How do we cap out a board in TFT? This is a fairly loaded question, but once a player understands certain fundamentals, they can practice this skill more effectively and become a late game menace.

The main thing when capping out boards is recognizing what resources you have. A 2-Star 10 cost dragon is great, but Ao Shin with no items is a very expensive reverse Force of Nature for your team. You can probably envision a board with several upgraded legendary units, but you have 20 gold to roll when you go level 9.

Some common errors I see are as follows:

1. Playing 1-Star legendary units with no items or subpar items, vs. an upgraded unit of a lower cost

2. Rolling to 0 gold on 9 when you have extra HP and you need significant gold to make meaningful upgrades

3. Not Switching your carry to a stronger unit when given the opportunity (ex: Swapping Daeja to Ao Shin) or recognizing other upgrade opportunities

4. Weakening your frontline thus not enabling your backline hypercarry

5. Not adding enough utility to match late game board states

Let’s address these issues and slowly build a foundation on how to transition to late game boards that can win out.

Playing Weak Legendary Units

This might sound odd, but even legendary carry units need to be enabled. While units like Bard or Soraka are self-sufficient support units, others like Yasuo and Pyke need items and sometimes traits to be useful. While they provide some utility, switching out upgraded units contributing to your team is often incorrect. This also applies to Dragons, when we have a 10 cost unit that takes up 2 slots, we need items to enable the unit, especially since items on these units equate to itemizing 2 units at once.

Rolling to 0 on 9

It is very common for people to go level 9 and start donkey rolling every turn. While sometimes this is correct, if you have extra HP and need a significant amount of gold to make meaningful upgrades, we can econ back up and then roll when necessary. We have to keep in mind that legendary units are 5 or 10 gold each, so rolling down is far more expensive than when we looked for 3 or 4 costs. If we need 30 gold alone for an Ao Shin, do you think we are also going to get Bard 2, Yasuo 2 etc. when we aren’t even making 10 every turn?

Not Recognizing Upgrades

If you’re level 9 with 50 gold, you can probably make a stronger board, or look for a 3-Star champion win con. It’s easy to think “my board is fully upgraded, this is probably the best I can do,” yet you still have 1 or 2 cost units on your board. Obviously don’t make changes just for the sake of them. Really consider what is necessary on your board and what traits are helping you versus what traits are helping weak units.

Above is a pretty strong Jade board. Let’s say you go level 9, what do you change? We could add a Pyke for assassins or a Bard for more mystic and mana generation. Let’s assume we have plenty of gold to roll down with, would you stay on this board? While in certain matchups this might be better, we can easily make a stronger board. Anivia can become Shyvana or Aurelion Sol easily, and Shi Oh Yu items can go onto a Yasuo. While this might not always be the move, you shouldn’t be complacent when you have resources in the late game.

Sabotaging Frontline

It’s easy to put in units you hit of a higher cost than what’s on your board, but sometimes our primary carry just needs frontline, not other carries running around to feed mana and die. Dragon hypercarries like Ao Shin and Daeja need a team built around them to help scale. A common thing you hear is that X unit scales with frontline, and those are examples of it.

Assuming everything here is upgraded, what would you take out? Lulu and Shen have no synergies, so it might be tempting to drop them, but really consider what your comp is missing. If you’re losing to an AP heavy comp, maybe swap in Mystic over Shen, or add Ornn over Lillia (although your comp becomes much less attractive) for bruiser and more utility. While you don’t need to run all of these units and what you run can vary a lot from game to game, don’t just make changes blindly. Shen can negate an entire spell rotation from Shi Oh Yu, and Lulu gives tons of attack speed to Daeja, so make sure you don’t ignore this.

Not Adding Enough Utility Late Game

Something that gets overlooked when building late game boards is utility. People think their Stage 4 rolldown is their final board, but this is just another step. Stage 6 boards are true late game boards that have stronger carries supported by an even better frontline along with CC.

There's a reason this Ao Shin board is so strong (besides legendary units) It has tons of utility. Sylas mana reaves, Ornn slows the attack speed of half the enemy team and stuns, Zoe is not balanced, Bard stuns, Lulu polymorphs, Nami heals and more. There are many forms of this board, but understanding why it’s hard to keep up with boards like this come Stage 6 is key to helping you craft late game comps.

A quick side note. A common question I see in my Discord is “How do I beat X board” while getting 2nd is frustrating, an important thing to recognize is that certain comps and setups have a HARD CAP. Once we are committed to running certain units based on augments or items, this can’t be changed. However, recognizing what is core to your comp and what is a flex slot is imperative. Sometimes you just can’t outscale someone, and that’s fine.

To wrap things up, capping out boards is a skill that takes practice. Recognizing connecting pieces and what is core takes time, but this is what makes the difference between a top 3 and a 1st. Just be mindful of what resources you have to work with and you’ll climb in no time.