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Round Order

Ashes is played over a series of rounds. Each round is divided into three phases that must be resolved in order. Most of the game takes place during the player turns phase.

1. PREPARE 2. PLAYER TURNS 3. RECOVERY

Prepare Phase

During the prepare phase each player simultaneously resolves the following three steps in order:

  1. Roll Dice: Roll all of the dice in your exhausted pool and place them to the left of your dice power reference cards. This is your active dice pool. On the first round of the game, the player who rolls the most basicsymbols chooses who should go first (the First Player), taking the first player token or giving it to their opponent. If there is a tie for most, all players must re-roll all of their dice until there is no tie.
  2. Discard Cards: You may discard any number of cards from your hand.
  3. Draw Cards: Draw cards until you have 5 cards in your hand.
    • Fatigue Damage: Starting with the First Player, players alternate placing 1 wound token on their Phoenixborn until all players have placed wounds equal to the number of cards they should have drawn but could not.
Player Turns Phase

The player turns phase typically consists of many very short turns. Starting with the First Player, each player will take just one or two actions per turn. They will continue taking turns, back and forth, until both players consecutively pass on their turn.

On a player’s turn, they must take one main action and may choose to take one side action. These may be taken in either order. Once both players have taken Pass as their main action on consecutive turns, the player turns phase is over and the players move on to the recovery phase.

Recovery Phase

During the Recovery Phase, each player simultaneously resolves the following three steps in order:

  1. Recover: Remove a number of wound tokens from each unit you have in play equal to that unit’s recover value.
  2. Remove Exhaustion: Remove 1 exhaustion token from each card you have in play that has 1 or more exhaustion tokens on it. Rotate your Phoenixborn so that it is upright.
  3. Exhaust Dice: Move any number of dice from your active pool to your exhausted pool.
End of Round

Some effects take place after the recovery phase “at the end of the round.” Each player (one at a time, starting with the First Player) resolves all effects they control that occur at the end of the round, in the order of their choice. After all such effects are resolved, the player with the first player token passes it to their opponent andthe next round begins.


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