The mid lane champion pool at First Stand 2025 puts every other tournament to shame

League of Legends’ First Stand 2025 wrapped up this weekend, and fans are buzzing about the staggering number of unique mid-lane picks—bringing fresh energy to the game’s esports scene.

League’s Fearless Drafts have forced pros to dig deep, leading to an unprecedented mix of comfort picks, off-meta surprises, and meta-defining strategies. It has already gathered a ton of positive attention from team coaches and even the best players in the world. 

Fans were tired of watching the old handshake champion matchups within the stale meta in the past few tournaments. They always came with a conservative amount of champions at each event, and fans have now gotten the taste of variety in the year’s first international tournament. Riot has already confirmed that Fearless Drafts are returning later in the year, which is amazing for fans who are looking to catch their favorite players playing unique champions. 

The six-day First Stand 2025 tournament had the best teams from across the globe go head-to-head, and Hanwha Life Esports came out on top. Among mid-laners, Kim “Zeka” Geon-woo from the Korean team had the most number of unique champions at a whopping 13. The champion picks start with staples Azir, Akali, and Sylas, but Zeka also showcased spicy picks like Zed and Kassadin, among others, which are often seen as anti-meta picks. 

Closely after Zeka, Vladimiros “Vladi” Kourtidis from runner-ups Karmine Corp played 10 unique champions in the mid lane, including the likes of Cassiopeia. Team Liquid’s Eain “APA” Stearns and the youngest mid-laner of the tournament, CFO’s Tsai “HongQ” Ming-Hong, both played eight unique champions in their lanes against opponents.

Lastly, for the LPL giants who didn’t have the best time at First-Stand, Top Esports mid laner Lin “Creme” Jian only played five unique champions, most often picking Aurora. On average, mid-lane players played 8.8 unique champions at First Stand, which was only a six-day event—and that should make players excited for more unique champions and flex picks in upcoming League tournaments.

Compared to MSI 2024, where Lee “Faker” Sang-hyeok (eight) and Zhuo “knight” Ding (10) had the most unique champion picks in the mid lane, other top mid laners stuck to their comfort picks and kept their champion pool at four or five champions.

Heading to MSI 2025 next, most players will lose that luxury and will have to expand their champion pool to deal with the format and enemy bans to put on a show for the fans.