What does it mean to channel a rune?

Runes pay for every card in Riftbound: the League of Legends trading card game, but you never play a rune the way you play a unit or a spell. Your 12 runes wait face down in the Rune Deck, apart from your Main Deck, and they come onto the board when you channel them. To channel a rune is to take the top rune of your Rune Deck and put it on the board, where it stays, usually until you recycle it for Power.

What happens when you channel a rune?

The top rune of your Rune Deck goes onto the board, into your base, and you control it. You do not pick the rune. The Rune Deck is shuffled before the game and its order stays secret, so a Jinx deck of Fury Runes and Chaos Runes can channel two Chaos Runes on a turn when it needs Fury. Unless the card that makes you channel says otherwise, the rune enters ready.

Channeling is not playing. A channeled rune costs nothing, and an ability that triggers when you play a card does not trigger for it. Channeling adds no Energy or Power by itself either: you exhaust the rune to add 1 Energy, or recycle it to add 1 Power of its domain. Every rune is one of the six basic runes, one for each domain: the Fury Rune, the Calm Rune, the Mind Rune, the Body Rune, the Chaos Rune and the Order Rune.

When do you channel runes?

You start the game with no runes on the board and channel two in the Channel Phase of each of your turns. It comes after the Beginning Phase, in which you score the battlefields you hold, and before the Draw Phase. The two runes enter ready, so they can pay for cards in your Main Phase of the same turn.

The first turn has one change. In a one-on-one Duel, and in each game of a Match, the player who goes second channels an extra rune in their first Channel Phase, three runes instead of two. In the three-player and four-player modes, the player who goes last gets that extra rune.

At any other moment you channel only when a card tells you to. The Core Rules call channeling a Limited Action, which means a player cannot choose to channel whenever they like.

What does "channel 1 rune exhausted" mean?

It means the rune comes onto the board already exhausted, turned sideways, and most cards that channel extra runes say so. An exhausted rune cannot be exhausted again for Energy, so it gives no Energy on the turn it arrives. It readies with the rest of your cards in your next Awaken Phase. It can still be recycled for Power at once, because recycling a rune does not need the rune to be ready.

Mobilize, a Body spell from Origins that costs 2 Energy, channels 1 rune exhausted, and it draws you a card instead when your Rune Deck is empty. Catalyst of Aeons costs 4 Energy and channels 2 runes exhausted. Stormclaw Ursine, a unit that costs 7 Energy and has 6 Might, channels 1 rune exhausted when you play it.

Some cards channel a ready rune instead, which can pay Energy at once. K'Sante, Courageous, a champion unit from Radiance, the set with its release on 23 October 2026, channels 1 rune when he holds, that is, when you hold the battlefield he stands at during your Beginning Phase.

What happens when your Rune Deck runs out?

Nothing bad happens. When your Rune Deck holds fewer runes than you have to channel, you channel as many as there are, and when it is empty you channel none. An empty Rune Deck never gives an opponent a point, unlike an empty Main Deck, which makes you burn out.

With 12 runes and two a turn, your Rune Deck is empty by your sixth turn if you channel no extra runes and recycle none. Runes you recycle for Power go to the bottom of the Rune Deck, so you channel them again once the runes above them are gone. The Radiance battlefield Cosmic Vista even rewards an empty Rune Deck: when you hold it while your Rune Deck is empty, you score 1 point.

Why do players want to channel extra runes?

Each extra rune is 1 more Energy on every turn that follows, so a rune channeled early lets you play bigger cards sooner. Take a Volibear deck, which plays Fury and Body. If you go first and play Mobilize on your first turn, you have three runes after it, five on your second turn and seven on your third. That is enough for Stormclaw Ursine one turn earlier than two runes a turn allow. Stormclaw Ursine channels a rune of its own, and Relentless Storm, the Legend of Volibear, can be exhausted to channel one more when you play a Mighty unit, one with 5 Might or more. You then have eleven runes on your fourth turn instead of eight.

The price is a first turn spent on a spell that puts nothing on the battlefields. Extra runes also come out of the same 12, so channeling them sooner empties the Rune Deck sooner, and they are worth the most in the first turns of a game. Some cards reward a board full of runes: Esteemed Hierophant, Tomb-Raider Barbara and Siphoning Strike from Vendetta each do more when you control 7 or more runes.

Which cards change how many runes every player channels?

A few cards change the Channel Phase for the whole table. Sandstone Chimera, a Calm unit from Vendetta, makes every player channel only 1 rune in their Channel Phase while it stands at a battlefield. It slows you down as well, so it works best when you already have the runes you need and your opponent does not. It limits only the Channel Phase, so a card such as Mobilize still channels its rune.

Battlefields can make players channel too. Obelisk of Power makes each player channel 1 rune at the start of their first Beginning Phase, so in a Duel the first player has three runes on their first turn and the second player has four. It is on Riot's banned list for Constructed, so a Constructed tournament deck cannot bring it, while Sealed and Draft decks still may. Startipped Peak lets you channel 1 rune exhausted when you hold it. The Papertree from Spiritforged makes every player channel 1 rune exhausted when you hold it, your opponent included.

A deck brings exactly 12 runes, all in the two domains of its Legend, and how many runes of each domain to bring decides which runes you are likely to channel. A rune you have channeled pays for a card when you exhaust or recycle it, which paying for a card follows step by step. The runes page lists every rune, and the full rule is rule 431 of the Core Rules on Riot's Rules Hub.