Turn order, and what a fight interrupts

Before the first Awaken

The game start sequence, in the order the rules run it. The mulligan step is the one worth reading twice.

1. Put your Champion Legend in the Legend zone.
2. Put your Chosen Champion in the Champion zone, face up.
3. Set your 3 battlefields aside.
4. Determine turn order by any fair random method everybody agrees on.
5. Shuffle your main deck and your rune deck separately.
6. Draw 4 cards.
7. Mulligan once: set aside up to 2 cards and draw that many replacements.
8. Recycle the cards you set aside to the bottom of your main deck.
9. Reveal the battlefield each player is using, random in a single game and chosen in a best of three.
10. The first player begins their Awaken phase.

The six phases

1. A

   Awaken

   Core Rules 315.1

   You ready every game object you control that can be readied. Runes you spent, units that moved, gear you exhausted for an ability: all of it stands up together.

   Nothing else happens here. There is no window, nobody can respond, and the runes you just readied cannot be spent yet.

2. B

   Beginning

   Core Rules 315.2

   Two steps, in this order. Start-of-turn effects resolve first, and then the scoring step: you hold every battlefield you control, and each one pays 1 point.

   The order is worth knowing, because a trigger can fire before you score and change what you are about to score.

   Holding has one condition people forget. You control a battlefield only while one of your units is standing on it. If the last one walked home or died on your opponent’s turn, control was already gone and there is nothing here to score.

3. C

   Channel

   Core Rules 315.3

   You put the top 2 runes of your rune deck into play, ready. Fewer than 2 left in the deck means you channel as many as you can, and you are not stuck.

   In a two-player game the player going second channels 3 during their first Channel phase only, as compensation for the tempo of going second. That is the whole of the first-turn adjustment: nobody skips a draw.

4. D

   Draw

   Core Rules 315.4

   You draw 1 card. In a two-player game the first player draws on turn one as well.

5. M

   Main

   Core Rules 316

   The Main phase opens by throwing something away: every player’s rune pool empties, and any energy or power left unspent is lost. That is the first of the two moments per turn when saved resources evaporate.

   After that it has no structure at all. While you hold priority you may take as many actions as you can pay for, in any order: play cards, activate abilities, move units.

   Moving is the one that changes the board. Exhaust a ready unit to move it between your base and a battlefield, and several units may travel together as one action if they share a destination. Moving into a battlefield you do not control is what opens a showdown, so every fight in the game begins as a move made here.

6. E

   Ending

   Core Rules 317

   End-of-turn effects resolve first. Then the expiration step does three things: every unit heals, every "this turn" effect expires simultaneously, and both rune pools empty for the second time.

   Then the next player becomes the turn player and the six phases start again from Awaken.

A fight is not a phase

This is the most common thing summaries get wrong, and it is worth being exact about. A turn has six phases. Combat is not one of them, and neither is a showdown: they happen inside the Main phase, staged by a cleanup the moment a battlefield becomes contested.

There is one real exception, and it is narrower than it sounds. Moving into a battlefield nobody holds creates a showdown that the rules do run as a stand-alone phase, and that showdown creates no combat at all. It is a phase, but it is not part of the standing turn structure, and you will never find it printed in a list of six.

Which cards are legal right now

Two independent questions decide it. Is a chain sitting on the table, and is a fight happening? A turn is always in one combination of the two, and the two answers stack: a chain during a showdown is a showdown closed state, and Reaction is the only key that fits it.

That is also why a Reaction costing one energy is worth more than an identical effect without the keyword. You are not paying for the effect. You are paying for the timing.

Open

No chain exists. On your own turn, in a neutral state, you may play anything you can pay for.

Closed

A chain exists. Only Reaction cards may be played, by anybody, and triggered abilities join it without needing a keyword at all.

Neutral

No showdown is running. The Main phase is the neutral open state, and only the turn player acts in it.

Showdown

A showdown or combat is running. Only Action and Reaction may be played, on anybody’s turn.

Priority

The exclusive right to act, held by one player at a time. You have it on your own turn, when you gain focus, and when the player before you passes.

Focus

The showdown version of priority. The attacker gains it as combat opens, and it passes when a chain empties during the showdown. Gaining focus grants priority; passing priority does not cost you focus.

The cleanup you never see

Between the steps above the game runs a cleanup, and it runs after almost anything. Each one checks whether somebody has won, kills every unit carrying lethal damage, drops control of any battlefield you no longer have a unit on, removes hidden cards at battlefields that changed hands, and then stages any showdown or combat the new board calls for.

A cleanup does not clear marked damage. Healing happens in a combat cleanup and in the Ending phase, and nowhere else.

• the turn moves between an open and a closed state
• the turn moves from one phase to the next
• an item joins the chain, is finalized on it, or leaves it
• any game object enters or leaves the board
• the status of any game object changes
• a move is completed