Drafting in League of Legends is a strategic phase where teams select their champions before a match. It plays a crucial role in determining a team's composition and overall strategy. Making wise champion selections during the draft can significantly impact your chances of victory in the game. One important thing to know is that the order of picks is always the same. Blue side will always get the first pick of the game, with Red side getting the last. Historically, this gives Blue side a large advantage as Blue side can secure the strongest open champion, also forcing Red side to have more pressure to ban "meta" champions. After Blue side picks first each team picks 2 champions at a time, until the final pick for Red side which is only 1 champion. Picks are commonly referred to by their side and position in the draft. For example, the first pick of Blue side is called B1, while the first pick of Red side is called R1. This means that B1 is always the first pick of the game, and R5 is always the last. Bans are also an important factor, but for most players outside of high-level or organized play, they will be a matter of personal preference. In a normal game, all bans are done at the start, however in professional play, the bans are done in stages with each team banning 3 champions before any picks are made followed by 2 more bans from each team after the first 6 picks are made.
The image to the right shows the first 6 picks of a draft. In this scenario, Blue side utilized its first pick (B1) to select Zeri, a highly mobile carry. In response to this, Red side picked Vi (R1) and Rakan (R2). These picks not only work very well together as they share the same goal of wanting to dive on top of the enemy team but also because Vi has a point-and-click crowd control ability as her ultimate, making it very easy to lock down Zeri due to it being undodgeable. Following this, Blue side picked Lulu (B2) and Viego (B3). Lulu is a good choice here as it synergizes well with Zeri, empowering an already strong carry for the team, while also providing some counter-engage in the form of her Polymorph ability which effectively shuts down an enemy champion for a period of time. Viego, on the other hand, while not completely useless, is not a particularly amazing pick due to it not matching the existing needs for the team and not being strong against Viego's direct opponent Vi. To end the first round of picks, Red side chose Xayah (R3), a champion that is designed to have advantages when played with Rakan specifically. Xayah also fits the existing Red side theme as she can follow up the initial engage from Vi and Rakan as a large source of damage.
Following the first round of Picks and Bans, each team can make more focused bans based on what they think the opposing team still needs. For example, both teams likely still need to pick a champion for the Mid and Top lanes. Because of this, each team bans champions they feel would be good for their team composition. In this example, Blue side banned Aatrox and Gwen, who are powerful close-range fighters, and Red side banned Viktor and Malphite, who are very good at controlling an area and providing disengage for their team. Following this round of bans, Red side started by picking Azir (R4), allowing them to have another source of damage as well as some secondary engage tools. Blue side then picked Xerath (B4) and Sion (B5) to end their draft. Overall, these are two very good picks for the Blue side, as Xerath is a strong counter to Azir and the Red team composition as a whole due to his extremely long range. Sion provides the Blue side with a much-needed frontline to absorb damage, as well as providing some crowd control with his large area-of-effect (AoE) abilities. To end the draft phase as a whole, Red side chose Olaf (R5). The Olaf pick rounds off a very dive-heavy team for the Red side, as well as giving them a matchup top lane against Malphite that should almost always be winning for them. While it is impossible to predict which team will win purely by looking at the draft, Red side's draft should give them a significant advantage, as outside of the Midlane matchup of Azir vs. Xerath, they should be stronger in the early stages of the game, and with a composition like this, they should be able to snowball a lead to take control of the game.
