Turn structure
Five phases, every round
Each round follows the same five-phase sequence. Both players move through every phase together — there are no alternating turns. The game is decided by who reads the board better, not who acts first.
The battlefield
An 8×8 grid
The battlefield is a symmetric 8-column by 8-row grid. Each player's base sits on their back row. Deploy zones let you bring new robots onto the field within your half of the board.
Your base starts with 20 HP. It cannot move. If it reaches 0, you lose. Robots can attack the base directly from adjacent tiles or with ranged attacks that reach it.
Robots
Your units on the field
Robots are deployed onto the grid via Robot cards. Once active, you assign Protocol cards to them each planning phase to move, attack, or trigger abilities. A robot scrapped at 0 HP is removed from the field.
| Stat | What it does |
|---|---|
| HP | Hit points. Reaches 0 → robot is scrapped and removed from the field. |
| Armor | A consumable buffer against attacks. Each hit it absorbs spends one armor, whatever the hit size — so a high-armor Bastion Sentinel shrugs off a run of attacks until its armor is used up. |
| Protocol Slots | How many Protocol cards you can assign to this robot per turn. A robot with 1 slot can only act once per round. |
| Movement Range | Base tiles the robot can move when a Movement card is assigned. |
| Initiative | Lower value = acts earlier in the resolution phase. Fast robots can scrap slow ones before they get to act. |
| Special Ability | Passive or triggered effect unique to that robot type. Varies by faction and unit tier. |
Cards
Your toolkit
Every card has an energy cost, an initiative value, and a kind. The five kinds differ most in how you play them: some deploy a unit onto the board, some slot into one of your robots to set its action for the turn, some attach to a unit for the rest of the match, and some are played straight from your hand for an immediate effect.
Summons a mobile unit into your deploy zone. Its stats come from the unit's chassis, not the card. Once on the field, you assign it Protocol cards every turn.
Summons a stationary unit — walls, turrets, generators. Structures can't move, but they soak damage, block lanes, and power your economy.
The action a robot takes this turn, slotted into one of its protocol slots. Three flavors: Move repositions along a path, Ranged fires at a target cell in range, and Melee strikes an adjacent enemy. A robot runs as many Protocols per turn as it has open slots.
Installs permanently onto one of your units, taking an upgrade slot, and stays for the rest of the match. Most upgrades reinforce a generator — raising its energy output, adding armor, or granting keywords like Taunt — while others bolt onto any robot to turn it into a power source.
A one-off effect resolved from your hand: draw cards, gain energy, heal or shield a unit, lay a trap, or buff and debuff robots on the field. Utility is the game's toolbox of tricks.
Decks are 40 cards. You can run up to 4 copies of any card, except Prototype cards, which are limited to 1 copy. Every card in your deck must belong to your chosen faction or the neutral pool.
Energy
An economy you build
Energy is spent during planning to play cards. It doesn't accumulate — at the start of every round your energy resets to that turn's income, and anything unspent is lost. You begin on your HQ's base output of 2, and grow it by deploying generators (Energy Deposits) and installing energy Upgrades. There's no cap: the bigger the economy you build, the more you can spend each turn.
Energy per turn = HQ base (2) + every generator and energy Upgrade you keep alive. No cap — and losing a generator lowers it again.
This makes your economy a board-state decision rather than a fixed timer: invest early turns in generators and cheap units, and the income you built pays for heavier robots and combos later. Blowing up an opponent's generators is a real tempo swing. A few instant effects — like Scrap Salvage — can even spike you above your income for a single turn.
Winning
Destroy the enemy base
The primary win condition is reducing your opponent's base to 0 HP. Bases have 20 HP and can be attacked by adjacent robots or those with ranged reach. A base cannot move and cannot fight back — it must be defended by your robots.
Reduce the opponent's base to 0 HP. The win is checked after every action, so the match ends the instant a base falls — mid-resolution, not at end of turn.
There's no round or turn limit. A match runs until one base is destroyed — the pressure comes from the board, not a timer.
Either player may concede at any point during the match.
Factions
Choose your playstyle
Every deck is built around one of three factions. Your faction sets your robot roster, your card pool, and how you want the fight to go. Neutral cards — the open pre-evacuation surplus — are available to every faction and fill the gaps in your strategy.
Light, cheap frames with high initiative — they act first and hit before your opponent's plan lands. Strong movement and melee let Vanguard dictate tempo; the trade-off is fragile HP and little staying power. Leans into Overcharge — pushing a frame past safe limits for extra output, at a cost printed on the card.
Tanky frames with heavy armor and high HP. Traps and defensive utility punish opponents who overcommit. Fortify rewards a frame that holds its tile with ramping bonus armor — +1 each turn, up to +3 — reset if it moves. Slow to win, but hard to crack once dug in.
Win the position, win the fight. Nexus moves enemies where it wants them — gravity wells, pushes and pulls, tile traps, and ranged angles set up turns in advance. It dismantles a formation by geometry rather than brute force, then fires from where the enemy can't answer.
Glossary
Keywords & effects
Cards and robots share a vocabulary of keywords that tells you exactly what an effect does. These are the ones you'll meet most often — the complete list lives in the in-game rules panel.
| Keyword | What it does |
|---|---|
| Combat | |
| Armor | A consumable buffer. Each attack it absorbs spends one point of armor, regardless of the hit's size; when it's gone, damage reaches HP. |
| Shield | A regenerating pool that soaks damage before armor and HP, refilling a little each turn. |
| Retaliate (N) | When hit by an attack, the robot deals N damage straight back to the attacker. |
| Line | Fires down the robot's column, hitting the first robot or HQ in its path. Friendly units block the shot. |
| Windup (N) | The shot charges for N turns — the robot Boots Up until it fires automatically. |
| Status | |
| Boot Up | The robot can't be assigned cards this turn; a booting generator also makes no energy. Chassis with Boot Up start booting as soon as their Deploy is planned, so they take no orders on the turn they arrive either. |
| Stealth | Hidden from the opponent and unpickable as a melee target — but a ranged hit on its tile still lands and reveals it. |
| Taunt | Melee attacks must target a taunting enemy while it's in range. Ranged tile attacks and attacks aimed at the enemy base ignore it. |
| Immovable | Can't be pushed, pulled, or shoved by any Force Move. |
| Fortify | Each turn it holds its tile, the robot gains +1 Armor (up to +3). Moving resets the bonus. |
| Targeting Laser | Ranged attacks lock onto a chosen enemy and follow it if it moves before the shot resolves. |
| Board & displacement | |
| Force Move | Any push or pull that shifts a robot against its will — push, gravity well, conveyor. Immovable robots ignore it. |
| Recall | Returns a friendly robot to your deploy zone, fully healed. |
| Undeploy | Suspends a robot off the board for a few turns, then redeploys it. |
| Tile Effect | A lingering effect planted on a cell — a hidden landmine, a timed bomb, and other traps — that triggers when a robot enters or lingers on the tile. |
| Destroy | Removes the target outright, regardless of its remaining HP. |
| Phase | A move that teleports past robots and tile effects — the landing tile must still be empty. |
| Economy & lifecycle | |
| Energy Generator (N) | Produces N energy each cleanup. Found on structures like Energy Deposits. |
| Recursive (X) | Locks the card in its slot; its action repeats automatically each turn for the duration. |
| Failsafe | When the robot is scrapped, its card's effect fires — damaging Failsafes hit every adjacent tile. |
| Self-Destruct (N) | The robot scraps itself N rounds after it deploys, triggering its Failsafe. |
| Exhaust | After it resolves, the card is removed from your deck for the rest of the match. |
| Prototype | Only one copy of the card may go in a deck. |