In this guide, I'll be going over what open forting is, how to pull it off, and I'll be using my Jhin comp as an example of a plausible open-fort strategy.
First, let me add some qualifications. I don't know if Jhin is the best composition. I think a Jinx or Kayle comp may be stronger. I'm just using Jhin as an example since I'm most familiar with it.
Also, this may not be the 100 percent optimal strategy, this is just how I've consistently won 10 of my first 11 on EU West.
Before we get into open forting, let's keep in mind generally what composition we want.
We'll go into how to specifically play this comp, but all you need to know for now is to grab every Ashe, Karma and Mordekaiser you see until you get those champions to two-stars in the early game.
Other champions you should hold are Caitlyn, Poppy, Leona, Twisted Fate, Blitzcrank, Shen and Malphite. However, these aren't remotely as important as your core composition.
Once again, before we begin, I'm uncertain if this is the best comp of 10.6. I'm just using this as an example.
Let's begin.
I'll be teaching you my variation of open forting and show you some examples of game states and what I do in certain situations. The specifics may change a bit based on what comps are strong, but until they change something fundamental about the game, this will generally be how to pull off the strat.
First, the carousel. You should aim for three things: Sparring Gloves, B.F. Sword and Recurve Bow. Since the two most important items, Last Whisper and Infinity Edge, both require Sparring Gloves, you should prioritize that starting item.
However, what's great about this comp is item flexibility. Any type of item is usable. AP items are good on Cho and Ashe, tank items are good on Cho, Thresh and Wu, and of course, AD items are good on Jhin and Ashe. As long as you have exactly Last Whisper, IE, you can use pretty much whatever type of item you want.
But enough about comp specifics, let's get into the meat of the strategy: open forting.
So, what is open forting? It's basically strategically inting or losing on purpose. The reason this strategy is viable is due to the damage changes. Generally, you'll take less damage until at least stage four, and since they also changed how losestreaking works, you'll have an insane amount of gold with a safe amount of HP. Also, you'll be higher level with more gold than anyone else.
So, after first carousel, you should look out for the champions I listed above. Just win the first PvE rounds.
However, there are two key rules to follow.
One: gold is king. If you have the opportunity to make interest gold, such as selling most or even all of your bench for 10 gold, do it. The only exception to this is if you have a random Ashe, Karma or Morde.
Two: Never combine items until at least Kruggs. For this article, I'm just calling the PvE rounds by their old names, so the monsters at stage two are Kruggs. Don't @ me.
So, after your first three PvE rounds, you're at stage 2-1. Hopefully you have at least ten gold.
Now, it's time to open the fort!
You should do everything possible to lose a round. Let's say you've found a Caitlyn and two Poppys. You should put your ranged champions in the front, and your melee champions in the back.
With this positioning, your Cait will be focused first, then your Poppys will be focused one at a time. Sometimes you'll face a Blitzcrank and focus will be split between Cait and one Poppy, but with this positioning, it should be almost impossible to win a round.
Now, you've lost round one and you have, let's say 18 gold and a completely empty bench. It's perfectly fine to sell the two Poppys and only have Caitlyn on the board. Remember, the objective is to lose and make gold. The marginal amount of health you could get by killing an extra champion isn't worth one gold.
You've lost round 2-2 easily and now we're onto 2-3. Even though you have the option of putting in four champions, you don't need to. But, now you've found a Mordekaiser. He will permanently sit on your bench or be on your board.
However, try not to synergize Vanguards as it's still possible to win despite the incredibly poor positioning.
Since you have Morde, Cait, try to put either ranged units or units that have no synergy on the board. Like maybe a Zoe and a Jarvan IV.
Now that you've also lost this round, you should have either the lowest or second-lowest HP, meaning you can pick first. During this carousel, you should prioritize a three-cost champion. Even though the most important item would be Recurve Bow to complete Last Whisper, it's okay to get a B.F. Sword or even a second Sparring Glove.
However, if the carousel doesn't have any three-cost champions holding items to complete Last Whisper, just take a one or two-cost champion with the item you need.
You should be at about 80 HP now. If you have more, great! You're ahead of the game.
So, even though most times it'd be optimal to level up, we're going to hold that XP.
Keep losing stages 2-4 and 2-5.
You should have about 60 HP with at least 40 gold.
Now, you have your first decision to make: to level or not level; that is the question.
If you have a level-two carry and a bunch of tanks, you can just go ahead and combine items on the carry. If not, level up, put items on a carry that you'll sell later, and position all your units to the right so they focus the right-most Krugg. Also, organize your tanks by tankiest to least tanky, left to right.
M stands for monster :)
Now, your goal is to basically spend all your gold over 50 on XP. So, if you have 58 gold, spend eight gold on XP. Keep doing this until you are either below 45 HP or level seven, whichever is first.
In the meantime, reposition optimally so you can either win, or kill a bunch of units.
The comp is really strong in the mid game, so if you win one or two rounds, it's not a big deal, and if you keep losing, that's also fine. Generally, you should shoot for being level seven by Wolves, or stage 3-5. That generally means you have two rounds of rolling without anyone else contesting your units as most people level to seven at 4-2.
By carousel, you should only focus on completing whatever item is incomplete, either your IE or your Last Whisper.
Hopefully by now, you've found maybe an Ashe or two, a Karma, and maybe even got your Cait and Morde to level two. Again, you should be pretty close to seven, and hit it by wolves at the latest.
I'll talk way more about positioning later, but generally put your carry to the left supported by Karma, Morde and Poppy for Vanguard, and put Blitz, TF or Ezreal in for Chrono.
Now, we roll.
It's wolves and we're level seven with 50 gold.
Even though it's suboptimal, I like rolling until about 40 gold at wolves.
Next round, roll to 30 gold and roll to 20 every future round until you're strong enough to save gold and go level eight.
Generally, strong enough means having a level two Ashe, Karma, Mordekaiser, at least a level one Jhin, and either a level two Jhin or a level two Cho'Gath and Wukong.
If you don't find a level two Jhin, it's fine. You have insane items and your frontline with Dark Star is buffing him by 50 percent.
Throw in either a Sona or a Soraka for Mystic, and you're good to go.
Hopefully, if you've done this right and aren't super unlucky, you should be above 30 health.
Now, your goal should be to get a third item on Jhin, get a mana item on Ashe and level eight.
Keep saving that gold until you're either being pressured too much or you have 50, slow-level or fast-level depending on how much pressure is being applied, and you should be level eight by Raptors or one round after at the latest.
After that, it's time to panic. You take a ton of damage at this stage, so you should either roll down to 10 or zero to find a level two Jhin, finish your other four-costs, and find exactly Lulu and Thresh.
Position Thresh away from the aggression and have something with CC on the bench.
Even though you don't have perfect items, your comp is still insane. You don't need Wukong level two, but you kinda need Cho level two, and definitely need Jhin level two.
After you have exactly this comp, level nine baby.
Generally shoot for going level nine so as to have 30 gold remaining.
At nine, I like Miss Fortune the most and I just center her in the middle of Jhin and Ashe, try to level your other five-costs, and you can bench Cho for a level two Ekko or Gangplank.
Or, since Cho already has items, you can keep those champions on the bench for Thresh.
Position based on what you're facing and enjoy the free wins.
Composition
Let's talk specifically about this composition.
First, here's a slightly worse mid-game comp, but it has the advantage of having more champions that can be replaced, and it's a lot cheaper.
You should gradually swap out all the Brawlers other than Cho into random five costs, but you can play this in case you just aren't finding any Mordes and Karmas, or you find a random level two Malphite and maybe like two Blitzcranks.
Next, let's talk items.
For Jhin, the two required items are Last Whisper, IE. For the third item, I think Bloodthirster is the best item, and Hurricane is the second-best. If not, another IE, or pretty much any item that has either a B.F. Sword or a Recurve Bow is good.
I like having a repeating mana item, like Shojin or Seraph's on Ashe as she ults a ton of times. I even put a Luden's Echo on her once and it felt pretty solid. Finally, Morello and tank items are great on Cho'Gath and one or two Redemptions, one on Wu and the other on Morde are excellent.
The name of the game is survival so Jhin can snipe everyone and Ashe can spam ults.
Speaking of overall strategy, let's go over the purpose of each individual champion.
Jhin and Ashe should be pretty obvious. They are on opposite corners because if one dies, the other can supplement the damage, but we'll go more into positioning in a sec.
We have Morde and Karma for stall as Infiltrators and random spells will hit Jhin in the mid game and may burst him before he can lifesteal up.
Since I brought up lifesteal, one of the most important synergies is celestial as it works with Jhin's fourth shot. Again, the name of the game is stalling your opponent's comp, and Lulu gives Cosmic synergy to help with that goal.
Wukong and Thresh are just good units that also give Chrono, which again, since we're prolonging fights, is an excellent synergy to have and gives Jhin even more lifesteal and damage.
Finally, we have Cho'Gath who's the only replaceable unit. He's just the best four-cost to fit in as there isn't really a good AP user unless you luck into an early MF.
Positioning
The most important thing is putting Jhin, and hopefully Ashe as well, out of harm's way.
Generally, I see people stacking right side, so I put Jhin on the opposite side of aggression. If the majority of the lobby is stacking left side, just swap the positions of Ashe, Jhin and Karma, Lulu. Also, you want Morde on the side of aggression so he dies first and gives Jhin the Dark Star buff. You want him opposite of Jhin so he gives it to Jhin and not Karma.
A small note is I have a unit one square back of Jhin and Ashe to bait out things like Blitz hooks and Vi ults. We can reposition based on the lobby later.
The other two small things are Wu's and Thresh's positioning. Firstly, Thresh is positioned away from the aggro to get multiple ultimates off and so the units he lanterns don't immediately get focused. Secondly, Wu is positioned in the center, but one square opposite of the main aggression. So, if the majority of enemy champions are on the right, Cho will be center-right, and Wu will be center-left.
The reason for this is Cho will take most of the aggro after Morde and get his ultimate off, and he'll generally be able to stay alive because of all the healing from his ultimate, his own tank stats, Jhin killing everything, and the other CC that's present.
While Cho is getting low, Wu will be taking some aggro. He will then ult and swap most of the aggro to himself. Since he's knocked everyone up, his job is done. He'll die shortly after, and since there's a redemption on him, he'll heal your team, which generally means it will allow Cho to ult again, and maybe heal your two Mystics.
The only changes will come in the late game depending on if someone is stacking one side or if you're versus infiltrators.
If someone is only stacking the right side of the map, just put Ashe to the right of Jhin and put Lulu to the right of Ashe.
If you're versus Infiltrators, I'll just draw up what you should do. This will be an example if most of the frontline is to the right.
Jhin is in the safest square possible as he essentially has five champions guarding his front, two guarding his back, and Ashe to split the aggro from the back.
The Infiltrator positioning doesn't matter too much as Jhin will turn on them once he's killed one of two units. His lifesteal, plus Karma shield, plus stall from Ashe, Lulu ultimates should be more than enough to massacre their backline threats.
Other than that, just position around random CC and MF ultimates and you should be good to go.
Happy sniping!
