Just because Arcane Season 2 ended doesn’t mean the adventure does. With its source material still here, what better way to celebrate Arcane than with a good game!
I’m not talking about League of Legends, by the way, but Teamfight Tactics, a game inside the League of Legends client which, would you happen to know it, has its 13th and current set: Into The Arcane.
What even is Teamfight Tactics?
Taken from the Riot website itself, “Teamfight Tactics is a strategic free-for-all game of attrition featuring iconic champions from League of Legends.”
TFT is an auto-battler game where you set up your units and let them fight it out against your opponents, whether it be monsters that drop loot or other human opponents.
Putting it in another perspective, it’s like playing chess, but instead of having chess pieces, you have units coming from League of Legends and Arcane. Just like chess, each piece plays differently, and let’s just say some units are inherently stronger than others.
How do you even play Teamfight Tactics?
Putting it simply, each turn before a fight, you get gold, and with this gold, you could opt to either buy champions, “reroll” your shop, or level up. With the champions you bought on hand, you set up your board and let the fun begin.
Placing units sounds fun and all, but how do they get stronger, or how do you increase your chances of winning? You can make your units stronger by giving them items or getting more copies of your units. If you get 3 of a kind, you get a 2-star copy of that unit! Get 9, and you could get a 3-star unit. If for some reason you get 27 copies, you get a 4-star unit!
Other factors to take into consideration are these in-game mechanics called traits and augments. Traits are inherent characteristics that units possess that grant them bonuses when you have more of those units together. One such trait specific to Set 13 is the family trait composed of Powder, Vi, and Vander.
As for augments, these are in-game buffs offered every few stages that, when taken, could change the outcome of a game.
While it’s somewhat difficult to fully explain what happens in TFT, luckily, the mobile version of TFT was released late in 2023 and includes a handy tutorial too!
What makes Set 13: Into The Arcane different from all the other sets?
On top of having units directly from Arcane and not just League of Legends for this expansion, there are also team-up augments taken directly from the show and this set’s big gimmick: The Anomaly.
Some augments take cues directly from the show, with samples found below:
While the sisters may have been apart for the longest time, Violet and Powder found each other in the Rift as Vi and Jinx with the Sister trait. Childhood friends Vi and Ekko also found themselves having a little reunion. Wouldn’t you look at that! Great minds think alike, with the geniuses Ekko and Heimerdinger having their own little party.
There are more team-up traits found in the set, but it’s more fun to discover them yourself!
What about The Anomaly, though?
Exclusive to Set 13, The Anomaly, like in the series Arcane, is a major plot element that could change the very foundation of the world as they knew it. In the case of Teamfight Tactics, it is a major buff granted to a unit in stage 4-6.
Buffs can range from making your unit an immortal tank to a straight-up calamity, but at the end of it all, how you use this buff and who you use it on is up to you. There’s only one chance to evolve, so make it count!
Endgame Reflections
While the doors of Arcane are closing with the finale happening just recently, the fact that the story can continue through TFT should be a moment of celebration for both fans of the series and the game alike. The story’s not done, with more battles on the Rift to come. When it gets right down to it, this set is one of the most fun ones for sure, both in lore and in-game!
Download TFT now, and let’s have some fun. With Arcane finally concluding, it’s time to make our own stories!
