I was invited by Riot Games for a preview session of the next Teamfight Tactics (TFT) set, Magic n’ Mayhem, which will mark the 12th set in the history of the game and will release on July 31st, 2024. Naturally, anything I mention here is subject to change until release. The new set is built all around the Magitorium, a magical castle of curiosities, and the chaos that ensues thanks to its many inhabitants. So, as you can imagine, there are lots of magic users, elemental fighters, and silly little guys.
But let’s start with the new major set mechanic: Charms. Charms can appear in your shop instead of champions and give special effects that usually last for only one turn. That can mean turning all of your items into Statikk Shivs, applying Sunder to all your enemies for the first few seconds of combat, or even summoning a 2000 HP dragon to fight on your side. I didn’t really get warm with this mechanic during the time I played. Because most of the effects are both temporary for only a single turn and usually not particularly powerful, it often doesn’t feel worth spending the money on, and matters are made even worse by the fact that Charms take up one of your slots in the shop that could’ve been a champion you were looking for. We’ll see what, if any, changes they make until the release of the set and how I’ll feel about it once I have spent much more time with it, but on first impressions, this mechanic is a bit of a dud for me.
But that doesn’t mean I’m not a fan of the new set at large. Once we get to the champion pool, there’s plenty of fun stuff here. At 5 gold, we have champions like Briar and Smolder making their TFT debuts, as well as Norra from Legends of Runeterra (2020) teaming up with Yuumi for a singular unit. Xerath is interesting because he introduces his own set of ascended Charms, Milio pulls completed items out of his bag and shares them with his friends, and Morgana steals a 1-star copy of an enemy unit at the end of every battle. I love that the team at Riot isn’t scared to go a little crazy with their 5 gold units, and they are delivering this set once again.
The new traits also have plenty of fun and new ideas in store. I won’t go through all of them, because there’s just too many, and they’re not all flashy and exciting enough to talk about here; simple stuff like Mages, Shapeshifters, and Vanguards are making their return, for example. But let’s go through a few that stood out to me. First, there’s Eldritch, the summon trait of this set, which summons a different kind of big unit depending on the number of Eldritch champions you have. I’ve always been a fan of TFT’s summon traits, and I particularly love the aesthetic of this one. Speaking of traits whose aesthetic I loved, there’s Frost, which summons an ice clone of the first unit you kill during the round that explodes on death. Imagine Lissandra’s passive from League of Legends (2009). One of the sillier ones is Honeymancy, in which every unit comes equipped with a group of pet bees that attack the enemy alongside them. They didn’t feel super strong that one time I played them, but I hope they end up being viable because I kind of loved it. Next to Honeymancy, you got plenty of other types of magic like Witchcraft, Arcana, and… Sugarcraft? Next to Shapeshifters, we also have Dragons, and Faerie. On the opposite end of Frost, there’s Pyro. And if all of that stuff is too magical for you, there’s the more tech-based Portal trait, or Multistriker and Warrior for fans of more physical combat. And that’s not even all of them. I’m excited to play around more with all of the different traits and champions in this new set.
There are also 140 new Augments, because of course there are, and as with every new set in Teamfight Tactics (2019), there are a whole lot of combinations that are left to be discovered once the set drops, and we all get to play hours and hours of it. For now, I can say I’m very much looking forward to it and see a lot of potential with this new set, even if I don’t love the new Charm mechanic for now.
Nairon played Teamfight Tactics Set 12: Magic n’ Mayhem on PC at a preview event in collaboration with Riot Games.
