When you receive a Haywire damage card, do not show it to your fellow players or discard it. Instead, place it face down under the programming card in the current register of your player mat. Your robot has received an electrical jolt that will create a wild effect during the following round. Each register can have a maximum of 1 face-down Haywire. If you draw additional Haywire cards during that same register (and you already have a face-down Haywire card under this register’s programming card), place any additional Haywire cards you draw after the first one face up in the damage discard pile. You lucked out this time and take no additional damage!

Note that a new Haywire card you draw from the damage deck can be placed under a Haywire card you just resolved during a register.

At the end of the round, when you are discarding cards from your registers, discard only face-up cards! Leave each Haywire face down in the register during which it was earned.

Haywire cards might have abilities and effects that break the rules of the game. When this happens, the card takes precedence over the rulebook!

At the start of each round of play, you may have some Haywire cards already face down in your registers. Remember: Only 1 Haywire per register! You may look at them, but you must leave them in the registers where they were placed. Haywire cards are crazy, sometimes powerful moves and shenanigans that you might be able to take advantage of... if you play your cards right.

Example: A Haywire card is already in your Register 3 for this round. Only you know what it is. It can’t be moved to another register, but its effect is pretty good for getting around a corner quickly. Can you place cards in Registers 1 and 2 to take advantage of it? During this round, you’ll place programming cards from your hand only in Registers 1, 2, 4, & 5.

If you don’t have what you need in your hand to take advantage of the Haywire card, try a SPAM card in Register 2, and you might get lucky!

By the end of this round, the Haywire card you resolved will be face-up, so you’ll remove it from your registers like any other programming card. Discard face-up Haywire cards in your registers to the damage discard pile.

Notes on Specific Haywire

Cards If you do not have an uninstalled permanent upgrade when this card is revealed, ignore this effect. If you do, install it at no Energy cost, even if it causes you to have more than 3 permanent upgrades. You can then take advantage of that upgrade for the rest of the current round. The upgrade discard pile is next to the upgrade deck.

Moving to the left or right is similar to normal movement, except that the side of your robot becomes its leading edge. Your robot does not change facing to make such a move. Your robot can still push other robots when moving sideways, and a robot’s sideways movement is still stopped by walls.