Ruling — Zombicide: Invader

← Zombicide: Invader

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How do I play?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Zombicide: Invaderbg-248065-en-1e

Zombicide: Invader is played over a series of Game Rounds.[1] The sequence of play is as follows:

Setup

1. Choose a Mission.[2]

2. Place the tiles.[2]

3. Place the Objectives, Spawn Zones, and any other tokens and figures as indicated by the Mission.[2]

4. Select 6 Survivors and distribute them between the players as you see fit.[2]

5. Players take 1 Dashboard for each of their Survivors, placing the Survivor's ID Card on it, taking a colored plastic base to attach to the miniature, and taking 5 plastic trackers of the same color.[2]

6. Set aside Starting Equipment (4 Cattle Prods and 2 SMGs) and Oxygen Tank cards.[2]

Players' Phase

1. The player with the First Player token takes their Turn.[1]

2. The player activates their Survivors one at a time, in the order of their choice.[1]

3. Each Survivor can initially perform 3 Actions per Turn.[1] These actions include:

* Move: Move 1 Zone (spending extra Actions if there are Xenos in the starting Zone).[3]

* Search (1x per Turn): In a room Zone free of Xenos only; draw a card from the Equipment deck.[3]

* Door Activation (FREE, 1x per Turn): Place or remove a closed door token on a door opening in the Survivor's Zone, provided it is not in a Mold Zone or a destroyed door.[3]

* Reorganize/Trade: Exchange Equipment with another Survivor in the same Zone, or Attach/Detach Equipment cards (Bullets, Energy Cell, or Canister).[3]

* Combat Action: Melee Action (requires equipped Melee weapon) or Ranged Action (requires equipped Ranged weapon).[3]

* Take or Activate an Objective in the Survivor's Zone.[3]

* Make Noise: Put a Noise token in the Survivor's Zone.[3]

* Do Nothing: All remaining Actions are lost.[3]

* Machine Actions: Using a Skill or Remote Control token (e.g., controlling a Sentry Gun).[3]

4. Once a player has activated all their Survivors, the player to the left takes their Turn, activating Survivors in the same manner.[1]

5. The Players' Phase ends once all players have completed their Turns.[1]

Xenos' Phase

1. All Xenos on the board activate and spend 1 Action to either attack a Survivor in their Zone or, if no one is available to attack, move toward Survivors or noisy Zones.[1]

2. Hunters get 2 Actions per Activation; after their first Action, they go through the Activation Step again to resolve their second Action.[4][1]

3. New Xenos appear in all active Spawn Zones.[1] To spawn:

* Select a Spawn Zone and draw a Xeno card.[5]

* Determine the Xeno type and the line corresponding to the highest Danger Level among the Survivors.[5]

* Place the indicated amount of that Xeno type in the Spawn Zone.[5]

* Repeat for each Spawn Zone, starting with a chosen zone and proceeding clockwise.[5]

4. Once all Xenos have performed their Actions, the phase concludes.[1]

End Phase

1. All Noise tokens are removed from the board.[4][1]

2. The first player hands the First Player token to the player to their left.[4][1]

3. A new Game Round begins.[1]

Winning and Losing

* The game is won immediately when all Mission Objectives have been accomplished.[1]

* The game is lost if a starting Survivor is eliminated, if Mission Objectives can no longer be fulfilled, or if 2 or more Spawn Zones are linked by an uninterrupted chain of Mold Zones.[1]

[1] RULEBOOK Zombicide: Invader — Rulebook · p.10 · 04 SETUP · PLAYERS' PHASE · XENOS' PHASE · END PHASE · WINNING AND LOSING

[2] RULEBOOK Zombicide: Invader — Rulebook · p.7 · 04 SETUP

[3] RULEBOOK Zombicide: Invader — Rulebook · p.56 · GAME ROUND SUMMARY · 01 - PLAYERS' PHASE · TARGETING PRIORITY ORDER

[4] RULEBOOK Zombicide: Invader — Rulebook · p.56 · STEP 1 - ACTIVATION: ATTACK OR MOVE · STEP 2 - SPAWN · 03 - END PHASE

[5] RULEBOOK Zombicide: Invader — Rulebook · p.28 · PLAYING HUNTERS · STEP 2 - SPAWN

The sage rests. The game continues.

🔧 debug — where this ruling came from

outcome: ANSWERED — Answered
corpus profile: live,vps
answerer pin (deploy-frozen, attribution only): gemma4:26b think:false 5571076f3d70
timings: search 126 ms · ask 9888 ms · total 10016 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 10016 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 10, "score": 0.04741, "snippet": "Considering the resources to be gathered here, our bosses will answer the emergency calls as soon as possible. There is a lot of distance to cover, however, so our survival is in our own hands. We know where the security rooms are, but anything can, and will, be a potential weapon. - Jared Zombicide", "headingPath": "04 SETUP · PLAYERS' PHASE · XENOS' PHASE · END PHASE · WINNING AND LOSING", "sharpsignalDocId": 994}, {"page": 56, "score": 0.046871, "snippet": "GAME RULES OVERRIDE THIS ROUND SUMMARY. The first player activates all of their Survivors, one after the other, in any order. When they're done, the next player's Turn begins. Play clockwise. Each Survivor has 3 Actions to spend, chosen from the following list. Unless otherwise stated, each Action m", "headingPath": "GAME ROUND SUMMARY · 01 - PLAYERS' PHASE · TARGETING PRIORITY ORDER", "sharpsignalDocId": 994}, {"page": 56, "score": 0.04598, "snippet": "All Xenos spend 1 Action doing 1 of these 2 things: \u0007 Xenos in the same Zone as at least 1 Survivor Attack them. \u0007 The Xenos who didn't Attack, Move instead. Spoiler Abominations place Mold tokens in room and corridor Zones. \u0007 Each Xeno favors visible Survivors, then Noise. Choose the shortest path,", "headingPath": "STEP 1 - ACTIVATION: ATTACK OR MOVE · STEP 2 - SPAWN · 03 - END PHASE", "sharpsignalDocId": 994}, {"page": 28, "score": 0.045956, "snippet": "Hunters have 2 Actions per Activation. After all Xenos (including Hunters) have gone through the Activation step and resolved their first Action, Hunters go through the Activation step again, using their second Action to Attack a Survivor in their Zone or Move if there is nobody to Attack. EXAMPLE 1", "headingPath": "PLAYING HUNTERS · STEP 2 - SPAWN", "sharpsignalDocId": 994}, {"page": 54, "score": 0.031746, "snippet": "If several Survivors benefit from this Skill at the same time, players choose their Turn order. Zero-G run - The Survivor can use this Skill once during each of their Turns. The Survivor spends 1 Action. They move 2 Zones. Ignore everything in the intervening Zone, except airlocks, walls and closed ", "headingPath": "17 SKILLS", "sharpsignalDocId": 994}, {"page": 49, "score": 0.030769, "snippet": "Show the Xenos who's the boss. Accomplish the Objectives in any order to win the game: Take all Objectives. Reach the Orange Level (or more) with all Survivors. Superior firepower! Each Objective gives 5 Experience Points to the Survivor who takes it. Each Red Objective provides a random Prototype w", "headingPath": "OBJECTIVES · SPECIAL RULES", "sharpsignalDocId": 994}, {"page": 7, "score": 0.030303, "snippet": "A Zombicide: Invader game usually features 6 Survivors, distributed in any way you see fit, among players. We recommend new players join the game with a single Survivor to get a quick grasp on the game mechanics. A veteran player can easily control a whole team of 6 Survivors and clear Xeno swarms a", "headingPath": "04 SETUP", "sharpsignalDocId": 994}, {"page": 43, "score": 0.029412, "snippet": "Rescue the engineers. Accomplish the Objectives in this order to win the game: 1- Find the scientists. Take the Blue and White Objectives. 2- Exit the scene. Reach the Exit with all Survivors. Any Survivor may escape through this Zone at the end of their Turn, as long as there are no Xenos in it. Se", "headingPath": "OBJECTIVES · SPECIAL RULES", "sharpsignalDocId": 994}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 10, "quote": null, "headingPath": "04 SETUP · PLAYERS' PHASE · XENOS' PHASE · END PHASE · WINNING AND LOSING", "sharpsignalDocId": 994}, {"page": 7, "quote": null, "headingPath": "04 SETUP", "sharpsignalDocId": 994}, {"page": 56, "quote": null, "headingPath": "GAME ROUND SUMMARY · 01 - PLAYERS' PHASE · TARGETING PRIORITY ORDER", "sharpsignalDocId": 994}, {"page": 56, "quote": null, "headingPath": "STEP 1 - ACTIVATION: ATTACK OR MOVE · STEP 2 - SPAWN · 03 - END PHASE", "sharpsignalDocId": 994}, {"page": 28, "quote": null, "headingPath": "PLAYING HUNTERS · STEP 2 - SPAWN", "sharpsignalDocId": 994}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 994 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 994 boosted
answered-before recall: this ruling was answered, so past rulings were not offered
similarity threshold in force: 0.55 (rulesage.answered-before.similarity-threshold; the exact-question tier is not gated by it)
answer fence: passed — letter density 0.89255 of 2699 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row recorded: Sep 6, 2026 13:23 UTC

retrieval — what the passage search returned

what this block IS: the PASSAGE SEARCH's own results — the same search that fills this page's closest-passages list — and NOT the passages the answerer read. Answering runs its OWN retrieval: a far wider candidate pool, re-ranked down to a final handful, plus floors this search never applies — the base rulebook, surviving errata corrections, and one slot per book on a multi-book read. Each of those armed only if THIS ask sent what it needs: the boost block names the ids it forwarded, and the scope line names the books it read. A document the answer CITES that no row here names is therefore EXPECTED, not a defect: two searches, two candidate pools, two orders. The answerer's own final rows are shown in their own block below, beside these and never mixed into them.

score = the fused retrieval score (reciprocal-rank fusion over the search arms) — NOT a cosine similarity. This ruling ran the THREE-ARM fuse (full-text + vector + the doc-priority boost arm, which carried the base rulebook and/or the errata corrections this query matched), whose arithmetic ceiling is 0.04918 — all three arms ranking the same chunk #1 (ceiling = arms/(k+1) at k=60). The measured healthy band 0.016–0.033 was measured on TWO-arm asks and does not bound this one: its high end is the two-arm ceiling, and a third arm has room above it. A chunk only one arm ranked highly lands near 0.016 (that one arm's #1 vote), so 0.03 here is an excellent hit, not a 3% match.

per-arm ranks (the rank each search arm gave a chunk): NOT DISCLOSED by the gateway. Fusion happens gateway-side and only the FUSED score crosses the wire, so rulesage cannot show them without a gateway change. The rank column below is the FUSED rank (position in the returned list), which is real.

token count per chunk: NOT DISCLOSED — chunk token counts are not reported on the ask path. The character counts below are of the bounded snippet/quote rulesage actually received — a real measurement of what we hold, never an estimate of the chunk.

fused rank	document	heading	page	fused RRF score	snippet chars
#1	RULEBOOK Zombicide: Invader — Rulebook (corpus doc 994)	04 SETUP · PLAYERS' PHASE · XENOS' PHASE · END PHASE · WINNING AND LOSING	p.10	0.04741 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	300
#2	RULEBOOK Zombicide: Invader — Rulebook (corpus doc 994)	GAME ROUND SUMMARY · 01 - PLAYERS' PHASE · TARGETING PRIORITY ORDER	p.56	0.046871 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	300
#3	RULEBOOK Zombicide: Invader — Rulebook (corpus doc 994)	STEP 1 - ACTIVATION: ATTACK OR MOVE · STEP 2 - SPAWN · 03 - END PHASE	p.56	0.04598 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	300
#4	RULEBOOK Zombicide: Invader — Rulebook (corpus doc 994)	PLAYING HUNTERS · STEP 2 - SPAWN	p.28	0.045956 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	300
#5	RULEBOOK Zombicide: Invader — Rulebook (corpus doc 994)	17 SKILLS	p.54	0.031746 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	300
#6	RULEBOOK Zombicide: Invader — Rulebook (corpus doc 994)	OBJECTIVES · SPECIAL RULES	p.49	0.030769 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	300
#7	RULEBOOK Zombicide: Invader — Rulebook (corpus doc 994)	04 SETUP	p.7	0.030303 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	300
#8	RULEBOOK Zombicide: Invader — Rulebook (corpus doc 994)	OBJECTIVES · SPECIAL RULES	p.43	0.029412 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	300

what the answerer read — the passages it actually had in front of it

what this block IS: the passages the ANSWERING read put in front of the answerer, in the order it read them — the other half of the two reads described above, and the one that decides what the answer could possibly say. Each row names the book it came from and where in that book it sits, what it scored when the search arms were fused, which arm carried it there, and whether the re-ranker chose it or a floor guaranteed it a slot. A row here that no passage-search row names is EXPECTED: a far wider pool, re-ranked, with floors the passage search never applies.

candidate pool: the answering read scored 80 passages, out of a ceiling of 80 set gateway-side. Both figures are reported by the gateway for THIS ask — measurements of what actually happened, not constants read out of anyone's source and printed here on faith.

floors armed for this ask: the base rulebook — armed · surviving errata corrections — not armed · one slot per book on a multi-book read — not armed. Every floor is stated on every ask, armed or not, so a floor that did not apply here is never mistaken for one this app does not know about.

arms fused for this ask: vector + full-text + the doc-priority boost arm. Stated separately from the rows because an arm that ran and carried nothing is a different fact from an arm that never ran.

read at	document	heading	page	fused rank	fused RRF score	carried by	how it got its slot
#1	RULEBOOK Zombicide: Invader — Rulebook (corpus doc 994)	14 PLAYING WITH 7+ SURVIVORS	p.36	#10	0.028021 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	vector + full-text	the re-ranker chose it
#2	RULEBOOK Zombicide: Invader — Rulebook (corpus doc 994)	MOVEMENT · MELEE AND RANGED WEAPONS	p.13	#32	0.011905 (below 0.016, the low end of the measured band — a weak fuse (that band was taken on two-arm asks; only its low end, one arm's #1 vote, carries over to a 3-arm one))	vector	the re-ranker chose it
#3	RULEBOOK Zombicide: Invader — Rulebook (corpus doc 994)	STEP 1 - ACTIVATION: ATTACK OR MOVE · STEP 2 - SPAWN · 03 - END PHASE	p.56	#3	0.04598 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	vector + full-text + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#4	RULEBOOK Zombicide: Invader — Rulebook (corpus doc 994)	04 SETUP · PLAYERS' PHASE · XENOS' PHASE · END PHASE · WINNING AND LOSING	p.10	#1	0.04741 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	vector + full-text + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#5	RULEBOOK Zombicide: Invader — Rulebook (corpus doc 994)	04 SETUP	p.7	#7	0.030303 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	vector + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#6	RULEBOOK Zombicide: Invader — Rulebook (corpus doc 994)	17 SKILLS	p.54	#9	0.028068 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	vector + full-text	the re-ranker chose it
#7	RULEBOOK Zombicide: Invader — Rulebook (corpus doc 994)	PLAYING HUNTERS · STEP 2 - SPAWN	p.28	#4	0.045956 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	vector + full-text + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#8	RULEBOOK Zombicide: Invader — Rulebook (corpus doc 994)	GAME ROUND SUMMARY · 01 - PLAYERS' PHASE · TARGETING PRIORITY ORDER	p.56	#2	0.046871 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	vector + full-text + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it

chosen chunks — what the answer actually cited

#	document	heading	page	quote chars
[1]	RULEBOOK Zombicide: Invader — Rulebook (corpus doc 994)	04 SETUP · PLAYERS' PHASE · XENOS' PHASE · END PHASE · WINNING AND LOSING	p.10	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Zombicide: Invader — Rulebook (corpus doc 994)	04 SETUP	p.7	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Zombicide: Invader — Rulebook (corpus doc 994)	GAME ROUND SUMMARY · 01 - PLAYERS' PHASE · TARGETING PRIORITY ORDER	p.56	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK Zombicide: Invader — Rulebook (corpus doc 994)	STEP 1 - ACTIVATION: ATTACK OR MOVE · STEP 2 - SPAWN · 03 - END PHASE	p.56	no quote on the wire
[5]	RULEBOOK Zombicide: Invader — Rulebook (corpus doc 994)	PLAYING HUNTERS · STEP 2 - SPAWN	p.28	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 126 ms · first delta 5718 ms · total 10016 ms (retrieval and first-delta both measured from the START of gateway work, so first-delta INCLUDES retrieval — do not subtract)
full breakdown: queued 0 ms · retrieval 126 ms · ask 9888 ms · gateway work 10016 ms · total 10016 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 3895
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 843
tok/sec: 201.0 tok/sec — 843 output tokens in 4.195 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 56s ago)
answerer host (measured by rulesage): reachable (for 22h, checked 7s ago)
answerer node (the seat proxy's own header — this probe, not this ask): node1
stream path: streamed — the gateway pushed at least one accumulated draft
watchdog: first-token watchdog: 30s per arming window (rulesage.table.first-token-watchdog-seconds), re-armed once by the passages frame — so the worst case before a reader falls back to polling is 60s. Whether it actually fired is a BROWSER-side decision that never reaches the server, so it is not recorded here. The stream path above is the server's half of that story: whether a delta was emitted at all.
num_ctx · think posture: both are the CHILD's settings, not rulesage's, and no ask reply carries them — an answer never states which context window or think posture produced it. The live-seat line above reads them from the running child instead, where the gateway can answer for itself; it describes the child NOW, not this ask.

disposition

outcome: ANSWERED — Answered
abstain rationale (n/a — this ruling answered): answered — no abstain rationale applies

setup-shape — why the checklist band did or didn't render

decision: NOT_SETUP_SHAPED — no setup-shape pattern matched this question

errata registry — what the gate above had to match against

this game registers NO errata cards (edition 924), so "no registered errata card matched" above could never have matched one

Errata scope: the gate above matched this ruling's own edition only. When an ask also reads an expansion, that expansion's own registered errata cards stay outside the match — a stated phase-1 limitation, not a failed lookup.