When a new set comes out, people really struggle to understand what goes into a comp and how to successfully make boards on their own rather than reference a top player’s comp list. This comes down to components of a comp and understanding the natural line that leads to board states. Let’s examine the process for one and a couple ways to reach the end goal of building a board.

To start, there are two ways to begin a board and figure out the path to that comp. We can start with a Level 8 board and reverse engineer how to get there, or build a standard opener and add onto it to see what paths it can lead to. If you aren’t familiar with making boards then I recommend starting with an opener and going from there as it’s much easier to make a level 4 board.

This is a pretty basic opener that has some easy routes to take depending on what you hit. We can add in more Mages and easily transition to a Sohm board. We can find an early Idas or just Shimmer units and run those, while running Kai’sa instead of Taliyah for Dragonmancer if we find Volibear. This opener is particularly strong with AP items as Taliyah can hold items until mid Stage 3-ish. But what if we don’t have an AP opener?

This is a basic opening board we can play with AD items. A big part of deciding our opening board is always what items we start with. It doesn’t matter if an item is broken if no one on our team can use it. We always start with some form of frontline and backline, deciding which to alter based on early 2-Star units and items.

Once we establish our early board and figure out what pieces that can be added, the next step is how to filter these potential additions. While at first it can be just adding traits or random upgraded units, deciding what goes on our mid/late game board requires a bit more thought.

Filtering your options comes down to items, units hit and augments. I think the highest cap is generally deciding your board based on items. Whatever high-cost units that can use what we have made will generally be the strongest. This is why slamming flexible items is generally best as we cast the widest net on what units are playable and we can play more towards what we hit rather than having to play towards items alone.

Augments are important as well and even generic augments have best case uses. For example, Second Wind will be better with higher HP units like Bruisers and Shapeshifters. Again, this all contributes to a filtering hierarchy of what to play around when building a late game board.

Once we have an idea of what units we want, this eases our transition a lot as we can ignore certain options. If my frontline items are BT/Titan’s for example, I’m probably not going to play Idas so we can cross that off. Now this is all fairly practical knowledge to incorporate in general when deciding what to play in game, but let’s dive into what a comp needs come late game to help you build a board.

Teams need backline and frontline obviously, but also want utility. Something tricky with Set 7.5 is the abundance of carries but not a lot of late game utility. This can make boards a bit tricky to build but we can still make it work. We had the Senna opener earlier that can easily transition to Xayah as we have Ragewing in place and can make easy additions. Let’s look at how the comp could realistically expand as the game goes on.

This board is super easy to transition to. We drop the Bruisers as we want Aphelios for Cannoneer, which opens up Darkflight. We then can add a Sejuani to give us a guild bonus and still be sacrificed. Twitch is easy as we want it later and again buffs our whole team. Sett could also become a Rakan or maybe you hit an early Hecarim for 3 Cavaliers. You can also add in a Dragonmancer like Lee Sin which could open up adding an early Graves as well.

Again, there are a lot of options, but some simple questions to ask yourself to help expand your board are as follows.

• Do we need more frontline or backline?
  
• What traits enable our carry?
  
• Is the lobby heavy AD or AP?

There are more things to consider, but these are a few good questions to filter your decisions. Once you get into the habit of asking yourself what your board needs, you’ll make a lot more conscious decisions that benefit you rather than autopilot decision making.

How did we get to this board? Well, we swapped Senna to Xayah as she was our item holder. We already had Twitch. If we get a Morello, it opens up playing Shyvana easily which means Jayce is an even better addition for more Guild bonuses, along with Shapeshifter and more CC.

We can keep the Cavaliers for more frontline, or they can become other units depending on what you hit. There are a lot of options you could do but this board has damage, frontline, and utility. If you didn’t get AP items, we could swap Shyvana to Hecarim and a Rengar or Rakan and have Idas instead of Jayce.

Overall, we can see the path to reaching this board and have ideas for variations of it. It can be beneficial to go over all the variations to have a better idea of what you’re looking for in a game so you aren’t as lost. A good practice is to take time building boards or looking at comps online and make variations of them with different frontlines or carries.

The final point to add is that comps generally have a core, so for this Xayah comp the units you almost always play are Xayah and Twitch plus a Ragewing unit. We ideally want Shyvana, Jayce and Bard usually but those can be flexed out or added later.

So, what does all this information mean? To sum it up, Boards revolve around a core group of units that need to be enabled. Depending on what items you have we can better decide our flex units. Building a board requires 1. Frontline units 2. Backline damage 3. Utility units, especially CC. Looking at the path to getting to your late game board can not only help craft team comps but also teach you about the early-mid game it takes to get there.

Look at top boards and see what makes them work to get inspiration. Once you start asking yourself questions and gain insight into what makes boards work, you can start making them yourself instead of relying on websites and better understand the fundamentals, allowing you to climb. I hope this helps and good luck on your climb!