Champlab Strategy: The Best First Guesses

A data-driven guide, computed by running Champlab's own clue logic over all 173 champions.

Most Champlab advice boils down to "start with someone average". That's roughly right, but we can do better than a hunch. For this guide we took every champion on the roster, pretended to guess it first against every possible answer, and recorded exactly what the clue grid would show — using the same comparison code the game uses, so partial matches on multi-value columns and the release-year arrows behave exactly as they do when you play. Then we asked one question: after this first guess, how many champions are still possible, on average?

How we score a first guess

A guess splits the roster into groups: every answer that would produce the same row of colours ends up in the same group, because from the grid alone you can't tell them apart. If the answer is equally likely to be any champion, the expected number of candidates left after the guess is the sum of each group's size squared, divided by the roster size. Lower is better. We also track the worst case (the biggest group), the number of distinct colour patterns the guess can produce, and the information gained in bits — a guess that produces 128 equally likely outcomes would be worth 7 bits.

The top 15 opening guesses

Brand comes out on top: on average only 2.21 champions remain possible after guessing Brand first, and even the unluckiest answer leaves 6. Zed is a close second at 2.26. The pattern in the list is clear once you see it. 15 of the top 15 are Human, which splits the roster's largest species almost in half on the first clue. 8 of the 15 are listed in two positions, so the position cell can come back green, yellow or red instead of just green or red. 4 carry more than one region (Brand, Sona, Xin Zhao, Cassiopeia), which does the same for the region column. And every one was released between 2010 and 2013, close enough to the middle of the timeline that the year cell is yellow for a big slice of the roster and the arrow splits the rest.

For contrast, the weakest opener is Smolder, which leaves 18.09 champions on average and up to 40 in the worst case. The bottom five — Smolder, Bel'Veth, Briar, Viego, Kindred — are all champions whose attributes are rare (an unusual resource, a one-off species) or recent. A rare attribute is great when it hits and nearly useless when it doesn't, and it almost never hits. Familiar openers don't always hold up either: Wukong ranks 87th (4.95 left) and Teemo 135th(7.30).

Narrowing down by release year

The year column is the only one with direction. It turns green on the exact year, yellow when your guess is within 2 years, and shows an arrow pointing toward the answer whenever it isn't exact. Judged on this column alone, the most useful year to guess is 2012 (about 41 champions left on average), followed by 2010 and 2013. A 2026 guess is the least useful, leaving about 159 — almost everything is older, so its arrow nearly always just says "earlier".

That asymmetry comes from the roster itself: the 2009–2012 launch era holds more than half of all champions, and releases have been sparse since. In practice:

• An up arrow on a 2012 guess means the answer is from 2013 or later — a small, recent group. List the champions you know from 2015 onward and pick a second guess that splits them by position.
• A red down arrow on a 2012 guess can only mean 2009 — the launch roster, the biggest single year. Switch to position and species to cut it down; the year column has nothing left to tell you.
• Yellow means within 2 years either side. Combine it with the arrow: yellow ↑ on a 2011 guess leaves only 2012 and 2013.

The champion list has a page for each release year with at least five champions, and every one of them opens with how that year compares with the rest of the timeline.

Common mistakes

1. Reading yellow as "one of these is right". On positions, species, range and regions, yellow means at least one value overlaps and the lists aren't identical. A yellow on a Top/Jungle guess doesn't mean the answer is Top or Jungle only; it could be Jungle/Mid or Top/Support.
2. Ignoring green on multi-value columns. Green means the whole list matches. If Brand's position comes back green, the answer is exactly Mid/Support — not "some kind of Mid".
3. Guessing only champions that could be the answer. In Gold mode, a guess that can't win but splits the last eight candidates cleanly is often better than a coin-flip on a likely one.
4. Forgetting the twins. Gragas and Olaf have identical rows in all seven columns. When the grid points at one, you still need a guess to separate them.
5. Opening with a favourite. Your main might be a great champion and a terrible opener — anything with a unique resource or species gives very little information when it misses.

Worked solves

Three rounds played with the approach above: open with Brand, then always take the guess that leaves the fewest candidates on average. The colour columns are, in order, gender, position(s), species, resource, range type, region(s), release year.

Putting it together

Open with Brand or Zed. Read green as "exactly this", yellow as "overlaps but different", and let the year arrow cut the timeline in two. From the second guess on, stop thinking about who the answer probably is and think about which guess splits the remaining candidates most evenly. Try it in Challenger mode, check the rules if a colour surprises you, and see the FAQ for how disputed attributes are decided.