Your first Riftbound turn, walked through

Rules explanations tell you what is legal. They are not much help the first time you are sat looking at four cards with no idea which one to play. This is one turn, played out, with the reasoning shown.

I am using the Origins Jinx, Loose Cannon deck, because it is one of the three preconstructed decks and a lot of people start there.

Setup

Both players draw 4 cards (rule 117). One battlefield is chosen at random from each player's three (rule 480.5), so there are two on the table. Say they are Zaun Warrens (mine) and Grove of the God-Willow (theirs).

My opening hand:

• Chemtech Enforcer, 2 Energy, 2 Might, Assault 2, discard 1 when played
• Get Excited!, 2 Energy and 1 Fury Power, a damage spell
• Blazing Scorcher, 5 Energy, 5 Might, Accelerate
• Rhasa the Sunderer, 10 Energy, 6 Might, costs 1 less per card in my trash

The mulligan

I can set aside up to two cards and draw that many back, then the ones I set aside get shuffled in (rule 118).

Rhasa goes. Ten energy is turn eight or later, and it only gets cheap if my trash fills up, which has not happened yet. A card that does nothing for six turns is not a card.

Blazing Scorcher stays. Five is a long way off, but it is the kind of thing that wins a battlefield when it lands, and I would rather have one expensive card than none.

I draw one back: Stalwart Poro, 2 Energy, 2 Might, Shield.

Better hand. Two things I can cast early.

Turn one

Awaken

Nothing to wake up. It is turn one.

Beginning

I control no battlefields, so I score nothing. Jinx's legend draws me a card if I have one or fewer in hand. I have four, so nothing happens.

Channel

Two runes come in (rule 315.3.b). I get a Fury and a Chaos.

If I were going second I would get three (rule 480.7). I am going first, so two.

Draw

One card: Traveling Merchant, 2 Energy, 2 Might.

Hand is now Chemtech Enforcer, Get Excited!, Blazing Scorcher, Stalwart Poro, Traveling Merchant. Five cards, two runes.

Main

Two runes means 2 Energy, and no Power unless I recycle one, which would cost me the rune off the board.

What I can afford:

• Chemtech Enforcer: 2 Energy, no pips. Yes.
• Stalwart Poro: 2 Energy, no pips. Yes.
• Traveling Merchant: 2 Energy, no pips. Yes.
• Get Excited!: 2 Energy and 1 Fury Power. That needs three runes. No.
• Blazing Scorcher: 5 Energy. No.

So one 2-drop. Which one?

Not Chemtech Enforcer. It makes me discard a card when I play it, and on turn one my hand is my whole plan. Assault 2 is good, but Assault only helps when attacking, and I cannot attack anything yet.

Stalwart Poro or Traveling Merchant. Both 2 Might. The Poro has Shield, so it defends as a 3. The Merchant filters a card when it moves.

I play Stalwart Poro, because the unit I put down on turn one is the one that will be standing on a battlefield on turn two, and defending is what it will be doing. A 3 on defence is meaningfully harder to shift than a 2.

Where does it go? It has to be my base, because I control no battlefields yet and you can only play units to your base or ground you already hold (rule 355.2.a).

Paying: I exhaust both runes, one at a time. Two energy, both runes now sideways. The Poro arrives exhausted (rule 143.4), so it cannot move this turn.

Can I do anything else? No. Both runes are spent, and an exhausted rune produces nothing.

Ending

Damage clears, nothing to clear. Unspent energy is lost, there is none. Turn passes.

What that turn actually accomplished

Nothing visible. No points, no ground, one unit lying on its side in my base.

That is a normal turn one. The unit I played is the thing that takes a battlefield on turn two, once it wakes up in my Awaken Phase. Riftbound's first turn is always a turn of setup, because units arrive exhausted and there is no way around that except Accelerate, which I could not afford.

Turn two, briefly

Awaken stands my Poro and both runes up. Beginning scores nothing. Channel gives me two more runes, so I have four. Draw gives me a card.

Now I have a ready 2-Might unit and 4 energy. The move is:

1. Move the Poro onto a battlefield. Moving costs exhausting it (rule 144.2). If the battlefield is empty, I am the only player there, so I take control, and since I have not scored it this turn that is a Conquer and I get a point immediately (rule 464.1).
2. Then spend the runes on another 2-drop, or hold them if I think a trick is better.

Note the order. Move first, then play. If I play a unit first I still have the same energy, but if I spend energy first and then discover I wanted Accelerate on something, it is too late. Doing the free thing before the paid thing costs nothing.

And which battlefield? Zaun Warrens, mine, which gives me discard 1 then draw 1 when I conquer it. A filter for free. If theirs were closer to my plan I would take that instead, but with nothing else on the board, taking the one with a useful trigger is the tiebreak.

The habits worth taking from this

• Play the unit that will be doing the job next turn, because everything arrives asleep.
• Do the free things first. Moving a ready unit costs no energy.
• Count your ready runes, not your runes. Sideways ones are spent.
• Read the whole cost. The pip is the thing that stops you casting.
• Turn one doing nothing visible is fine. Turn four doing nothing visible is not.

Doing it yourself

Reading a walkthrough is useful once. The Trainer has four full-turn lessons where you run the whole sequence yourself, on a real board, making each decision, with the trainer stopping you when a move does not work and telling you which rule you missed.

Free, no account needed, and the whole starter section takes about twenty minutes.