Somebody has opened a raid on you and the march is already moving. Nothing you build now arrives in time, and nothing you configure now configures properly — what is left is one question that can end the whole thing, and four moves for when the answer to it is no.
- Bubble, unless you are enraged. That ends it.
- If you cannot: move far away and ask — normally 333.
- Mixed specialties and gear, crew ATK on, hospital empty.
- Then counter what is actually coming, not what you feared.
Bubble, unless you are enraged
If you can put a bubble up, do it and the raid has nowhere to land. There is nothing brave about taking a hit you did not have to take, and nobody in this faction will think less of you for it.
You cannot bubble while you are enraged — the state you are in after attacking someone. That is the price of having swung first, and it is worth knowing before you swing rather than while a march is on its way to you. Both words are in The words we use.
Be calm, and read what is actually coming
The march takes time to arrive, and that time is not for panicking in — it is for looking. Watch how the attacker is being reinforced: who is filling their raid, how fast it is filling, and what their combat gear looks like.
Everything you do next depends on that reading. A raid that is filling slowly and a raid that is already full are two different situations, and only one of them is worth spending your own troops on.
Move far away, and say what you need
Move your mansion well away from the attacker, then tell the faction chat what is happening and what you need. Ask for reinforcements plainly — normally 333, one third of each troop, because you usually do not yet know what is coming.
Say it early and say it as a request, not as an apology. Being raided is not a failure that needs explaining; it is a thing that happens to everybody in this game, and reinforcements only arrive if somebody knows they are wanted.
Set what you can in the seconds you have
You will not have time to tune anything properly, so the point is coverage rather than precision:
- Mixed specialties and mixed combat gear. Mixed beats specialised here, because you are guessing.
- Crew ATK buff on.
- Hospital empty. Wounded troops with nowhere to go die instead of being wounded.
If any of these takes you more than a few seconds to find, that is the real lesson of the attack, and it is fixed on a quiet evening, not on this one.
Counter what is coming, using the circle
As soon as the raid starts moving you can see what is in it. Answer with what beats it: knives beat guns, guns beat bikes, bikes beat knives. The formation that counters an incoming attack is chosen the same way any formation is chosen — Formations and counters has the circle and the six shapes.
Counter what you can see, not what you were afraid of. The most common way to lose a defense is to prepare for the attack you imagined while a different one lands.
When the faction's raid is a defense, nothing changes for you
A raid that appears in the faction is either an attack or a defense, and from where you sit the two are the same job: wait, read the call, send the three things. Same Caller, same code, same countdown — see Reading the call.
What changes is only whose clock it runs on. In an attack we choose the moment; in a defense somebody else chose it, which is exactly why being reachable matters more than being ready.
Everything that actually saves you was done yesterday
The wall, the crew enforcer, the meatshield, the empty hospital, anti-recon: none of it can be built while a march is in the air. The page that lists them is Set your account up, it takes one evening, and it costs nothing.
Read it on a night when nobody is attacking you. That is the only night it works.
Bubble if you can. Ask if you cannot