The Riftbound turn, phase by phase

Riftbound's turn is unusual in how little of it asks you to do anything. Four of the six phases run themselves. That is deliberate, and once you see the shape of it the game gets a lot easier to hold in your head.

The order never changes: Awaken, Beginning, Channel, Draw, Main, Ending.

Awaken

Everything you control stands back up (rule 315.1.b). Runes you exhausted, units that moved, your legend if you used its ability. All ready again.

Two things worth knowing:

• This is your stuff only. The other player's units stay however they were.
• It happens before you score, which matters more than it sounds. A unit that moved onto a battlefield last turn is now ready, so it can move again immediately after you have collected the point for holding it.

Anything with Temporary dies here, at the start of your turn, before scoring (rule 816). So a unit made Temporary on their turn will not survive to hold anything for you.

Beginning

This is where you score. Every battlefield you control gives you a point (rule 315.2.b.2). That is a Hold.

No decision, no cost, no action. You just get it, for every battlefield you are still standing on.

Holding is how most games are actually won. Conquering a battlefield gets you one point right now. Holding it gets you a point every single turn you keep it. Two turns of holding beats one conquest, and the player who understands that usually wins the long games.

Also fires here: start-of-Beginning-Phase abilities. Jinx, Loose Cannon draws you a card if you have one or fewer in hand, which is the deck's way of paying you back for all the discarding it asks for.

Channel

You put 2 runes from your rune deck onto the board (rule 315.3.b). If there are fewer than two left, you get what is there (rule 315.3.b.1).

You do not pick them and you cannot speed it up. This is the entire economy of the game and it moves at a fixed rate.

The one exception: whoever went second channels an extra rune on their first Channel Phase (rule 480.7), which is the game's way of compensating for the first-turn disadvantage.

Draw

One card (rule 315.4.b). If your deck is empty you have burned out, which is worth avoiding but is not instantly fatal.

Your rune pool also empties at the end of this phase (rule 315.4.d), which is only relevant if something gave you energy during the earlier phases.

Main

Everything you decide happens here. There is no defined structure to it (rule 316.2), you just take actions until you are done:

• play cards
• move units
• use activated abilities
• start fights

Moving a unit into a battlefield the other player is standing on opens a showdown, which is its own sequence. That happens inside the Main Phase.

Because the four earlier phases are automatic, the Main Phase carries the entire weight of the turn. Time spent thinking is best spent here, and specifically on one question: what does the board look like at the start of their next turn? Because that is when they score.

Ending

Three things happen, all automatic (rule 317.2):

• All damage clears. Every unit heals completely. Damage does not carry between turns.
• "This turn" effects expire. Buffs from spells, temporary Might, granted keywords.
• Rune pools empty. Unspent energy and power are lost, not saved.

The healing is the one that changes how you play. Chipping a big unit for 2 and coming back next turn to finish it does not work. Damage either kills something now or it may as well not have happened.

What this shape means for how you play

Put together, the phase order tells you something useful: the board you leave behind at the end of your turn is the board that scores for you at the start of your next one.

You do not score when you take a battlefield in the Beginning Phase. You score for what you are still holding when you get back round to it. So the question at the end of every Main Phase is not "did I gain ground this turn", it is "will I still be standing on this ground in two turns' time, after they have had their go at me".

That is also why sending an attack that cannot clear a battlefield is worse than doing nothing. Surviving attackers are recalled to base if any defender is left standing (rule 461.1.a.2), so you finish the turn with your units at home, exhausted, and the same ground still theirs.

Practising it

The turn structure is the sort of thing that stops being confusing the third time you run through it and never confuses you again. The Trainer has a section on the turn and four full-turn lessons at the end where you run the whole sequence yourself, phase by phase, on a real board.

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