Change Sex with Maligan Mirror

[MunchkinMan]

Your combat strength, as well as the combat strength of any Monster, can, in fact, go below 1. It is Level that can't go below 1. Cursed with both Malign Mirror and Sex Change puts your combat strength at -2 (4 + 3 + 1 - 10 = -2), but you're still Level 4. If you were to play Baby (which is -5 to the Monster's combat strength) on a Level 1 Monster, its combat strength would be -4 (1 - 5 = -4), but its Level would still be 1, if, for some reason, that mattered.

Whenever you face a Monster, you have entered combat. You could also say, you fought the Monster, so both of those cards mean the same thing: The next time you face a Monster, you suffer the penalty and then you may discard the Curse and lose its effects. It does not matter if you lost to, killed, or defeated the Monster in some other way, you just have to enter combat (i.e., face a Monster) with it. Combat is fully and completely described in the rules in a rather large section, and I can't do the whole thing justice by trying to summarize it further, so if what I said above doesn't explain it enough, then reviewing the rules should be able to explain what combat is and when it happens.