So You Drew an Encounter — Combat, Sabotage & The Math of Survival

The Moment the Card Flips

You've finished your pre-draw actions: your character ability is on cooldown, you deposited a spare tool into the Shared Inventory, and nobody revealed themselves as a Carrier.

You reach for the central deck, flip the top card, and the room goes quiet. It's an Encounter.

Whether it's a standard Undead Horde, a hulking Behemoth, or The Matriarch, the table suddenly shifts from resource planning into immediate crisis management. Here's exactly how an Encounter resolves under the new v4.0 rules, using the Undead Horde as our example throughout.

Undead Horde encounter card in Carrier, showing 5 Danger required to clear, a Run penalty of +1 Danger, and a Failure penalty of +1 Mutation. — The Undead Horde: 5 Damage to clear, +1 Danger if you run, +1 Mutation if you fail.

Assessing the Threat

Every Encounter card displays a damage threshold representing the horde's strength. The Undead Horde shows a clear requirement: 5 Damage to clear. Anything less, and the fight is lost.

As the active player — the Turn Leader — the call is yours from here: run, or stand and fight.

Close-up of the Danger threshold marker on an encounter card, showing 5x Danger. — The threshold sits right in the corner of the card — this is the number your team is working to beat.

Running from an Encounter

The Undead Horde is temporarily bypassed and parked for later. The cost: fleeing adds +1 Danger to the next Zombie Encounter your team faces.

If the table is caught off-guard with empty hands or weak weapons, you can choose to run. Running buys you breathing room now, but makes the very next fight harder to survive.

The group is allowed a maximum of 3 Run attempts across the entire game. Once all 3 are spent, you can no longer flee and must stand and fight. Running isn't the same as failing: running dodges the fight for a Danger cost, while failing means your strike team fought and came up short.

Three bypassed zombie encounter cards (Undead Horde, Stonewall, Undead Horde) placed face-up in a row to track active runaway encounters. — If you run, place the bypassed Encounter face-up on the table so the entire group can see the threat you've parked.

Standing to Fight: Assembling the Strike Team

If the Leader decides the group is ready to confront the Undead Horde, you forgo running and commit to combat. This is where the real decisions start.

Dynamic Team Sizing

There's no more forcing an artificial headcount like "choose exactly 4 players." Party size is completely flexible — the Leader picks who joins based on what weapons people claim to hold.

Heavy Tier 2 or Tier 3 weapons on hand? Send a lean 2-person strike team and conserve resources.
Only basic Tier 1 weapons? You'll need more players to combine enough attacks to hit the threshold.

The Overencumbered Restriction

Only active, agile survivors can fight. Any player holding 4 or more cards is marked OVERENCUMBERED and can't be chosen until they reduce their hand to 3 cards or fewer.

The Social Deduction Dilemma

Before locking in the squad, the Leader relies on table talk — everyone will claim they can contribute damage. But every player invited onto the strike team is another chance for a hidden Carrier to sneak in and sabotage the fight.

Carrier saboteur role card, showing the infected survivor whose goal is to cause failed encounters. — Carriers are infected survivors hiding among the group. They can't kill outright — a failed encounter is exactly what they're working toward.

Contesting the Strike Team

Once the Leader nominates the players for the fight, the rest of the table gets a say. If the group distrusts the Leader's selection, or suspects a hidden Carrier was placed on the team, they can choose to contest the encounter.

Here's what happens when an encounter is contested:

The nomination is immediately cancelled and automatically counts as a Run.
The encounter card is placed face-up on the table as a parked threat.
This consumes 1 of the group's 3 maximum Run attempts.
The standard Run penalty applies: +1 Danger is added to the next Zombie Encounter.

Contesting gives the survivors an emergency brake if they suspect the Leader is setting up a sabotaged team — but it costs a precious Run attempt and raises the danger for the next fight.

Submitting Combat Cards

Once the Leader locks in the strike team, each participating player secretly chooses 1 card from their hand and places it face-down into a central combat pile.

Four encounter cards placed face-down in the combat pool, representing secret card submissions from four chosen strike team players. — A 4-player strike team takes on the Undead Horde. Each player secretly submits 1 card face-down — since the cards are hidden, the Leader has to trust everyone is contributing a real weapon.

Here is what can be contributed:

Card Type	Effect	Deck Count
Tier 1 Weapons	+1 Attack Damage	20 cards
Tier 2 Weapons	+2 Attack Damage	10 cards
Tier 3 Weapons	+3 Attack Damage	5 cards
Live Samples (Sabotage)	-3 Attack Damage	15 cards

The Sabotage Dilemma

Survivors want to contribute their best weapons to reach the 5 Damage needed to clear the Undead Horde. Carriers want the encounter to fail — by submitting a Sample, they inflict a -3 Damage penalty on the group's total attack score.

Three supply cards fanned out with the Samples sabotage card in focus. — Samples look like any other supply card until they're revealed — that's what makes them dangerous.

Close-up of the Samples card corner, showing a -3 Damage penalty. — Every Sample played face-down carries a -3 Damage penalty the whole team absorbs.

Revealing the Damage

To protect hidden identities, all submitted cards are gathered, shuffled thoroughly, and flipped face-up together in the center of the table.

Total Team Damage = (Sum of Weapon Damage) − (Sum of Sample Sabotages)

Scenario A: A Clean Victory


Revealed Cards	Armaments (+1), Armaments (+1), Medical (+2), Armaments (+1)
Calculation	1 + 1 + 2 + 1 = 5 Total Damage
Result	Victory. 5 meets the 5 Damage threshold — the horde is defeated with zero sabotage.

Total Damage: 1 + 1 + 2 + 1 = 5 Total Team Damage. — Four revealed combat cards: three Armaments (+1 each) and one Medical (+2), totaling 5 Attack Damage against the horde.

With zero sabotage cards played, the strike team successfully hits the 5 Damage threshold needed to clear the Undead Horde.

Scenario B: The Carrier Sabotage

Now say one player secretly dropped a Sample instead of a weapon:


Revealed Cards	Armaments (+1), Medical (+2), Medical (+2), Sample (-3)
Calculation	1 + 2 + 2 − 3 = 2 Total Damage
Result	Defeat. 2 falls short of 5 — a hidden Carrier successfully sabotaged the squad.

Total Damage: 1 + 2 - 3 + 2 = 2 Total Team Damage. — The 4 face-down cards revealed for Scenario B: Armaments (+1), Medical (+2), Sample (-3 Sabotage), and Medical (+2).

A hidden Carrier slipped in a Sample instead of a weapon, so the team only dealt 2 damage — short of the 5 needed. The encounter fails: the group takes the +1 Mutation penalty, and the table immediately starts interrogating the 4 strike team members to find who sabotaged them.

Victory or Defeat

Once the damage is tallied against the Undead Horde's 5 Damage threshold, the encounter resolves based on the total.

On victory (total damage is 5 or higher):

The Undead Horde is defeated and placed into the discard pile.
All 4 submitted combat cards go to the discard pile, ready for Rangers like the Forager or Blacksmith to scavenge later during Daybreak.
Participating character passives activate, such as the Survivalist's Recover ability granting a random Supply card refund.
Any active Danger modifier on this fight is cleared.

On defeat (total damage is less than 5):

The group suffers the penalty listed on the card: +1 Mutation. Advance the mutation tracker by 1.
Any active Danger penalties remain in effect.
The interrogation phase begins. The table now has concrete proof that a Carrier was on the strike team and secretly dropped the Sample sabotage. Accusations, bluffs, and deductions start immediately as players try to figure out who lied about their hand.

Reclaiming Run Attempts

Encounters the group ran from don't stay parked forever. Once you've scavenged better weapons, any player can skip their normal draw and challenge one of those face-up encounters instead.

If the strike team clears it:

The encounter card is discarded.
The team reclaims 1 spent Run attempt for future emergencies.

If they fail, it's treated as a normal defeat — the +1 Mutation penalty and all. This gives survivors a real tactical choice: spend a turn clearing a known threat to regain an escape slot, or keep pushing deeper into the unknown deck.

What This Brings to the Table

By connecting encounter resolution directly to tiered weapon math, dynamic team sizes, and the ever-present threat of a Sample sabotage, combat in Carrier is no longer just a numbers check. Every encounter becomes a high-stakes interrogation.

As the Leader, you're constantly weighing the odds: risk bringing along a player you don't fully trust because you desperately need their firepower, or head into the horde shorthanded and hope your basic weapons are enough?

We're bringing this updated combat system to our next playtest sessions to see how players handle the pressure. Let us know your thoughts — see you in the next dev log!