Today we will cover what a Headliner is, how to buy them, how to play around them, when to sell them, and what items are great on each headliner. Lastly we will cover general Headliner tips at the end.

In TFT Set 10, the “Headliner” is a new mechanic–some may recognize it from the old name of “Chosen” from Set 4. Headliners are automatically upgraded units that come as 2-star champions in your shop. One of their traits is doubled in effectiveness, and they have unique bonuses, often a bonus in stats or an augmented ability. They cost the sum of their star level, so a 3-cost Headliner would cost 9 gold, as you’re essentially buying three units to make a 2-star​.

Headliners can appear in your shop with each shop refresh if you don’t already own one, or every 4th shop if you do. That means if you want to casually pivot your board, you can do so by waiting to see a good headliner every 4 shops. If you want to quickly remix your board, you can sell your Headliner and find a new one in every shop.

Note: You cannot have two Headliners. You cannot buy the Headliner in your shop if you already have one, so you must sell your existing Headliner in order to buy the one in your shop.

Here are the odds of seeing a specific Cost Headliner based on your Level

Using a Headliner effectively can significantly strengthen your board, especially in the early to mid-game. They are fantastic item holders, and you should try to use one each round if possible since they provide huge bonuses to your team.

“But what if I don’t like the Headliners I see?” Too bad. Try to play them as much as possible. Since Headliners give a free 2-star, bonus stats, and a bonus trait, you are effectively refusing to play an upgraded champion, a trait spatula (equivalent to a silver augment in most cases), and lose out on it’s bonus stats as well. This is a huge downgrade to your team!

Obviously, if there was a Headliner that gave us the exact trait we wanted, that is perfect, but we are not always so lucky. With this in mind, we want to always have a “worst case scenario” Headliner that we want to buy every shop.

In this board below, we have Bruisers and Pentakill, and we are looking for another unit to put in. Obviously finding a Bruiser or Pentakill Headliner would be great, but what should we buy if we don’t see that? Something as simple as a Headliner Rapidfire Aphelios could be playable for a few rounds before we swap it out for something better when we roll down. This is because we have 5 melee units, and getting 1 ranged unit would add a lot of value to our team since we need some damage. Yes, yes, I know, Aphelios does not give any key traits for our team, however, I’m trying to illustrate worst case scenarios. It is “takeable” because we need a ranged damage dealer and maybe an AD item holder. If we needed an AP item holder, a “worst case scenario” Headliner could be something like Senna. In the early game, we cannot greed our Headliners if not we lose too much HP, and we also cannot roll in most case because that would be horrible for our economy early on. The purpose of early game Headliners is to save HP until we are able to do a big roll down, which occurs at 3-2, 3-5, or 4-1 in most cases depending on your leveling strategy.

Note: This is just one example and not a rule regarding the units and traits mentioned.

You should sell your Headliner in 2 scenarios

You should also try to not have a low cost (1 or 2 cost) Headliner in the late game (Stage 5 and beyond) because you are sacrificing a lot of power.