A drawn gun is stronger than a fired one. When to shoot, when to fold, and why the smart boss makes his rival pay to pull the trigger.
Guns don't win this war — Respect does. But the turf that carries your Contracts, your Deeds, and your Speakeasies never comes quietly, and that makes a loaded pistol the down-payment on the crown. Here's the secret the corner boys never learn: most firefights are settled before a single die leaves the hand — in the long silence of the standoff, in the cold sum of who holds the better ground. Learn that ground, and you'll win wars you never have to fight. Here it is.
Everything comes down to how many dice you roll and what kills:
And Threat is where the defender lives. A dug-in Occupier stacks bonuses an attacker simply cannot match.
When you Move onto turf a rival Controls, the fight pauses. First the Occupier answers; then the Invader chooses, and keeps choosing until the Pin breaks.
Below: an Invader (with Boss) storms a Secured district — 3 Runners, a Boss, and a Safehouse — spending up to 3 Open Fires. Note what a big raid really costs first: the Sweep caps any district at 5 mobsters overnight, so a crew of six or more must be massed with an extra Move on the day — one more Influence the defender never spends. The numbers are sobering.
| Invader Runners | Attack Dice | Invader Takes It | Invader Losses | Gains Heat |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 3 (even numbers) | 2 | 1% | 3.9 | 75% |
| 4 | 3 | 8% | 4.7 | 91% |
| 5 | 3 | 25% | 5.0 | 95% |
| 6 (2× the garrison) | 4 | 48% | 5.0 | 99% |
| 7 | 4 | 66% | 4.7 | 99% |
| 9 (3× the garrison) | 5 | 89% | 4.2 | 100% |
| 11 | 5 | 96% | 4.0 | 100% |
Read the shape of it: even numbers is a slaughter (1% for the attacker), you need roughly double the garrison for a coin-flip, and triple for a confident take — and you'll bleed 4–5 bodies and near-certain Heat doing it. A "few guards behind a Safehouse" genuinely do keep the peace: two Runners plus a Safehouse and Boss hold off a four-man raid four times in five; three Runners, nine times in ten.
The defender's free ambush shot and Safehouse +2 mean a fair fight isn't fair — it's a 1-in-50 for the attacker. If you mean to take a block, bring at least double the garrison, ideally into the next dice tier (5–6 bodies for 3 dice, 9 for the 5-dice cap). Anything less just donates your crew and your Heat to the man you're attacking.
Every Open Fire costs 1 Influence — a Play you're not spending on money or Contracts. Grinding a stubborn alley from 3 volleys to 5 lifts your odds barely (25% → 31%) while your losses climb and rivals run free across the city. Commit hard or not at all: plan the force to win in 2–3 volleys, and if it's not breaking, Fall Back before you're bled dry. There is no cheap war of attrition here.
Folding costs zero casualties — you trade the block and its barrels for a mobile, intact crew that lives to earn tomorrow. Standing to fight a stronger raider bleeds you whether you hold or not (2–3 casualties average even at a coin-flip). So fold the empty corner without a second thought; dig in only when your hold odds are high, or the block is worth a crown — a Contract site, a Borough Deed, a Ward or Dock that swings a Title, or a Speakeasy your Night Mayor race can't spare.
When a rival crosses your line, run the read in this order:
| If… | Do this | Why |
|---|---|---|
| The block is empty scrap you don't need | Fold | Keep every body. Turf is cheap; a trained crew isn't. Let them have the corner and make them defend it next. |
| You want the block and intend to fight | Ambush | The free +1-Threat shot is pure upside — it strictly beats Hold Fire on both hold-rate and your own losses. If you're fighting at all, shoot first. |
| You're unsure they mean to fight | Hold Fire (a bluff) | Not a combat move — a political one. It lets a passer-by leave without a war, and hides your strength. Use it to keep the peace, not to win the fight. |
Everything above is mob-blind — the cold arithmetic every crew shares. But no two families fight the same. Each bends the maths in exactly one place, and knowing which place is worth more than any table on this page. The yardstick below: an invader with a Boss and 6 Runners storming the biggest garrison the Sweep allows — Boss, 4 Runners, and a Safehouse — with 4 Influence to burn. (Seven guns on one block is a deliberate concentration, not a standing stack: only a Sicilian corner wakes up that heavy.)
| Invader | Takes the District | Rival Boss Dies | The Read |
|---|---|---|---|
| Baseline (no play) | 9% | 13% | Defence wins. That's the reference. |
| Irish — Firepower | 29% | 41% | One free die triples the take rate. |
| Sicilians — Hit | 8% | 94% | Not there for the turf. There for the man. |
| Vipers — Stealth (5-man cap) | 7% | 11% | The cap bites against full garrisons. |
| Knights — Torch first | 1% | 1% | A siege play, not a takeover (below). |
Firepower is a free attack die on every Open Fire volley — strictly an invader's tool, it never fires on defence, not even an Ambush — and it's worth roughly a full dice tier. A concentrated assault of Boss and 6 Runners into a Secured 3-Runner block jumps from 48% to 79%; into a full garrison, it triples the take (9% → 29%). On their own turf the Irish defend like anybody else. Plunder is a different weapon: hit soft stockpiles — against two unguarded Runners sitting on barrels, one quiet volley lifts ~1.3 barrels for 3 Influence, under one body lost, and zero Heat, the only violence in the city the law ignores. Against a Secured stockpile it trades ~3 bodies for a single barrel — don't. And loot only leaves on an Advance; Fall Back drops it.
Everyone else's garrison is capped by the Sweep at 5 mobsters. Untouchable isn't: a Sicilian Boss + 6 Runners behind a Safehouse holds 80% against the biggest raid in the game (10 men, 4 Influence); Boss + 8 Runners holds 99%. Past nine defenders the attacker's five-dice cap simply cannot cut through Threat 4 — it is a wall, and the only real check on it is that 15 Runners stretched over an empire leave every other border thin. Hit is the opposite tool: Move in, pay 2, and the rival Boss eats the first hit — 68–94% he dies depending on your crew, even into a full garrison — then Fall Back. Three Influence, and the rival loses his +1 Threat everywhere on the map plus 2 more Influence to Rise. You were never there for the turf.
Stealth deletes the Occupier's two best answers — no Ambush, no Fold — and it shows against thin turf: a five-man Stealth squad takes a Boss + 2 Runner + Safehouse block 70% of the time versus 24% marching in, at roughly half the casualties. But the 5-mobster cap means it cannot out-muscle a full garrison (7%, no better than walking). Snipe the thin blocks, the lone Bosses, the half-guarded Stills; never use it as a siege engine.
No Knight play adds dice or Threat — in a straight firefight they are the baseline row, everywhere, the only crew that fights bare-handed. What they do own is reach: Skiff lands five men from any coast you control onto any other, so an isolated picket anywhere on the water is prey — a full skiff takes two lone Runners 92% of the time for barely a body, and even a Boss with two guards falls near a coin-flip. No other crew delivers that fight without marching the map. Torch is the other lever and it's a siege tool: 3 Influence, a sacrificed Runner, and Heat to burn the Safehouse, which lifts tomorrow's assault from 7% to 18% and deletes the +2 Threat until the rival re-Secures ($500 and a Play). Prep, not takeover — or pure spite on the way out. The rest of the Knight war is economic: the rum trade fills the bankroll, the bankroll fills Recruit, and Recruit is how you show up with the three-to-one the tables above demand. Outnumber first; fight second.
The hothead charges a Secured block with an even crew and wonders why he's burying four men and holding a Rat's worth of Heat. The made man garrisons the turf his Contracts need, folds the corners that don't earn, and when he finally does move, he moves with three-to-one and ends it in two volleys. Same dice. One of them dies rich.
Run your own matchups in the Combat Simulator — dice, Threat, and Heat are rules-accurate, and every mob kit (Firepower, Hit, Stealth, Torch, Plunder) is modelled — and see the brewing half of the empire in the companion Brew Engine guide.
Figures are Monte Carlo estimates (100,000+ trials) over the full combat rules (Muscle-Ratio dice capped at 5; Threat from Boss +1, Safehouse +2, Ambush +1; occupier free ambush, simultaneous Open Fire, invader pays 1 Influence per volley — 2 for Hit — and takes Heat on a kill). The baseline tables are mob-blind; the mob figures fold in each kit as written (Firepower on the invader's Open Fire volleys only, Hit's first-hit-on-the-Boss, Stealth's 5-man cap, Torch's Runner sacrifice, Plunder's steal-don't-kill). All numbers model a single fight in isolation — board position, who moves next, and what the district is worth still decide whether a fight is wise in the first place.