Drafting Bounty
Every death hands them stars. Play like yours are worth something.
The objective
Kills earn stars, and the team with more stars when the clock ends wins. Dying hands the enemy the stars over your head and resets your own value — so Bounty is the one mode where not dying is literally the objective. A star that spawns mid at the start of the match gives the first fight real stakes.
Leads change how the mode plays: the team ahead can turtle behind its sightlines, and the team behind has to manufacture a pick without gifting one back.
How to draft it
01Range wins
Bounty is the sniper mode. Long sightlines and open ground mean the team that wins the poke war controls the whole map, and short-range brawlers can spend a full match unable to safely enter. Draft range first: marksmen and long-range damage dealers are the spine of nearly every serious Bounty comp, and skimping on it is how you end up spectating your own match.
02Don't trade down
A kill for a death is not neutral in Bounty — whoever carried more stars lost the trade. High-value brawlers need discipline and, ideally, an escape or shield to survive their own mistakes. Picks that reliably die once per minute are actively feeding the enemy score no matter how much damage they deal. Survivability tools that look mediocre elsewhere are quietly excellent here.
03One flanker breaks the stalemate
When both teams have range and neither blinks, Bounty becomes a staring contest. An assassin or flanker who can slip the sightlines and delete one overextended sniper flips the star ledger in a single play. It's a luxury pick — take it only after the range core is secured, and on maps with the bushes or walls to make the route survivable.
Who to ban
Ban the meta marksmen, nearly always — the brawlers who win the long-range war outright shape the entire match. On the few bushy Bounty maps, spend a ban on the dominant ambusher instead. If the patch has a sniper with both range advantage and an escape, that's the closest thing ranked has to an auto-ban.
The ban phase runs from Diamond upward — below that, drafts go straight to picks. Bans are also the most patch-sensitive call in the draft: for today’s data-backed ban suggestions on a specific map, use the draft board.
The Bounty maps
Most of the pool is open, long-sightline terrain where the range war is the map. A handful of bushier maps invert the mode into ambush chess, and flankers jump from luxury to core there. Center control matters everywhere — the mid star and the best sightlines usually live in the same place, so the first fight tends to set the tone for the next ninety seconds.
- Brace For Impact
- Choral Chambers
- Dont Turn Around
- Dry Season
- Hideout
- Hit And Run
- Layer Cake
- No Excuses
- Shooting Star
- Side By Side
- Starrburst
- Wall Hugging
- Watermelons
All 13 competitive Bounty maps — Ranked rotates a handful of these each season, and the draft board’s map picker tracks the live rotation, with per-map win rates, synergies, and counters for each.