Tactics Cards: Complete Guide (Seasons 4-6)

Tactics Cards are equippable cards that boost your squads in battle and your economy outside it. They arrived in Season 4 (Evernight Isle) and came back, reworked, in Seasons 5 and 6. You find them in the Profession Hall.

#At a glance

#The two kinds of card

#Core cards (gold)

• Permanent. They keep working in the off-season and carry into later seasons, so they're the best long-term use of your resources.
• Each has base stats plus a tactical skill. Some skills are passive; others are active with a cooldown or a daily use limit.
• Ascend (stars): merge duplicates of the same card. Each duplicate adds a star (up to 2) and raises the skill's strength.
• Enhance (levels): spend Profession EXP, up to level 10. Reaching level 10 costs about 29 to 30 million Profession EXP in total (about 9 million to reach level 5). A Core Level Reset Token refunds the EXP if you want to move it to another card.
• Core cards can't be dismantled.

#Battle and Resource cards (purple, blue, green)

• Seasonal. They only work during the season they belong to.
• Rarities: SSR (purple), SR (blue) and R (green).
• Every card has a fixed main effect plus 0 to 3 random bonus stats, rolled when you get it. Purple cards usually have 2 or 3, blue 1, green none. Bonus stats can't be re-rolled or upgraded, so a good roll matters.
• Upgrade them with Tactical Fragments. You get fragments by dismantling spare cards (SSR 500, SR 200, R 100) and from daily first kills on zombies.
• Battle cards boost your squads in fights. Resource cards boost gathering, zombie loot, plunder and similar.

#Slots and swapping

• You have 2 Core, 4 Battle and 4 Resource slots. Unlock requirements depend on your profession level and change over time. (For example, the first Core slot dropped from Profession level 80 to 50 in mid-2025.)
• Quick Equip offers ready-made sets: Sustained Combat, Rapid March, Defense Support and Monster Destruction. From Season 5 you can also save up to 3 loadouts of your own.
• To swap cards, all your squads must be home and idle. A card on cooldown can't be swapped out, and you can't equip two cards with the same name.
• Lineup Presets don't save Tactics Cards. If you switch presets before a fight, check your cards too.

#How to get cards

Sources change each season. Common ones:

• Zombies and season monsters: daily first kills give cards, packs or fragments. (In Season 6, Rainforest Walkers give an SR card pack on the daily first kill from week 2.)
• Season shops: the Season 4 Magatama Shop and the Season 6 War Merit Shop (opens at Fungus Institute level 4) sell card packs that refresh daily or weekly. Spending War Merit doesn't lower your leaderboard rank.
• Season events, alliance boss kills and the season battle pass.
• Pack points (Season 4): every 5,000 points from opening packs gives a bonus bundle that includes a Core Choice Kit.

Gold packs only contain Core cards. Purple and blue packs are mostly regular cards with a small chance of a Core card; green packs never contain Core cards. The game doesn't publish a pity counter.

#Which cards to use

#Season 4: Evernight Isle

Core cards worth chasing: the passive Morale Boost cards (Warmind, Windrusher, Bulwark). Guides rate these above most active-skill cores because they work in every fight without you having to trigger them.

A standard battle setup:

Resource cards: Purgator – Resource Hunger (more resources from zombies), Purgator – Night Snatcher (more Profession EXP from zombies), and the gathering-output cards for farm accounts.

#Season 5: Wild West

Card names changed, and several Season 4 cards came back with new stats. Core cards are now named after styles: Quickstride, Battlestreak and Garrison.

• Hybrid Squad is the Season 5 version of the 4+1 card.
• Counter Reversal deals more damage and takes less from the troop type that counters yours.

#Season 6: Lost Rainforest

The big change: the 4+1 card is gone, with no replacement. An off-type hero now cuts your squad type bonus from 20% to 15%, so the meta moved to pure five-hero squads (all Tank, all Missile or all Aircraft). Each type got its own card instead:

• These three cards work in PvP and Global Expedition only. They don't help with zombie farming.
• Counter Reversal matters even more now, because pure squads are easier to counter.
• Standard Season 6 build: your squad's type card, Counter Reversal, Quickstride Attribute Boost and Contaminated Land, with Morale Boost plus Quick March or Defensive Regroup as Core cards.
• Regular cards now go up to level 12 (15 with the gold Level Up stat). Only purple (SSR) battle cards can be enhanced. Reaching level 12 costs about 64,500 fragments.
• In Global Expedition, the total level of your equipped battle cards unlocks extra Expedition attack and defense bonuses.

#What happens at season end

• Core cards are kept, with their stars and levels.
• Battle and Resource cards are converted into fragments at the normal dismantle rate, and each fragment becomes 5 Profession EXP.
• Unopened packs convert into Profession EXP or a random Core card.

#Tips and common mistakes

• Put long-term resources into Core cards. Profession EXP and duplicates spent on Core cards last forever; regular cards are gone at season end.
• Judge regular cards by their bonus stats. A purple card with three good bonus stats (ideally the Level Up stat) beats a higher-level card with poor rolls.
• Upgrade carefully. You can't move fragments off a card once you've upgraded it. The only way back is dismantling it, which returns less than you spent.
• Keep a blue or green copy of a card you need until you get the purple version.
• Re-check your cards when you change squads or presets, since presets don't save them.
• Season 6: don't build Aftermath Burst until your Swift and Fiona are well built, and remember Dimensional Crit picks your highest-Attack Tank automatically.

#Sources

Compiled from community guides (last checked October 2026). Guides sometimes disagree on exact numbers. Where they did, we've said so or left the number out.

• Cpt Hedgehog: Season 6 Tactics Cards
• Cpt Hedgehog: Season 4 & 5 Tactics Cards
• Cpt Hedgehog: Season End Conversion Guide
• Cpt Hedgehog: Season 6 War Merit
• Last War Tutorial: Season 4 Tactics Card
• Last War Tutorial: Season 4 Week 8 and item conversion
• LDShop: Season 6 Tactics Cards Guide (store blog)
• LootBar: Season 6 squads after the 4+1 change (store blog)