How to Draft as an Amateur Team: A Simple Pick and Ban Process

To draft well as an amateur team, decide most of the draft before champ select opens: scout the opponent, prepare two or three compositions, write a short ban list, know each player's comfort pool, and name one person who calls it. During champ select, you follow the plan and only adapt where you have to. That's how to draft as a LoL amateur team without losing the game in the lobby. The rest of this guide breaks the process into before, during and after.

Most amateur drafts fail the same way. Nobody prepared, five people talk at once, someone first-picks a champion they haven't played in weeks, and the last pick gets locked with two seconds left. None of that is about game knowledge. It's about process.

Why amateur teams lose the draft before the game starts

Pro teams spend hours on draft. You don't have hours. You have a few evenings a week, five schedules and a Discord call. So the goal isn't a perfect draft. It's a draft that's good enough, built on what your players actually play well, and repeatable every match.

Three things usually go wrong:

• No preparation. The team opens champ select and starts thinking. Under a timer, people default to what scares them or what they played last night.
• Too many voices. Five opinions in thirty seconds is noise. The pick that gets locked is whoever talked loudest, not whoever was right.
• Drafting out of comfort. A champion that looks strong on paper but that your jungler has played twice is a worse pick than a slightly weaker one he has played all split.

A simple process fixes all three.

How to draft as a LoL amateur team: start before the match

Most of the draft happens before champ select. This is where your time pays off.

Scout the opponent

Start with who you're facing. Look at each player's recent champion pool, with volume: what they've played a lot over the last couple of weeks, not one game three months ago. Look for one-tricks, comfort picks and duos they run together. If you need the full method, read how to scout your opponent before a League of Legends match.

The scout answers two questions: what should we ban, and what are they likely to pick?

Write a ban list

From the scout, write a ranked list of bans. Not five names. More like six to eight, ordered by priority, because you only control some of the bans and the other team will remove some options for you.

A good ban targets one of three things:

Avoid banning purely out of fear. The champion that beat you once last month isn't automatically a priority.

Prepare two or three compositions

Don't walk in with one comp. It gets broken by a single ban. Don't walk in with ten either. Nobody remembers ten.

Two or three is the sweet spot. For example: one comp that wants to fight early around objectives, one that scales and teamfights, and maybe a pick comp if your roster plays it well. For each one, write down:

• The five champions, and one backup per role
• The two or three picks that are the core of the comp
• The win condition in one sentence
• Which side it works best on, if it matters

If you've drilled these comps in scrims, even better. A structured block of practice games is the right place for that, as covered in how to run a structured scrim in League of Legends.

Know each player's comfort pool

Every player should give you a short list: three or four champions they can play in a real match tonight. Not their whole history. Not what they'd like to learn. What they would be confident playing under pressure.

This list is what makes the rest work. It tells the shotcaller what's safe to lock, what can be a blind pick, and what needs a counterpick slot. If a player's pool is too thin, that's a separate job, and how to build a LoL champion pool that climbs is a good starting point.

Who calls the draft

One person calls the draft. Everyone else gives input, then the caller decides.

It doesn't have to be the captain. It should be the person who did the scout, knows the comfort pools and stays calm under a timer. Some teams split it: the coach or captain calls the bans, the players confirm their own picks. That works too, as long as everyone knows the split before the match.

A few rules make it smoother:

• Input is short. "I'm fine on either" or "I can't play into that" is useful. A two-minute debate is not.
• A player can veto their own pick. Nobody should be forced onto a champion they don't want to play.
• The caller has the last word. Once it's decided, the team moves on. No second-guessing in game.

During champ select: bans, picks and counterpicks

In the standard tournament draft, the two sides alternate. There's a first ban phase, then a first pick phase, then a second ban phase, then the last picks. Blue side gets the first pick of the game. Red side gets the last pick, which is the strongest counterpick slot. Picks alternate after blue's first pick, with each side taking two in a row in the middle of each phase.

You don't need to memorize every slot. You need to know what you do on each side.

The first ban phase

Use your first bans on the top of your ban list. These are usually the opponent's comfort picks or the champions that would break your comps. If the other side bans something from your plan, don't panic. That's why you prepared more than one comp.

First pick logic

On blue side, your first pick should be something strong and hard to punish. Good first picks share a few traits:

• Strong in the current patch
• Hard to counter in lane
• Flexible across roles, if you have one, so the enemy can't read your lanes
• Comfortable for the player who gets it

Don't first-pick a champion with an obvious counter. You're handing the other team a free answer.

On red side, you don't get the first pick, but you get two picks right after. Use them to take two strong champions, or one strong champion and one that answers what blue just took.

Pick order: blind first, counter last

A simple rule for the order of your own picks: lock the roles that are safest to blind pick early, and save the roles that need a counterpick for the end.

Lanes where matchups matter a lot, often top and mid, are good candidates to pick late. Roles where a player has a comfort champion that works into most matchups can go early. Your comfort pool list tells you which is which for your team.

The second ban phase

By now you can see most of both comps. Use the second bans to target what's missing. If the enemy still needs a jungler or a support, ban the options that fit their comp best. If one of your late picks has a clear counter, ban it.

Keep it simple

Under a timer, the simplest plan wins. If the draft goes off script, fall back to the backup comp. Don't invent a new composition in the last thirty seconds. Don't let a player hover a champion nobody discussed. And if you're unsure between two picks, take the one your player is more comfortable on.

After the match: note what worked

A draft you don't review is a draft you'll repeat, mistakes included. After each match, take a few minutes to write down:

• Which comp you played, and on which side
• Which bans you used, and whether they mattered
• Picks that worked, and picks that felt bad in game
• Anything the opponent did that surprised you

Keep it short. A few lines per match is enough. Over a few weeks, patterns show up: a comp that works on red but not on blue, a first pick that keeps getting banned, a player who performs better on one champion than another. If the game went badly, fold the draft into the team debrief instead of turning it into blame. How to run a LoL team debrief after a loss shows how to keep that conversation calm.

Those notes become your next draft. That's what makes the process repeatable.

A draft checklist for match day

Draft from a plan, not from panic

How to draft as an amateur team comes down to doing the thinking early. Scout, prepare a few compositions, rank your bans, respect comfort pools, let one person call it, and write down what happened. You won't win every draft. But you'll walk into champ select with a plan instead of a guess.

If you want that preparation in one place, the Victory View App puts it together: a scout of the enemy roster with suggested bans and safe picks, saved compositions with five picks, five bans, subs and side, and a match page that links the scout, the comp and your notes so the whole team sees the same plan before champ select opens.