What happens at the start of a turn?

Every turn of Riftbound: the League of Legends trading card game opens with four short phases that come before the Main Phase. They are the Awaken Phase, the Beginning Phase, the Channel Phase and the Draw Phase, always in that order. The Core Rules, which Riot publishes on its Rules Hub, group them together as the Start of Turn, the first four of the six phases of a turn. The How to Play booklet of Proving Grounds marks them A, B, C and D.

The four phases mostly run on their own and ask no decision of you. The decisions come from cards that act at the start of a phase, and the order of events inside the Beginning Phase can cost you a point or give you one.

What happens in the Awaken Phase?

In the Awaken Phase you ready everything you control. Your exhausted units, gear and runes turn upright again, and so does your Legend if you exhausted it for its ability. Only your own cards ready, so the cards your opponent exhausted stay sideways until their own turn begins.

Readying is why the units that moved on your last turn can move again, and why the runes you exhausted for a Reaction on your opponent's turn can pay for cards again. A card can change this. Firebrand Raider is a unit from Radiance, the fifth set, with its release on 23 October 2026. While it is in play, units do not ready during the Awaken Phase, yours included, although runes, gear and Legends still do.

What happens in the Beginning Phase?

The Beginning Phase has two steps. First, every effect that happens "at the start of your Beginning Phase" takes place. Then you score one point for each battlefield you control, which is called holding.

The first step of the Beginning Phase is where many Legends, units and gear do their work. Loose Cannon, the Legend of Jinx, draws you a card if you have one card in hand or none. Mechanical Bandit, a gear from Radiance, makes each player reveal the top card of their Main Deck. You draw yours if it has the lowest Energy cost among them, and the revealed cards you do not draw are recycled. Gutter Palace wins you the game on the spot if you have exactly four cards in hand and exactly four units at battlefields. When several of your own effects happen at this moment, you decide their order.

The second step of the Beginning Phase is the scoring. Each battlefield you control gives you one point, and abilities that begin "When you hold" or "When I hold" trigger. Grove of the God-Willow draws you a card when you hold it, K'Sante, Courageous channels an extra rune when he holds, and Gloomist, the Legend of Vex, lets you exhaust it to draw a card when you hold. Gear with Deploy, the keyword that Radiance introduces, is killed when an opponent holds the battlefield it stands at.

Holding is one of two ways to score. The other is conquering, which means taking control of a battlefield during your turn. A battlefield scores only once per turn by either method, and the final point rule does not apply to holding, so holding can give you the last point on its own.

Why do start-of-turn effects come before scoring?

The Core Rules put the Beginning Step before the Scoring Step, so effects at the start of the Beginning Phase can change who controls a battlefield before it is scored. You keep a battlefield only while you have a unit there, and a battlefield you no longer control when the scoring starts gives you nothing.

The keyword Temporary is a clear case. A unit with Temporary is killed at the start of its controller's Beginning Phase, before scoring, so a Sprite token standing alone on a battlefield will not hold it for you. Sprite Queen makes a cycle of it: at the start of each of your Beginning Phases, the Sprite from your last turn is killed and she plays a new, ready 3 Might Sprite to your base. Frozen Fortress deals 1 damage to each unit there at the start of every player's Beginning Phase, so a unit with 1 Might standing there alone dies before its player can hold the battlefield. Dusk Rose Lab lets you kill one of your units there to draw a card, which costs you the point if it was your last unit there.

What happens in the Channel Phase?

In the Channel Phase you channel two runes: you take the top two runes of your Rune Deck and put them onto the board, ready to use. A Rune Deck holds 12 runes, and when fewer than two are left, you channel as many as there are. Runes you recycle to pay a Power cost go to the bottom of the Rune Deck, so a deck that spends Power keeps channeling for longer.

A card can also channel runes at other moments of the turn, as K'Sante, Courageous does when he holds, and those runes come from the top of the Rune Deck in the same way. Sandstone Chimera, a unit from Vendetta, slows the Channel Phase down for everyone: while it stands at a battlefield, every player channels only one rune in their Channel Phase.

What happens in the Draw Phase?

In the Draw Phase you draw one card from the top of your Main Deck. Riftbound has no maximum hand size, so you never have to discard because your hand is too big.

If your Main Deck is empty when you have to draw, you burn out: your trash is recycled into your Main Deck, an opponent of your choice gains 1 point, and then you draw. The gear Endless Riches from Vendetta removes the phase altogether: while you control it, you skip your Draw Phase.

Can anyone play cards before your Main Phase?

As a rule, no. The Core Rules let a player start playing cards and using abilities on their own turn only in their Main Phase. The exception is an effect that happens during the first four phases. Such an effect goes on the Chain like any ability, and while it waits there, each player may answer with a card or ability that has Reaction.

Energy and Power do not carry over into the Main Phase either. Every player's rune pool empties when a Main Phase starts, so Energy or Power added earlier in the turn is lost unless you spend it at once. Blue Sentinel, a unit from Unleashed, works around this: when it holds, it adds one Power of any domain at the start of your next Main Phase, after the pool has emptied.

Is the start of your first turn any different?

The first turn of each player has the same four phases, with a small change that depends on the game mode. In a Duel, the player who goes second channels three runes instead of two in their first Channel Phase. In Skirmish, War and Magma Chamber, the player who goes first skips their first draw, and the player who goes last channels an extra rune. These changes make up for the head start of the player who goes first.

Two battlefields from Origins act only at this point: The Arena's Greatest gives each player 1 point at the start of their first Beginning Phase, and Obelisk of Power gives each player one extra rune at that moment.

When the Draw Phase is over, the Main Phase begins, and from then on you decide what to play and where to move. Some battlefields have an ability for the start of the turn, either at the start of a Beginning Phase or when you hold them, and the battlefields page lists every battlefield.