Stages, rounds and why health matters
How a game is paced, what a lost fight costs at each point, and why health is something you spend, not something you keep.
Checked for patch 18.4. The numbers come from the live Set 18 data and follow every patch.
The idea
New to TFT? Start with How a game of TFT works.
A game of TFT is a race to be the last board standing, and health is the clock. Most rounds you fight another player's board. Lose and you take damage; run out of health and you are out. Everyone starts with 100.
The game moves in stages, each a handful of rounds, and players name every round by both: 3-2 is the second round of stage 3. The first stage is a short warm up against monsters. From stage 2 on, the stage decides what a loss costs. A fight lost in stage 2 takes 2 health before the enemy units still standing are counted; the same fight in stage 6 takes 12.
That is why good players treat early health as something to spend. Losing a few early fights costs little, and it can buy gold (the next lesson) or the time to build the board you actually want. Late health is the opposite: every loss takes a real bite out of what is left, and the player with more health when boards are even gets more rounds to find their upgrades.
See it live
Pick a stage and how many enemy units survived, and read what the loss costs from the live set's damage table.
- 4
- Health you lose
- 25
- Losses like this to knock out a player at full health
A loss costs the stage's base damage plus 1 for every enemy unit still standing. Open the damage table
The rule of thumb
Early health is cheap and late health is expensive: spend the first, protect the second.
Check yourself
You lose a fight at 4-2 with three enemy units still standing. How much health does it cost?
Pick an answer.