Beginning tomorrow, Riot Games will begin rolling at 48 hour beta periods for its new Team Builder queue for League of Legends, beginning with the Russian region, and ending with the north-eastern European region.
The new mode will exist alongside all other available modes for unranked Summoner’s Rift matchmaking (so normal blind and normal draft pick will still be there), but this mode is quite different in terms of champion selection. Instead of hoping that everyone will choose different roles and complementary champions when entering a game within a full team, players will be able to match up with other like-minded players and have a set plan going into a match. This is something very new to League of Legends and MOBA games in general.
Players will now choose a champion, position and role before they queue up, and will then be matched with other appropriate players in order to form a proper team. In the announcement post, the developers revealed that they are unsure how this will be able to translate into a competitive setting, which is why the mode will only be available in unranked for now.
In Team Builder, you will be able to queue as a normal player and be placed on a team, or as a captain, and build your own team and create its strategy. Of course, solo players that go AFK or reject groups will be barred from entry into Team Builder modes. At first, the timed cool-downs will gradually add up, but eventually League of Legends players can be banned from the mode altogether. Likewise, captains that go on power trips can be kicked from matches and eventually banned as well.
During this initial beta test, you will only be able to choose one preferred role when queuing for matches, but the language in the post suggests that this will be available when the features rolls out in a larger, more permanent scale.