A simple top-4 strategy

Posted: 20/07/2026Difficulty: Medium

First of all: once you understand the rule of TFT, making top 4 is quite easy (playing for first place is a different story).

The rule of TFT: count HP to know how many rounds you can lose

The rule works like this:

Notice stage 4: every round you lose costs you about 10 HP. So if your Little Legend is sitting around 40 HP and your board is in bad shape, four more losses and you're dead.

So the simple habit is: count your current HP to see how many rounds you can still afford to lose.

From there, you have the following ways to play the game.

HP-preserving fast 8

You can buy level 4 at round 2-1 and play for a win streak, or an alternating win-loss pattern (XO), accepting that you will be very poor (since nothing guarantees you keep winning).

Two cases here:

• You are strong and win continuously: take combat augments to keep the streak going.
• You play XO (short win-loss streaks): you will be very poor (but you keep your HP). What you need then is econ augments to repair your economy.

By round 4-2, ideally you'll have around 40-50 gold if you played it right (enough econ augments, or a long enough win streak). Then you can roll down to 30 gold to build a board strong enough, and wait a few rounds for interest to bring you back to 50.

With some luck you can win a few rounds in stage 4. This matters a lot, because each round is worth about 10 HP — winning one round means saving 10 of your HP and pushing 10 damage onto your opponents.

Common mistakes

Taking full combat augments while very poor: fast 8 comps usually need a 2-star 4-cost carry, so skipping econ augments means you hit level 8 late, or hit 8 with almost no gold.

Two cases:

• Hitting 8 one or two rounds late: you have the gold, but you pay 20-30 HP because you auto-lose those rounds (your opponents hit 8 first and already rolled).
• Case 2: hitting 8 with very little gold (10 gold or less) — you can't afford to roll, can't find your units, your economy is drained, interest = 0, and you're almost certainly finishing 8th.

Level-7 reroll

In this playstyle you reroll for units at level 7. Your power spike arrives earlier than level-8 comps because you started rolling sooner (hitting more 2-star units than your opponents). So through the mid game you are stronger than the lobby.

However, level-7 reroll comps run into some problems:

• If you don't hit your 3-star, you're almost certainly out of top 4 — so check carefully how many of your units the other players are holding.
• Even when you do hit the 3-star, you still won't beat the boards at level 9 and 10 running full 2-star 5-costs.

That's why these reroll comps are usually HP-preserving comps that aim for a top finish (top 2-3-4).

That's also why taking combat augments on reroll comps is so important — it guarantees:

• Your mid-game win streak (when you start rolling at level 7);
• And enough late-game power to fight the level 9-10 boards.

Playing for first

This is the hardest playstyle: you accept an early-game loss streak in exchange for economy and late-game power.

It needs late-game augment picks, and the support of traits like Boss Beasts, Chrono or the Ancients (the beasts give items that scale with your loss streak, Chrono gives exp and free shop rerolls, the Ancients give you a 1-2 gold unit every round — worth 1-2 gold of economic value each time).

But this playstyle is very hard. If you want to go straight to level 9, you can't roll at level 8 — so by the time you reach level 9 you'll have about 2-3 "lives" left (having taken hits with a weak board from the early game almost to the end).

That's why this playstyle demands elite board-pivoting and rolling technique.

Why round 4-2 is the most important round

Say you're bleeding out but still at 50 HP at round 4-2. Then you lose five rounds in a row and die at 5-1 — rest in peace, 8th place.

So round 4-2 is the last moment you still have both the HP and the gold to fix your board — plan to arrive at this round in control: enough gold to roll, and enough HP to hold on.