Neighbors Suburban Warfare Guide — Match Flow, Economy and Defense

A Neighbors Suburban Warfare guide really comes down to three habits the game never spells out: collect resources before the barrier drops, spend the first chunk of money on ground-floor window upgrades, and stop bashing fences you could simply jump over. This page covers match flow, the economy and tech upgrade tracks, base defense, attacking an enemy house, and how the playable roster shapes a team. It draws on the official Steam listing, the official Neighbors site, the community wiki, and two community walkthroughs, so anything that rests on a single player report is marked as such.

How a Match Is Structured

Every match runs on a day and night cycle wrapped around three short phases: a prep window before the barrier lifts, an open daytime push, and a night phase locked down by guard dogs. The prep phase is the only part with no enemy contact, which makes it the most valuable minute in the game.

Phase	What changes	What you should be doing
Prep	Barrier is up, no enemy contact	Grab traps and the free hammer, then break two outer fences for early money
Day	Yard is open, deliveries land	Push the enemy house, fight for resource crates, loot uncollected deliveries
Night	Guard dogs active, enemy yard is lethal	Defend, upgrade windows, and use ranged damage instead of diving in

A workable prep route looks like this:

• Go to the garage first for the bear traps, barricades and the single free hammer.
• Let the team's defender, usually Kim, keep the hammer.
• Trap the basement door and the back doors, since those are hit first.
• Check the kitchen and laundry room for extra barricades.
• Add three logs to the fireplace so nobody can drop in through the chimney.
• Finish with two fences near the construction site for early money.

Skipping the route costs opening tempo, because the enemy team is running the same loop on the mirror side of the map.

Early Game: Resources, Money, and Tech

Money and tech are separate currencies that come from the same sources: resource crates, broken props and deliveries. Crates are the important one, because throwing a crate into the garage shop converts it into cash plus one tech point, and tech points unlock the tools that let you break houses.

Tech counter	Unlock	Why it matters
4	Oil wells	Passive income for the whole team
5	Saw	Fast damage against doors and windows
9	Sledgehammer	The heaviest structure damage in the game

Teams can buy up to three oil wells and they are shared, so buying one blocks a teammate from buying the same one. A community walkthrough recommends placing them inside against the living-room wall rather than in the open yard and calls that an early-economy decision that decides long games; the exact spacing is a single-source tip, to confirm.

Other income sources are smaller but reliable:

• Breaking an outer fence pays 200 money.
• Lockpicking a door or window pays the same as breaking it, and Mary-Jean does it faster.
• Delivery trucks drop crates into your yard, which is exactly why orders should only be placed at night.
• Any crate left uncollected in an enemy yard can be thrown back to your own shop.

Base Defense: What Actually Matters

Defense is mostly about windows, not doors. A community guide argues that ground-floor windows are the real entry points because every other route into the map is a jump away, and that upgrading a window for 250 money with the hammer is the first purchase a defender should make. Upgraded windows seal shut, which also blocks your own team from using them as exits, so that trade-off is worth knowing before you spend.

Attackers rotate around the house, so the priority is to slow them at each entry rather than wall off one. The defender's checklist:

• Upgrade all ground-floor windows as soon as money allows.
• Board the back-middle window first if you cannot upgrade it, because it is described as the most-used window in the game.
• Bear-trap the back doors and the basement stairs.
• Keep the fireplace lit so the chimney route stays closed.
• Only barricade where it blocks a real path; extra boards on a wide window save little time.

Barricade placement is a genuine skill. A community walkthrough notes that horizontal boards can be broken by a running crouch-jump, while a tall cross-section board cannot be stood on and takes far longer to remove, and that Kevin can crawl under boards that stop adult characters; these placement details are single-source, to confirm.

Attacking the Enemy House

The fastest way into an enemy house is not the front door. Both sides of the map have rooftop access through a fixed ladder that cannot be looted or destroyed, and fences can be hopped or climbed, so the attacker's job is to reach a window while the defender is looking somewhere else.

Once inside, the priority order changes. Removing one log from the enemy fireplace disables it entirely and reopens the chimney as an entry point for your team, which makes it the single most valuable early action against a fortified house. The boiler room is the easiest early objective because it is jumpable and usually not upgraded yet, while late in a match it becomes the hardest room to take.

What to do on offense:

• Enter through a window or the rooftop, not the boarded front door.
• Pull one fireplace log and throw it off the map.
• Hit the boiler room early, while traps and barbed wire are still thin.
• Steal deliveries and crates instead of duelling defenders in the open.
• Watch the street: cars kill players who stand in the road.

Neighbor Roles and Team Composition

The roster is smaller than it looks in practice, because a few roles are close to mandatory. The community walkthrough that produced the first widely shared tier list treats Kim as required, since she is the only character who can repair structures and combines the highest damage with the fastest time-to-kill. Mary-Jean is the other near-lock, as the only ranged root in the game plus a short-cooldown wall-hack ability and faster lockpicking income.

Role	Neighbor	Job in a team
Repair and DPS	Kim	The only structure repairer, and the highest-damage fighter
Control and economy	Mary-Jean	Roots enemies, reveals them, farms faster with lockpicks
Frontline tank	Doreen	Highest melee damage over time and the tankiest character
Sustain	Gramps	The dedicated healer
Duelist	Chad	Described as the counter to Doreen
Specialist	P.A.	Backdoor pressure and a periodic free kill
Mobility	Kevin, Louie	Kevin is mobile but fragile; Louie is rated the weakest pick in the same guide

That read of the roster comes from a single community walkthrough recorded during Early Access, before later patches rebalanced several neighbors, so treat the rankings as a starting point rather than a current verdict, to confirm. For the fuller breakdown, see the tier list, the characters overview, and the how to play walkthrough.