Your First Turns in Riftbound

As the game begins, you'll gradually bring Runes into play. They give you the resources you need to play cards and use abilities, and having more runes available gives you more options during your turn.

When you use your runes, you'll often Exhaust them to pay for what you want to play. Some more specific costs can instead require you to Recycle runes back into your Rune Deck.

Early in the game, you're usually building up these resources while deciding which cards you want to play.

Units are the characters you'll use to move around the board, contest Battlefields, and fight your opponent's units.

Units normally enter play Exhausted, which means a unit you just played usually isn't immediately available for something that requires it to Exhaust.

At the start of your next turn, it normally becomes Ready, giving you more options for what to do with it.

Once your units are Ready, you can start using them to contest Battlefields.

A Standard Move normally lets a unit move from your Base to a Battlefield, or from a Battlefield back to your Base. Making that move Exhausts the unit.

Getting units onto Battlefields matters because that's where you'll compete for control and create opportunities to score points.

When opposing players contest the same Battlefield, a Showdown can lead to Combat.

During Combat, your units' Might helps determine both how much damage your side can deal and how much damage your units can take before being defeated. Abilities and other effects can also influence how the fight plays out.

Winning that fight can let you take control of the Battlefield and Conquer it.

Taking a Battlefield is useful because Battlefields are one of the main ways you score.

When you successfully take control of one, you can Conquer it and score a point. If you keep control until your next turn begins, you can Hold it and score again.

Keep that control for longer, and the same Battlefield can continue scoring through Hold on later turns.

All of these actions ultimately help you work toward the same goal: reaching the Victory Score while staying ahead of your opponents.

In a standard game, that normally means reaching 8 points and having more points than every opponent.

You don't need to rush every Battlefield immediately. Your cards, resources, units, and the current board will determine how you choose to work toward that goal.