutes as opposed to 40 mins for k3soju or mortdog. On a side note, he also talked very openly about his breakup with his girlfriend on a stream several months back and I was really struck by his vulnerability. His chat/audience was very supportive and it really elevated the whole streamer medium for me.
BunnyFuFuu – I would be remiss if I did not mention BunnyFuFuu. I wouldn’t exactly recommend watching him to learn strategy, but it’s highly entertaining. Watching BunnyFuFuu is like watching a crazed treasure hunter looking for the most insane/rare team compositions. This recent video is a great example. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lqrN2axI_HY.
