TFT Glossary — Teamfight Tactics terms explained

New to Teamfight Tactics, or just need a quick definition? This glossary explains the TFT terms, slang and mechanics you’ll run into — the basics like the board, bench, gold and unit stats, plus the strategy talk like comps, econ, rolling and trait breakpoints.

The basics

The core pieces of a game of Teamfight Tactics — the board, your units, gold, and the stats every champion has.

Ability Power (AP): A stat that increases the damage (and effects) of a unit’s magic abilities.
Armor: A defensive stat that reduces incoming physical (attack) damage.
Attack Damage (AD): A unit’s basic-attack damage; also scales many physical abilities.
Attack Speed (AS): How many basic attacks a unit makes per second. Attacking also generates mana.
Bench: The row below the board where you hold units you haven’t played yet (up to nine).
Board: The hex battlefield where you place units to fight. Also used loosely for the strength of your fielded team (“a strong board”).
Champion (unit): A playable piece you buy from the shop. Each has a cost, one or more traits, base stats, and an ability.
Champion cost: A unit’s gold price and rarity, from 1-cost to 5-cost. Higher-cost units are rarer and stronger.
Crit (critical strike): A chance (Crit Chance) for an attack to deal bonus damage (Crit Multiplier / Crit Damage).
Gold: The in-game currency. Spent on buying units, rolling the shop, and buying XP.
Health (HP): A unit’s hit points. Your own player HP also starts at 100 — reach 0 and you’re eliminated.
Level (player level): Your level within a single game. Leveling up raises your team size (units you can field) and improves shop odds for higher-cost units.
Magic Resist (MR): A defensive stat that reduces incoming magic (ability) damage.
Mana: A unit’s resource for casting its ability. It fills by attacking and taking damage; a unit casts when full (Initial Mana is its starting amount).
Range: How many hexes away a unit can attack — melee units (range 1) versus ranged carries.
Shop: The row of five units offered for purchase, refreshed each round or when you roll.
Stage / round: A game is split into stages (2-1, 2-2, …), each made of rounds — player-vs-player fights plus PvE rounds against minions/monsters.
Star level (★): A unit’s upgrade tier. Three copies of a unit combine into a 2-star, and three 2-stars into a 3-star — each far stronger than the last.
XP (experience): Buy XP with gold to raise your player level. You also gain a little XP automatically each round.

Economy

How players generate and spend gold — the “econ” game that decides who can afford the strongest board.

Econ: Short for “economy” — managing your gold efficiently to power up at the right time.
Econ breakpoints: Gold thresholds at 10, 20, 30, 40 and 50 that each add +1 interest. “Hitting 50” earns the maximum bonus every round.
Greed: Taking a risk now — holding gold or HP, or fielding a weaker board — to bank resources for a stronger board later.
Interest (gold interest): Passive income each round: +1 gold for every 10 gold you’ve banked, capped at +5 (at 50+ gold).
Loss streak: Losing several rounds in a row on purpose (or naturally) to collect bonus streak gold while saving up.
Streak gold: Bonus gold awarded for consecutive wins or losses. Breaking a streak forfeits the bonus, so players commit to winning or losing.
Win streak: Winning several rounds in a row, which awards escalating bonus gold (and pressures opponents’ HP).

Combat & board

Positioning your units and equipping them — turning the right pieces into a board that actually wins fights.

Backline: The rear rows of the board, where you place fragile damage dealers (carries) to keep them safe.
Best-in-slot (BIS): The optimal item or items for a given unit.
Carry: The unit that deals the majority of your team’s damage — usually the one you give the best items.
Completed item: A full item made by combining two components. Much stronger than a raw component.
Component: A basic item piece (Giant’s Belt, Chain Vest, Needlessly Large Rod, …) that combines with another to form a completed item.
Frontline: The front rows of the board, where durable tanks stand to absorb enemy damage.
Itemization: Deciding which items to build and which units to put them on.
Positioning: Where you place your units on the board. Often as decisive as the units themselves — protecting carries, dodging area damage, and matching up against opponents.
Slam (slamming items): Equipping items early for immediate power, accepting less flexibility later instead of holding components for a “perfect” build.
Tank: A durable frontline unit built to soak damage and protect the carries.

Comps & strategy

How players talk about team building and the lines they take to get there. Note: a team composition is a “comp”, never just a “team”.

Cap (capped / uncapped): A comp’s ceiling — its strongest possible version, and whether it can realistically win 1st. “Capping the board” means making it as strong as possible; an “uncapped” comp still has room to grow.
Comp (team comp): Short for “team composition” — the set of units and traits you build toward. This is the native word; players say “comp”, not “team”.
Contested: A unit or comp that several players are going for at once, which shrinks the shared pool and makes those units harder to find.
Fast 8 / Fast 9: Rushing safely to level 8 (or 9) as quickly as possible to access higher-cost units, often running a weaker board on the way.
Flex: Staying open to multiple comps and adapting to what you’re offered, rather than forcing one plan.
Forcing: Committing to one predetermined comp every game regardless of what the game gives you.
Hyper roll: Rolling the shop aggressively at level 4–5 with little regard for economy, to hit a 3-star power spike fast.
Opener: Your early-game starting board and plan for the first couple of stages.
Pivot: Switching the comp you’re building toward when another becomes more favorable.
Reroll comp: A comp built around repeatedly rolling the shop to 3-star one or more low-cost units.
Roll down (rolldown): Spending a big chunk of saved gold rerolling, selling and buying to quickly complete your board.
Slow roll: Rolling a little each turn while staying above 50 gold (to keep maximum interest), fishing for specific 3-star units.
Stabilize: Reaching a board strong enough to stop losing rounds (and bleeding HP) for the current stage.
Tempo: Playing for an immediately strong board to win rounds now — trading future economy for present pressure.
Trait tiers (Bronze / Silver / Gold / Prismatic): The colored strength tiers a trait reaches as you field more units of it. Hitting a higher tier (e.g. Gold or Prismatic) gives a bigger bonus. This tool’s Bronze/Silver/Gold strategies search for the most traits active at that tier.
Vertical vs horizontal: Vertical means stacking many units of one trait to reach its highest tiers; horizontal means spreading across many different traits at their lowest breakpoints.

Community slang

How players actually talk in chat, guides and on Reddit.

Bag / pool: The shared champion pool. Each champion has a fixed number of copies in the “bag”; buying copies removes them and changes everyone’s odds of finding that unit.
Diff: Short for “difference” — a clear strength gap. Used as a suffix: “board diff” (one board was decisively stronger), “econ diff”.
Donkey roll: Rerolling all your gold every single round in desperation, instead of saving income.
FF: Forfeit / give up — conceding a clearly lost game.
Ghosting: When an odd number of players remain, one fights a copy (“ghost”) of another player’s board; the ghosted player takes no damage from it.
Griefed: Being denied — on purpose or by circumstance — by another player contesting your units, holding copies, or an unlucky matchup.
High roll / low roll: Lucky or unlucky RNG — for example hitting several copies of a wanted unit in one reroll (high roll), or whiffing (low roll).
Hit: Successfully finding the units you were rolling for. “Did you hit?”
Natural (nat): Getting a unit or upgrade from your normal shops without rolling for it.
Scout: Looking at opponents’ boards and benches to judge their strength and see which units are still available.

Game mechanics

The recurring systems that define a TFT game. (Each set adds its own twist, so the exact names can change set to set.)

Augment: A powerful, game-altering bonus chosen from three options at a few set points in the game. Augments can reshape your whole strategy.
Breakpoint: The number of units of a trait you need on the board to activate its next tier of bonus.
Carousel: A shared draft round where players walk onto a rotating ring to grab a unit that comes with an item. Some sets replace or rename it with a set-specific variant.
Emblem: An item that grants a champion an extra trait — letting you activate a synergy you otherwise couldn’t. (This tool lets you add emblems to a search.)
Item: Equipment placed on a unit. Components combine into stronger completed items; some sets add artifacts, radiant items and other categories.
Ranked ladder: The competitive tiers — Iron, Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum, Emerald, Diamond, Master, Grandmaster, Challenger — climbed by finishing in the top 4.
Trait (synergy): A tag shared by some champions (an origin or a class). Field enough units with the same trait and it activates a tiered team bonus — the heart of team building.

Put it into practice

The terms above all feed into one question this tool answers: which team comp activates the most traits? Set your level and scoring style and it compares every possible combination of champions for you. Open the Explorer →