1. Getting started

Paying for cards

How the cards in your rune deck pay for everything else

The 12 cards in your rune deck don't do anything on their own. A couple come out of the deck each turn and stay on the table in front of you, and they're how you pay for the cards in your hand. These are runes.

A card's cost has two parts: the number, and on some cards one or more symbols under it. A rune can pay for either.

The number

To use a rune, turn it sideways. A card that's turned sideways has been used: it can't be used that way again until it's turned back upright, which happens at the start of your next turn. Turning a card sideways is called to exhaust it. Runes aren't the only cards you can exhaust, as you'll see later.

Exhausting a rune gives you 1 Energy, and Energy pays the number in a card's cost. A card with needs 3 Energy, so you exhaust 3 runes. Every rune gives the same Energy, whatever its color.

The symbols

Each symbol is one of the game's six colors. Every rune and most cards belong to one or more of them. These colors are the domains:

• Fury
• Calm
• Mind
• Body
• Chaos
• Order

Each symbol in a cost needs 1 Power of that domain: a symbol needs Fury Power. Energy can't pay for a symbol, and Power can't pay for the number.

To pay for a symbol, put a rune on the bottom of your rune deck. It gives you 1 Power of its own domain: a Chaos rune gives Chaos Power. Putting a card on the bottom of its deck like this is called to recycle it. You've seen it already: the cards you set aside in your mulligan were recycled.

A rune you recycle goes back into your rune deck, so you have one fewer on the table until it comes out again. But it doesn't have to be upright: you can exhaust a rune for Energy, then recycle the same rune for Power.