To win in TFT, you first need a strong board.

But what actually makes a board strong?

A board with a carry that deals damage and a frontline that buys enough time for that carry to do its job.

When improving your board, do not look only at how many traits you can activate. Look at:

• how strong the individual units are,
• where your items are concentrated,
• whether your carry has enough time to deal damage,
• and whether your traits are actually strengthening the important units on your board.

Early game: upgrades can matter more than unit cost

A useful mental model is to treat unit cost as rough “points.” This is not an exact combat formula, but it helps when thinking about early boards.

1-cost 1-star → about 1 point

2-cost 1-star → about 2 points

3-cost 1-star → about 3 points

Then imagine that upgrading from 1-star to 2-star adds roughly 2.5 points.

1-cost 2-star → about 3.5 points

3-cost 1-star → about 3 points

So simply hitting a 3-cost does not automatically make it better than a 1-cost 2-star.

Actual unit strength varies, and traits and items change the answer. The point is that naturally hitting 2-star 1- and 2-cost units is a major source of early board strength.

Your itemized carry is the center of the board

Combat power is not distributed evenly across every unit. Items create some of the biggest differences.