History AwesomeButImpractical / TableTopGames

''AwesomeButImpractical/MagicTheGathering''
''AwesomeButImpractical/YuGiOh''

* ''TabletopGame/MagicTheGathering'' has enough examples for [[AwesomeButImpractical/MagicTheGathering its own subpage]].

* [[TabletopGame/YuGiOh Yu-Gi-Oh!]] has plenty of examples, [[AwesomeButImpractical/YuGiOh now with their own page]].

** In the fluff, [[NamesToRunAwayFromReallyFast Abaddon the Despoiler's]] unimaginatively-named flagship ''Planet Killer''. Sure, it has the most powerful weapon pretty much in the known universe (the [[SarcasmMode imaginatively-named Armageddon Gun]]), and sure, it bristles with lance batteries and torpedo tubes, and sure, it has a crew of millions of slaves and thousands of [[SpaceMarine psychotic ten thousand year old badass warlords]], but the one time its captain tried to take it into action without escorts, [[SugarWiki/MomentOfAwesome a small squadron of cruisers sat out of range, flipped the bird at it, and blew it to pieces with long-range torpedoes.]] Undeterred by this, he built another one.

** Abaddon himself is considered this on the tabletop. Costing as much as a Land Raider, Abaddon has enough special rules and weapons to literally murder anything he comes across (even tarpits and superheavy vehicles wouldn't slow him down for long). However, he has the crippling drawback of having no movement modifiers at all; this means even the most basic trooper can simply outrun him if he doesn't have a transport. And because of his Terminator Armor, the only transport that will fit him is the aforementioned Land Raider (and no, his faction only gets the vanilla kind unless you dip into Forge World), which is yet another example of this trope.

** The 40K scale Tau Manta transport gunship from Forgeworld. At a massive 63x86cm (25x34 inches), this thing not only does not belong on a table, it ''is'' a table. And at [[CrackIsCheaper nearly a thousand UK Pounds]], there aren't likely to be too many players who can afford one.

** In the fluff, [[NamesToRunAwayFromReallyFast Abaddon the Despoiler's]] unimaginatively-named flagship ''Planet Killer''. Sure, it has the most powerful weapon pretty much in the known universe (the [[SarcasmMode imaginatively-named Armageddon Gun]]), and sure, it bristles with lance batteries and torpedo tubes, and sure, it has a crew of millions of slaves and thousands of [[SpaceMarine psychotic ten thousand year old badass warlords]], but the one time its captain tried to take it into action without escorts, [[CrowningMomentOfAwesome a small squadron of cruisers sat out of range, flipped the bird at it, and blew it to pieces with long-range torpedoes.]] Undeterred by this, he built another one.

* The three Wild Card Edges in ''TabletopGame/SavageWorlds'' are very powerful, but only work on turns when the character has been dealt the Joker. Sacrifice a very valuable trait slot which could be used on another, more reliable ability, to gamble on the slim chance of getting an insane power up for a turn.

*** Also the Thrallherd prestige class gets legions of mind slaves, replenished each day, using them as suicide bombers is a neat gimmick, it isn't that great mechanically.

*** Vengeful Gaze of God causes, on average, 1067 HP of damage, to any one target within a 4 kilometer radius. Pretty big, no? Except... casting it requires a skill roll with a Difficulty Class of '''419''' (probably the highest DC ever to show up in any D&D book), which is impossible even to a wizard on level ''100''. And if you '''are''' powerful enough to cast something like this, then at your level even the weakest mooks you face probably have hit points going into the thousands. And for added fun, it causes an average 700 HP of backlash damage to ''you''.

* ''TabletopGame/BloodBowl'' ogre and vampire teams look like they would be broken at a glance. Players of both types are outright [[LightningBruiser Lightning Bruisers]], but rules regarding the former's stupidity and that the latter's bloodlust mean teams composed them are doomed to fail.

*** Specifically, such awesome but impractical characters are called [[Franchise/StarWars Deathstar Units]] but not for the reason you'd think; They are massively powerful, incredibly huge targets, ridiculously expensive, require a large tax on all of your resources...and have a laughably easy weak spot for all that it took to get them on the table. For most of them the weak spot happens to be the "Tarpit Unit", a large number of cheap, expendable bodies to throw at the Deathstars which will tie them up in melee for the rest of the game. For example the Imperial Guard can field 50-100 guardsmen and conscripts for the cost of the average Deathstar which would swamp the Deathstar with bodies long enough for it not to matter.

* While [[TabletopGame/Netrunner Android: Netrunner]] may have overall less crazy card effects than its predecessor Netrunner, it has its share of big, beefy cards that are too costly to use most of the time.

* In many historical Ancient and Medieval miniatures' games, the war elephants.

* While [[TabletopGame\Netrunner Android Netrunner]] may have overall less crazy card effects than its predecessor Netrunner, it has its share of big, beefy cards that are too costly to use most of the time.
** Government Takeover, a Weyland agenda that's grants ''six'' agenda points (either player only needs 7 to win), has an awesome 3 credit-per-click effect when scored, and is limited to one per deck. The problem is that it requires '''nine''' advancements (for reference, a 5 advancement/3 point agenda is already considered hard to score) and it very likely game-ending if runner gets lucky and happens to steal it. Not to mention you probably don't even need that awesome effect- if you didn't win immediately, you're likely extremely ahead of your opponent.

* In the board game ''TabletopGame/{{Risk}}'', the player who controls the whole of Asia gets a bonus of 7 battalions per turn, the largest bonus in the game. This might be useful save for the fact that you almost certainly don't need the bonus if you are capable of successfully holding Asia for a turn (with its many border provinces).

** Many weapons fall under the AwesomeButImpractical category as well. Melee weapons, for example- a hatchet does great damage for most mechs, but to use it you've got to be adjacent to your opponent, and they know you're packing a hatchet. All too often the amount of tonnage devoted to packing one just ends up as dead weight that could have been used for longer ranged lasers or missiles. Another good example is the Hypervelocity Autocannon: better range than standard autocannons of the same damage potential, but they're also heavier (a real problem in a game in which weight is the main weakness of ballistic weapons relative to energy- and missile-based ones already), generate more heat, and have a 1-in-36 chance of [[MadeOfExplodium blowing up]] each time they're fired.

* ''TabletopGame/Warhammer 40K'' lives, breathes and shits this trope. All the time.

* ''TabletopGame/Warhammer 40K lives, breathes and shits this trope. All the time.

* The Baneblade superheavy tank in ''TabletopGame/{{Warhammer 40000}}'' looks absolutely sweet and its stats on paper are overwhelmingly awesome. After all, it's ready to unleash [[VideoGame/DawnOfWar ELEVEN BARRELS OF HELL!]] However, the sheer ridiculous points cost means that the opponent can field a much larger force, with all the dedicated anti-tank weaponry needed to make the Baneblade into eleven mountains of scrap metal.

* The ''[[BritsWithBattleships HMS Dreadnought]]'' from the ''Pirates Constructible Strategy Game''; it possesses five masts and five cannons that hit on a 4+ die roll, and these cannot be eliminated until all of its masts have been shot away. The drawbacks? 26 point cost (when most games run 40 point fleets) and slower than a glacier when sent out with no crew. Giving it a captain and a helmsman will tack on 5 more points, bringing the total cost to 31 points. While it might have a chance of doing some damage, if its sunk, captured or wrecked, then half the player's fleet is gone.