Setting up a game, the mulligan and the first turn

A game starts the same way every time, and the order matters. Each player puts their Champion Legend in the Legend Zone and their Chosen Champion in the Champion Zone, and sets their battlefields aside (rule 111, rule 112 and rule 113). Each shuffles their Main Deck and Rune Deck separately and places them in their zones (rule 114). The players then decide turn order, a repeating set of the players, by any fair random method they all agree on (rule 115 and rule 115.1). Only after that does anyone draw: each player draws 4, and then, in turn order, each performs a mulligan (rule 116 and rule 117). Play begins with the First Player taking their turn (rule 118).

The mulligan is where the order trips people up. A player chooses up to two cards from their hand and sets them aside, draws as many cards as they set aside, and only then recycles the set-aside cards (rule 117.1, rule 117.2 and rule 117.3). Because the recycling comes last, you can never draw back the cards you just threw away, and they end up at the bottom of your Main Deck. Two cards recycled together go there in a random order (rule 417.5).

Worked example. Take a game of 1v1 Match, which is a best of 3 (rule 488.6). Both players draw 4. The player going first looks at their hand, sets aside two cards, draws two new ones and recycles the two they set aside. Only now does the second player do the same. The mode of play can adjust each player's first turn, which is why the player going second in a 1v1 game channels an extra rune (rule 115.2 and rule 488.7).

Once play begins, a turn is a fixed run of phases taken by the Turn Player, who is simply the player taking the current turn (rule 303 and rule 304). When that player has been through all the phases of their turn, the next player becomes the Turn Player, and play continues in this cycle until a player wins (rule 306 and rule 302). The next lessons cover the zones, the runes and costs, and then the phases of a turn one by one.

Common mistake. "I can mulligan as many cards as I like." It is up to two, and the recycling happens after the draw.