History GameBreaker / RealTimeStrategy

*** The GLA terrorist on a bike, Terrorists can OHKO a tank, their weakness is supposed to be that theyr're not much faster than regular infantry. Putting them on a bike lets them jump cliffs, go faster and generally make your life a pain. It gets turned UpToEleven by the Bomb general, who can build them with the terrorist on top by standard, make them cheaper, and more powerful.
*** The US Aurora Bomber, which is literally invincible until it drops it's bomb, the bomber can literally be used in groups to completely eliminate anti air before blowing the entire base to kingdom come. Gets turned UpToEleven with the Superweapon general's Alpha auoroa, which is 20% cheaper and comes with a more powerful fuel air bomb.

*** The Chinese overlord tank which is the obligatory Mammoth {{Expy}} who's counters are supposed to be aircraft and rocket-wielding infantry, both of which are negated by sticking a gattling gun on top of it which also lets it detect stealth, It get's turned UpToEleven with the tank general's Emperor Overlord, who comes with the self healing propaganda tower by standard issue and can build a gattling cannon as well. The main issue balancing them is very slow speed and average attack range and the expense of the [[GatlingGood minigun]].

*** There's the extremely broken French subfaction, which came with the Grand Cannon, a huge defensive artillery piece which could destroy any enemy in the game with ease. As air units, it's only counter, were rare and underpowered, a French player could simply slowly creep his base towards the enemies under the constant protection of his cannons, until he was shelling the enemy base.

*** The Black Hand gains the Purifier Warmech, which was suppose to be a primitive version of the Avatar. In theory it's a costlier Avatar with a built-in flame thrower in lieu of the upgrading ability. While it resolves the Avatar's initial problem of not being able to deal with infantry, it also made the Purifier completely immune to it's hard counter: commandos. On top of that, the Black Hand has the Purifying Flame upgrade, which allowed all their flame-based weapons to deal extra damage to vehicles (normally fire damage deal almost negligible damage). Because the flame thrower is programmed to fire without the unit needing to target, a group of 6 Purifiers can literally walk right through the opponent's base, torching anything short of flying aircrafts without so much as raising their arm-mounted lasers.

** Antiair towers pretty much make all flying units useless.

*** The Chinese overlord tank which is the obligatory Mammoth {{Expy}} who's counters are supposed to be aircraft and rocket-wielding infantry, both of which are negated by sticking a gattling gun on top of it which also lets it detect stealth, It get's turned UpToEleven with the tank general's Emperor Overlord, who comes with the self healing propaganda tower by standard issue and can build a gattling cannon as well. The main issue balancing them somewhat is very slow speed and average attack range.

*** In space, the Rebels have Y-Wings, which can disable Imperial ships and space stations with only a few shots from their ion cannon special ability (even Star Destroyers) leaving them to be destroyed at leisure. While the disabling effect is temporary, a little time is all that is needed to destroy a crippled ship, or at least damage it to the point where it can't contribute to the battle anymore. Theoretically speaking, Imperial capital ships can spawn TIE fighter squadrons to protect themselves from Y-wings, but only 2 squadrons of fighters can spawn from a Star Destroyer at any given time (only 1 for other ships) and these are easily dealt with by the far-superior X-wing squadrons and anti-fighter/bomber corvettes. Cheap, low-tech, and contributing little to the unit capacity limit, Y-wings and X-wings can swarm in battle and they can be built almost anywhere. On paper, Tartan Patrol Cruisers cut through them easily, but with half as many cannons as the Rebel equivalent (4 instead of 8) having them divert power to weapons is almost a necessity, though this means less power to their shields which in turn means they can be quickly destroyed more quickly. All Rebel frigates and capital ships also have the ability to divert power to shields, which means that a Rebel frigate can the combined firepower of the Imperial fleet to be destroyed, and Rebel capital ships with this ability activated might as well be temporarily invincible. The Imperial counter to his ability is TIE bombers whose torpedoes can go past shields, but only a handful are deployed at a time (1 squadron per imperial frigate or capital ship, for a maximum of 6 squadrons since a maximum of 6 3-point frigates can be deployed at the 20-point cap) which can be easily destroyed by X-wings and corvettes. And this is even before the Ion Cannon comes into play: a ground-based structure that means the Imperials will have at least 1 of their ships (always their most powerful one) disabled for the entire battle; the Ion Cannon effect is temporary, but the recharge rate is faster than the duration meaning either multiple ships will be disabled at any given time (if the Rebel changes targets between shots) or that a single ship will be stun-locked for the entire battle if they focus on only one ship.
*** On the ground, the Rebels have Plex Soldiers, T4-B tanks, Airspeeders, and artillery spotters. Airspeeders are fast and as one of the only 3 flying units in the entire game (besides bombers on bombing runs are called and Boba Fett when using a special ability) can attack all Imperial ground units with impunity besides AT-AA walkers, which are overspecialized (useless against almost anything else besides Airpseeders) and tend to take considerable damage even while fighting the one unit they were made to counter. In addition, the ability to deploy tow cables to tie up and trip AT-ATs means that the single most powerful Imperial ground unit can be take out in seconds by a single Airspeeder. While mid-late tech, even a single squadron (3 Airspeeders) can wreck havoc, and the Rebels on higher difficulties tend to swarm them in land battles. The Rebel Plex Soldiers are also a major pain for any Imperial player. Cheap, equipped with powerful rockets, and available at the lowest tech-level, Plex Soldiers are a solid and reliable counter for every Imperial ground vehicle up to and including AT-ATs, remaining a crucial unit from the very start to the very end of the game to which the Imperials have no easy equivalent or counter. Imperial infantry theoretically take care of them, but T2-B light tanks (another cheap low-tech unit) with regenerating shields in turn take care of Imperial infantry (it takes around 2 full companies of infantry firing constantly to gradually wear down the shields of a ''single'' T2-B tank, whereas a single company of these tanks has 5 of them), and this is before late-game vehicles and tech literally roll over Imperial infantry, which brings us to T4-B heavy tanks. They can switch between lasers that melt [[MightyGlacier AT-ATs]] and shield-penetrating missiles. They have absolutely no viable Zann Consortium counter except Rancors and hero units (Zann infantry are supposed to be able to take them, especially since they can't be run over, but the missiles do too much damage for the infantry to be cost-effective). T4-Bs can take out turrets and even shielded structures from outside turret range. The result of this and the above Zann balancing issues is that the Empire gets positively destroyed by the Consortium and to a lesser extent the Rebels, the Rebels can only stop the Consortium later on, and the Consortium ends up powerless if they don't stop the Rebels in time. And finally, Rebel artillery spotters have the innocuous ability to do a "sensor ping", revealing a small area of the map. This seems minor, but you can do this regardless of how far away the spotter unit is away from where you click, so you can essentially keep your units in a strong defensive position, do sensor pings all over the map until you find enemy units or bases and then call in infinitely-reusable bombing runs until they're all dust. Although, considering you will only have bombing runs when assaulting a planet, this is really just overpowered on offense.

** On the Rebel side: T4-B tanks. They can switch between lasers that melt [[MightyGlacier AT-ATs]] and shield-penetrating missiles. They have absolutely no viable Zann Consortium counter except Rancors and hero units (Zann infantry are supposed to be able to take them, especially since they can't be run over, but the missiles do too much damage for the infantry to be cost-effective). T4-Bs can take out turrets and even shielded structures from outside turret range. The result of this and the above Zann balancing issues is that the Empire gets positively destroyed by the Consortium and to a lesser extent the Rebels, the Rebels can only stop the Consortium later on, and the Consortium ends up powerless if they don't stop the Rebels in time.

* In ''VideoGame/EvilGenius'', enemy agents [[YouCantThwartStageOne won't show up in your island before you reach the first objective]]. Therefore, if you build enough lockers to hold 100 [[{{Mooks}} construction workers]], get 100 of them, send them all overseas to steal money, and leave the game running for at least 2 hours, you'll end up with a strongroom holding at least... [[AustinPowers *Pinky raise*]] ...''Three '''Million''' Dollars''!

* ''VideoGame/{{Achron}}'' has a major problem with air units in general. Air units are supposed to be balanced by their high cost and frailty. However, when massed, air is much more powerful then ground units can possibly be, because air units can stack up in the sky, creating a rolling wall of death that will focus tons of damage on anything in its way. By contrast, ground units are limited by the amount of space on the ground, so you can't have many focus on one point. Also, air units are several times as fast as ground units and don't have to worry about terrain obstacles, so a single death ball and threaten the entire map and fly circles around their supposed counters. If they are outmatched, they can quickly retreat to heal or attack somewhere else.

* In the first two installments of the ''VideoGame/WarlordsBattlecry'' series, a character who was created for the campaign mode could not take part in skirmishes (and receive experience for it) until they finished said mode and exported their user data. In the third installment, these two modes were integrated (meaning skirmish matches could be played independently using the same campaign hero), letting a savvy player set up matches against ridiculously-hard AI opponents who had little to no resources, then reap hundreds of XP points in a short time. By combining this with a few upgrade points pumped into the the Knight Lord skill for the Knight class, a player could conceivably start a campaign mode tens of levels higher than the initial difficulty, and (by spending all starting XP on Knights) have a posse of bodyguards who will ravage anything and everything in their way. Beating the campaign then becomes trivial; it's possible to use a Knight Hero with a handful of Knights to clear out an entire map using this method (even on hard difficulties).

* ''VideoGame/StarTrekArmada 2'' gives the Borg a huge game-breaker: The fusion cube, in which 8 regular cubes are merged into one giant cube which has an insane amount of firepower, and can pretty much wipe the map on its own. But that's not the best part! The Borg also have the tactical cube, which is basically a regular cube on steroids with armor plating and super-charged weapons, and 8 of those can be merged into the unholy Tactical Fusion Cube! If you build a Tactical Fusion Cube, you're pretty much guaranteed to win that scenario. And just to put icing on the cake, a FC/TFC is not especially expensive to build.

* Many people consider the King Tiger in ''VideoGame/CompanyOfHeroes'' to be this. It's a one time use unit that drains 2000 manpower over the next few minutes after being fielded. It's also slow. However, it has tons of health, is heavily armored, can be called in at a moments notice, does not require you to 'pay' to field it, and and damage done to it can be repaired. It is essentially a supertank that you can call in for 'free' (you don't need to save up for it) and can be added to your existing army to give you a massive edge over the other player. The other player will need to field lots of AT Weapons to take it down, but these are costly and take time to make, and ontop of that, he still has to deal with your existing army while trying to set up and defend these AT Weapons.

* ''VideoGame/Constructor''

Mage-Bombs were fearsome in multi-player campaigns too. If the enemy was a Human player, the only way to ensure defense against this tactic was to use your own army to wall off your base. One false move, and a mage would be inside of your base and your workers would be dead in seconds. If your goldmine was within 12 spaces of a Mage, then the Mage/Death Knight does not even have to enter your base.

*** Additionally, the "Mage-Bomb" tactic is one strategy that can be game-breaking in the single-player campaign; If you're human, it involves making a [[GlassCannon Mage]] invisible and then sending that invisible Mage who can cast Blizzard into the enemy's gold supply lines and then raining a deadly ice storm upon the line of workers harvesting gold. It is devastating, if not decisive against the enemy's army production. Playing as Orc, the same strategy is done with Death Knights, and an Invulnerability & Haste spell cast upon the caster.

*** One Russian journalist summed it best: "Five Mammoth Tanks destroy everything. Ten Mammoth Tanks destroy completely everything."

*** One Russian journalist summe it best: "Five Mammoth Tanks destroy everything. Ten Mammoth Tanks destroy completely everything."

* Many people consider the King Tiger in ''CompanyOfHeroes'' to be this. It's a one time use unit that drains 2000 manpower over the next few minutes after being fielded. It's also slow. However, it has tons of health, is heavily armored, can be called in at a moments notice, does not require you to 'pay' to field it, and and damage done to it can be repaired. It is essentially a supertank that you can call in for 'free' (you don't need to save up for it) and can be added to your existing army to give you a massive edge over the other player. The other player will need to field lots of AT Weapons to take it down, but these are costly and take time to make, and ontop of that, he still has to deal with your existing army while trying to set up and defend these AT Weapons.

** Obersoldaten used to come with their [=LMG34=] for free, and in general their combat effectiveness was once at a state commonly derogatorily likened by players to that of action heroes or [[TheTerminator Terminators]].

* The first ''VideoGame/{{Age of Empires|I}}'' game had the Horse Archers. They can move fast, do a ton of damage, and have a range longer than anything except upgraded Priests and certain siege weapons. The only downside is that they're expensive to make and can't take much damage...at least, not until you upgrade them to [[UpToEleven Heavy Horse Archers]].

* In the game ''VideoGame/StarControl3'', the race of Doogs starts out an enemy, but can be converted into friends early in the game. Their ships are maneuverable, relatively fast, have a short-range cannon which can auto-fire on nearby ships, AND can quickly regenerate damage. No other enemy ship in the game comes close to challanging a Doog ship, making basically every battle after you get a Doog ship a matter of selecting the Doog ship and blowing up the enemy ship.
* ''StarControl 2'' will try to keep you in Earth's solar system until you gather the PlotCoupons with hordes of tough Slylandro probes. Fortunately, there's a Spathi ship lying nearby that's just ''perfect'' for killing them and gathering resources by the thousand before the game story hardly begins.

* In the game ''StarControl 3'', the race of Doogs starts out an enemy, but can be converted into friends early in the game. Their ships are maneuverable, relatively fast, have a short-range cannon which can auto-fire on nearby ships, AND can quickly regenerate damage. No other enemy ship in the game comes close to challanging a Doog ship, making basically every battle after you get a Doog ship a matter of selecting the Doog ship and blowing up the enemy ship.

*** The Chinese overlord tank which is the obligatory Mammoth {{Expy}} who's counters are supposed to be aircraft and rocket-wielding infantry, both of which are negated by sticking a gattling gun on top of it which also lets it detect stealth, It get's turned UpToEleven with the tank general's Emperor Overlord, who comes with the self healing propaganda tower by standard issue and can build a gattling cannon as well.

* In the first two installments of the ''Warlords Battlecry'' series, a character who was created for the campaign mode could not take part in skirmishes (and receive experience for it) until they finished said mode and exported their user data. In the third installment, these two modes were integrated (meaning skirmish matches could be played independently using the same campaign hero), letting a savvy player set up matches against ridiculously-hard AI opponents who had little to no resources, then reap hundreds of XP points in a short time. By combining this with a few upgrade points pumped into the the Knight Lord skill for the Knight class, a player could conceivably start a campaign mode tens of levels higher than the initial difficulty, and (by spending all starting XP on Knights) have a posse of bodyguards who will ravage anything and everything in their way. Beating the campaign then becomes trivial; it's possible to use a Knight Hero with a handful of Knights to clear out an entire map using this method (even on hard difficulties).
* In early versions of BrutalLegend, an Ironheade player who spammed fire barons was virtually unbeatable. Fire baron spamming was so overpowered that it nearly killed the game's online multiplayer community. Eventually Double Fine released a patch that gave fire barons a much-needed {{Nerf}}.

* The Noble Werewolf from the final {{Majesty}} 2 expansion is easily the most powerful hero ever seen in a Majesty game. Nobody else even comes close. By the time an average hero would get around 1k HP the Werewolf has 4-5 times as much, making them extremely difficult to kill. They also get ridiculous health regeneration and a large array of conjuration skills and powerful melee attacks that allow them to simply wade into a crowd of enemies and wreck total havoc. What really makes them devastating, though, is how easy they are to create compared to other top tier units- you only need a level 2 palace and a decent amount of gold to start recruiting them. The standard Human faction really has nothing that can compare.

* {{Achron}} has a major problem with air units in general. Air units are supposed to be balanced by their high cost and frailty. However, when massed, air is much more powerful then ground units can possibly be, because air units can stack up in the sky, creating a rolling wall of death that will focus tons of damage on anything in its way. By contrast, ground units are limited by the amount of space on the ground, so you can't have many focus on one point. Also, air units are several times as fast as ground units and don't have to worry about terrain obstacles, so a single death ball and threaten the entire map and fly circles around their supposed counters. If they are outmatched, they can quickly retreat to heal or attack somewhere else.