Crises in the nuclear era are commonly framed as contests in "brinkmanship," where actors compete by raising the background risk of a nuclear exchange until one side lacks the resolve to continue and backs down. But this framing may be too reductive: in practice, actors deploy a range of coercive capabilities that both alter the risk of escalation and shape political outcomes. How do these limited coercive capabilities shape outcomes in nuclear crises? We analyze the brinkmanship framework, finding broadly that more resolved actors will take greater escalation risks and perform better in conflict. We also analyze a ``contests of capabilities'' framework, showing that when a state’s resolve also shapes its willingness to compete at lower levels, more resolved actors may engage in less risky or less decisive measures. We use a game-free methodology to study how the underlying military fundamentals affect crisis behavior in settings with autonomous escalation risk across a wide variety of bargaining games.