Clash Tips: How to Prepare Your Team for a Clash Weekend

To prepare your team for a Clash weekend, lock your five players and their availability early, fix roles, give each player a small champion pool, drill two or three compositions, scout your opponents as soon as the bracket is known, and run the day itself with one shot-caller and a short reset between games. Those are the lol clash tips that matter most. Everything below is how to do each one without turning your week into a second job.

Clash is the closest thing most players get to a real tournament. Five people, a bracket, opponents who also prepared. That's exactly why it exposes teams who show up with five SoloQ habits instead of one plan. The good news: almost everything that goes wrong in Clash is decided before the first game, and it's in your control.

One thing first. Clash rules change over time: dates, format, tickets, tiers, schedule. This guide stays general on purpose. Check the Clash tab in the client for the current dates and format before you plan anything.

The week before: lock the five

Your first problem isn't the draft. It's knowing who will actually be online.

Name your five, and a backup. Five players who say "yes, I'm in" for the whole session, not "I'll try". Have one more person you can call if someone drops. A backup who has never played with the group is still better than forfeiting, but talk to them before the weekend, not during lock-in.

Get real availability. Clash runs on fixed time slots. Ask each player for a clear answer on the exact window, including the time before the first game for check-in and warm-up. Someone who "should be home by then" is a risk. Plan around the people who are sure.

Put it in one place. The date, the time to be online, who registers the team, who the backup is. One pinned message in your Discord or one shared calendar entry. If the info lives in five private DMs, someone will miss it.

The week before: roles and a small champion pool

Clash teams often lose champ select before they lose the game. Two players want mid, nobody wants to support, and the jungler is on a champion he played twice last season.

Fix roles now. Each player knows their role for the weekend. If you have a flexible player, decide where they go by default and when they swap. No role debates in champ select.

Keep each pool small. Ask every player for a short list of champions they're comfortable on in the current patch, with one clear comfort pick and one or two backups. Clash is not the place to test a new champion. If a player's pool is thin, help them pick something simple they can play safely, not something flashy. Our guide on how to build a LoL champion pool that climbs explains how to pick and trim a pool, and the same logic applies to a Clash weekend.

Think about the team, not five separate pools. Lay all five lists side by side. Do you have a frontliner? Some engage? Magic and physical damage both covered? If everyone's comfort picks add up to five carries with no way to start a fight, fix it now.

The week before: two or three compositions

You don't need a playbook. You need two or three compositions the whole team understands.

Build them from the pools you just collected. For each one, write down:

Then play them. A few games together before the weekend, in Normal, Flex or custom games, with the actual compositions. You're not grinding mechanics. You're making sure five people know what the plan looks like in game. If you can, set up one or two scrims against another team. A short, structured session is worth more than a long random one, and our guide on how to run a structured scrim in League of Legends shows how to set one up.

Once the bracket is known: scout your opponents

When the bracket goes live, you know who you face first. That's when preparation gets specific.

Look at each opponent's recent games, not their profile summary. What matters is what they play now: champions with real volume over recent weeks, the role each player actually plays, and any pair of players who queue together often. A player with dozens of games on one champion this month is a ban candidate. A champion they played once last year is noise.

Pick your bans with a reason. Two kinds of ban are worth it: the comfort pick of the player most likely to carry them, and the champion that breaks one of your compositions. Banning whatever scares you personally is not a plan.

Check for alternate accounts. In Clash, some players register on one account and play most of their games on another. If a player's history looks too thin for their rank, it's worth a look.

Turn the scout into a draft. For each opponent, decide your bans by side, your first pick, and which of your compositions fits best. Share it in the team channel before the day, so everyone arrives with the same picture. For the full process, read how to scout your opponent before a League of Legends match.

You don't need a full scout of every team in the bracket. A solid scout of your first opponent and a quick look at the likely next ones is enough.

Clash day: warm up, timing and comms

On the day, your job is to remove every reason to lose that has nothing to do with the game.

Be online early. Set a time well before the first game for everyone to be in voice, client updated, team confirmed. Late players are the most avoidable problem in Clash, and they put everyone on edge before champ select even opens.

Warm up without risking anyone's mood. Practice Tool for mechanics, or a relaxed Normal game for comms. A ranked loss streak right before the bracket is the worst possible warm-up. Pick something that gets hands moving and voices talking, nothing more.

Have the draft plan open. Bans, first picks, the composition you're aiming for. On a shared screen or pinned in Discord, so nobody has to remember it.

Pick one shot-caller. One person makes the final call in draft and on big decisions in game: take the objective, back off, go for the fight. Others give information: timers, positions, cooldowns, summoner spells. Information from everyone, decisions from one voice. Five people calling at once is how teams fall apart under pressure.

Keep comms short and calm. Short calls, no long explanations mid-fight, no blame. If someone makes a mistake, it can wait until after the game. In the middle of the game, the only question is what you do next.

Between games: a fixed reset

Clash games come one after another, and the time between them is short. Use a routine instead of a free-for-all.

1. A short quiet break. Water, stand up, breathe. No blame in the first minutes after a loss.
2. One thing that worked, one thing to change. The shot-caller or captain names them. Not a list of ten. One fix the team can apply in the next game.
3. Look at the next opponent. Re-read the scout, confirm bans and picks. Adjust if the last game showed you something.
4. Reset the tone. Same calm voice going into champ select. Teams that stay composed after a loss often play the next game better than teams that just won and got loose.

What to avoid: arguing about a teamfight for the whole break, rewatching replays, or one player tilting in voice. The detailed review comes later.

After Clash: a short debrief

Win or lose, a Clash weekend gives you real information. Five players under pressure, against teams who prepared, on your best compositions.

Debrief within a day or two. Keep it short. Did the draft plan hold? Where did each game turn? Did comms work, or did calls get lost? Keep it about decisions, not people. If the weekend went badly, our guide on how to run a LoL team debrief after a loss shows how to talk about it without blaming anyone.

Keep what worked. The compositions that held up, the shot-calling setup, the warm-up routine. Write them down so the next Clash starts from there, not from zero.

Pick one thing to train. If you lost every early game, that's your next focus. If champ select was messy, fix the draft process. One clear target until the next Clash is better than five vague ones.

LoL Clash tips checklist

Start before the next Clash

Check the Clash tab for the next dates, put them in your team calendar today, and work backward through the checklist. If you want one place to keep it all, the Victory View App can help: Scout builds a read of the opposing roster from their accounts, Compositions saves your picks, bans and side, Matches holds the preparation and the debrief notes, and the Calendar shows who's available before the weekend starts.