Advanced Roster-Building Strategy

Think in expected value, not highlights

Every roll offers you a choice, and the temptation is always to chase the single most famous name on screen. The stronger habit is to ask a quieter question: which available pick raises my final five-player average the most, given the roles I still need to fill? A legendary carry you cannot slot because that role is already taken does nothing for your Team Rating. A slightly less famous player who fills a scarce, still-open role can be worth far more to the run. Draft the lineup, not the poster.

Respect role scarcity

Not all roles are equally easy to fill well. Across League history, certain positions on certain team-years are stacked with all-time talent, while others are thinner. When a roll hands you a genuinely elite option at a role that is hard to fill — and that role is still open — locking it in early removes future pain. The mistake players make is leaving a "hard" role for last and being forced to take whatever a late roll happens to offer.

A practical way to think about it: at any moment, mentally rank your open roles by how confident you are that future rolls will solve them. Prioritize spending strong picks on the roles you are least confident about, and let the easy-to-fill roles ride on later rolls.

Reroll like a resource, because it is one

Rerolls feel powerful, which is exactly why they get wasted. In the main mode you get one Region, one Team, and one Year reroll for the whole run — and each one solves a different kind of problem:

• Year reroll is your scalpel. Use it when you love the team in front of you but the specific season is weak, or its best players sit in roles you have already filled. A nearby legendary year can transform the same organization into a perfect pick.
• Team reroll keeps the region but finds a new organization. Reach for it when a region-year is a dead end for your open roles but you do not want to leave that region entirely.
• Region reroll is the biggest swing. It changes everything and is best saved for when the current region simply has nothing useful for the roles you still need.

The golden rule: do not spend a reroll to upgrade a pick that is already fine. Save your rerolls for the rolls that genuinely threaten the run — they almost always come later, when fewer roles are open and your flexibility is lowest.

Balance carries and glue

A roster of five famous carries can still produce a mediocre Team Rating if some of those names were not actually elite in the specific year you drafted them. Conversely, a lineup that pairs two or three peak carry seasons with reliable, high-rated role players in the remaining slots often grades out higher and more consistently. Because the score is an average, your weakest pick drags the whole roster down — so raising your floor matters as much as raising your ceiling.

In practice, that means you should be just as happy to find a standout Jungle or Support season as a flashy Mid or ADC. The roles that fans underrate are frequently the ones that decide whether your average clears the threshold for an international contender.

Know your history — that's the real skill

Because ratings are hidden, the game rewards genuine knowledge of which players were great in which specific years. Name recognition is a rough proxy, but it fails you constantly: a famous player can have an down year, and a less-hyped player can have a career-best season that the rating reflects. The more accurately you can place a player's prime within their career, the better your picks will be. Reading our guide on the greatest rosters of all time is a good way to build that instinct.

Accept that variance exists

Even a flawless draft does not guarantee a Golden Road, and that is by design. The simulation includes opponent strength and randomness at every stage, with international events modeled as the toughest fields — read more in why international titles are so hard. Your job is not to eliminate variance; it is to build a roster strong enough that the odds tilt your way at every stop. Do that consistently, and the perfect runs will eventually come.