As revealed during League of Legends' 10th anniversary livestream, spinoff Teamfight Tactics is expanding the update plan as well as coming to mobile. The next major update, titled "Rise of the Elements," will completely remove all of Teamfight Tactics' original pool of 50 champions, as well as those added in later updates, for an entirely new pool of champions to pick from. The update is part of a larger plan by Riot to incorporate "seasonal sets" of champions, in order to keep the mode fresh but balanced. Such sets will also include item and class changes for the mode. The Rise of the Elements update will come to the public test environment on October 22nd, with a full release to come on November 5th.
The news also comes alongside Riot's reveal that the wildly popular spinoff would also be coming to mobile devices. Pre-registration on for Android devices will open up today, on October 15th, with the full release planned for sometime early next year. Mobile versions of Teamfight Tactics will feature full cross-play with the PC version. Presumably, in keeping with the announced plans for seasonal sets, the full release will coincide with the next set release.
Teamfight Tactics is an eight-player free-for-all strategy game set in the League of Legends universe. Drawing on fan-favorite champions and items from the wildly popular MOBA, Teamfight Tactics instead is an "auto chess" spinoff, where you place units on a grid but don't control them directly. Players take turns pulling units from a pool, spending money based on their performance. The end result is a fast-paced battler that rewards more strategy and thinking than it initially seems. Teamfight Tactics' move to mobile devices is squarely aimed at competitors including Dota Underlords, which has been on phones since mid-June earlier this year, and Auto Chess from Drodo (who developed the original Dota 2 Auto Chess which started this whole trend off). Considering Teamfight Tactics was the 14th most popular game on Twitch in the past 30 days, nearly eclipsing Overwatch, today's announcement seems like more of an inevitability than anything. Either way, we'll get our hands on Teamfight Tactics on mobile when it launches next year.
