How to Prepare for an Amateur League of Legends Tournament

To prepare for an amateur League of Legends tournament, lock your roster and availability weeks in advance, scrim with a purpose, scout every opponent the week of the event, build draft plans with backups, and treat match day like a checklist instead of a scramble. That's the whole of good lol amateur tournament preparation. The rest of this guide is the countdown: what to do, and when.

Most amateur teams lose tournaments before the first game starts. Not on talent. On a sub who didn't know he was playing, a lobby nobody could join, a draft built in the ninety seconds before champ select. All of that is avoidable.

Weeks before: lock the roster and the calendar

The first job has nothing to do with gameplay. It's knowing who will actually be there.

Confirm your five, and your sub. Read the tournament rules on roster size and substitutes, then name your starters and at least one sub who knows they're the sub. A sub who has never scrimmed with the team isn't a sub. It's a stranger. If you're short, deal with it now, not the night before. Recruit early so the new player gets scrims with the team before the event.

Collect availability for the event date and every scrim before it. Exams, work shifts, family dinners: you want to know about them weeks out. Ask each player for a clear yes or no on the tournament day and on each planned practice session. "Probably" is a no until it becomes a yes.

Check the registration details. Riot IDs on the sign-up sheet, the right server, rank requirements if the event has any, check-in time, and how the organizer will hand out lobbies or Tournament Codes. Write it all down in one place the whole team can see.

Set one or two goals for the block. Not "win the tournament". Something you can train and check, like cleaner drake setups or fewer deaths before 15 minutes. If you need a method, see how to set goals for your amateur League of Legends team.

Weeks before: scrim like it's the tournament

Scrims in the run-up to an event should look like the event. Same format, same time of day if you can, same draft rules.

• Play the format you'll face. If the bracket is BO3, book scrims as blocks of games, not one-offs. Practice the side selection and the draft order you'll get on the day.
• Practice Tournament Draft. Fearless rules, side choice, ban phases: if the organizer uses a specific setup, rehearse it until nobody has to think about it.
• Narrow your compositions. Pick the two or three comps the team plays best and drill them. A tournament is a bad place to test something new.
• Review every block. A short review after each session is worth more than another game. Keep it structured: what we planned, what happened, what we change. Our guide on how to run a structured scrim in League of Legends walks through the format.

By the end of this phase you want a team that knows its comps, its roles in each one, and what it looks like when the plan works.

The week of: scout, draft plans, comps

Once the bracket is out, your preparation becomes specific. You know who you're facing, at least for the first round.

Scout every opponent you might meet. For each roster: champion pools with volume, recent priority over lifetime history, and the duos they run together. Don't forget alternate accounts. For the full process, read how to scout your opponent before a League of Legends match.

Turn each scout into a draft plan. A scout that doesn't change your draft is wasted time. For each opponent, write down:

Prepare for the bracket, not just round one. If you win, who's next? You don't need a full plan for every possible team, but you should have a light scout ready so the next round doesn't start from zero.

Share everything before match day. The plan can't live in the captain's head. Every player should know the priority bans, their own picks in each comp, and the win condition. A short call two or three days before the event to walk through the plans is enough.

Match day: logistics first

On the day, your job is to remove every reason to lose that isn't the game itself.

Before check-in:

• Everyone online and in voice well ahead of check-in. Set the time early enough that one late player doesn't cost you the slot.
• Riot clients updated. Patch day surprises are real.
• Know how you'll join games. If the organizer sends Tournament Codes, decide who receives them and who posts them in the team channel.
• Have the sub on standby, online and reachable, even if you don't expect to use them.
• Draft plans open on a shared screen or pinned in Discord.

Warm up, don't burn out. A couple of normal games or a practice tool session can get hands moving. A SoloQ loss streak an hour before the bracket can do the opposite. Pick a warm-up that doesn't risk anyone's mood: practice tool for mechanics, a light game for comms.

Agree on comms rules. Who makes calls in draft, who calls objectives, and when the channel goes quiet. Under pressure, five voices talking at once is the most common way a team falls apart.

Between games of a BO3

The break between games is short, so use it with a fixed routine instead of a free-for-all.

1. Two minutes of quiet. Water, stretch, no blame. Nobody makes a good decision in the first minute after a loss.
2. One thing that worked, one thing to change. The captain or coach names them. Not ten things. One fix you can actually apply in the next game.
3. Re-read the draft. What did they pick, what did they ban, what did they leave open? If you lost, change something in draft before you change anything else.
4. Check side selection. If the side is yours to choose, decide it based on your draft plan, not on habit.
5. Reset. Same warm-up words, same calm voice in comms. Games two and three are often won by the team that stayed composed.

What to avoid: long arguments about a teamfight, rewatching the whole game, or a player tilting in voice. Save the detailed review for after the event.

After the event: debrief and keep the work

Win or lose, the tournament is the best data your team will get all season. Real stakes, prepared opponents, your best comps under pressure.

Debrief within a day or two. While it's fresh, go through each game: did the draft plan hold, where did the game turn, what went wrong in comms. Keep it about decisions, not people. The same structure you use for a weekly performance review for your LoL team works here.

Keep your scouts and notes. Amateur circuits are small. You will likely see some of these teams again, in the next event or in scrims. A scout you can reopen saves hours.

Update your goals. The tournament shows you what holds up under pressure and what doesn't. If your early game collapsed in every loss, that's your next block. Feed it back into the countdown for the next event.

LoL amateur tournament preparation checklist

Start your preparation now

Pick your next tournament date, put it in the team calendar today, and work backward through the list above. If you want one place to run all of it, the Victory View App keeps it together: Scout for each opponent with suggested bans and safe picks, Compositions with picks, bans and side, Matches for BO1, BO3 or BO5 with a preparation checklist, results and debrief notes, Tournament Code generation for custom games, and a Calendar with availability so you know who's playing before match day.