Lets Play / cosmicPostman

my dude, Assistant CO of Orange Star (artwork by @miss_akat)

“My name has been lost to history, but these days, they call me my dude.”

cosmicPostman, otherwise known as Post, is a Let’s Player on the Something Awful forums, known in particular for his two completed Let’s Plays of Advance Wars and Advance Wars 2: Black Hole Rising. The Let’s Plays are most notable for naming and characterizing every single fodder soldier in the game.

Unlike its sister series, Fire Emblem, Advance Wars uses nameless fodder units for its strategic combat, and the game expects the player to sacrifice as many of them as necessary to attain victory. cosmicPostman flatly refused to sacrifice units (for the most part), and played every mission trying to minimize casualties. He also ended every update with a support between two characters, just like Fire Emblem often does.

The other main draw of Let’s Play Advance Wars is the charismatic, chaotic and outspoken character adopted by cosmicPostman during updates, known in-game as “my dude”. This was further complemented in Let’s Play Advance Wars 2 with the addition of time-traveling police officer Ruin, who helps commentate and serves as a comic foil to my dude’s shenanigans.

For tropes about the Advance Wars series, please see the Nintendo Wars page.

Let’s Play Advance Wars can be found here. Let’s Play Advance Wars 2 can be found here.

On September 24, 2021, cosmicPostman began the Let's Play of Advance Wars: Dual Strike, set within the LPAW continuity. Completed a little over a year later, it can be found here.

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cosmicPostman’s Let’s Plays contain examples of:

• 11th-Hour Ranger: The final character to join any team in LPAW2 is Tina, who doesn't show up until the Green Earth Factory mission, the final stage before the fight gets taken to Black Hole. Their appearance is an equal shocker for both my dude and their fellow Orange Star soldiers.
  Lucy: Tina! Oh my god, Tina's back! Give this battle everything you've got, folks! There's NO chance that we can lose now!
• Aborted Arc: Dave, arguably. After getting revenge on Blue Moon, Dave is left bereft and purposeless. Before it can be developed further, however, Dave ends up staying with the army and driving their medium tanks, claiming that he got a promotion as his employer’s last-ditch effort to stop him from leaving the army. His purposelessness is never brought up again, and seems to have been dropped entirely.
• The Ace:
  • It's noted that, by Wars World's standards, Sensei might just be the single most capable CO of the bunch... when he has a mind for it.
  • Sensei is considered particularly deadly when working with Rose as his subordinate ACO, as she is herself considered to be this trope and is rapidly catching up to Sensei's level of competence. She's the only CO my dude ever fights that he cannot overcome, though Rose notes that part of this comes down to the fact that she's better than him on a technical level because she's always putting her best foot forward and can thus beat him in a friendly spar; when he has something to lose, my dude is noted to be Rose's equal.
  • Of course, my dude naturally grows into this over the course of the LPs. Beyond collecting funds and organizing his task force, Sturm takes so long to invade a second time because he intentionally waits for my dude to be out of the picture to invade in earnest, as he's aware that my dude's ability to coordinate the allied nations' top COs makes him a massive threat to Sturm's power grab.
  • Most of the cast begrudingly admit Hawke is this. Not only did he manage to capture half of Green Earth before Jess returned to give the Green Earth COs the force they needed to counterattack, Rose's whole gambit in fighting Hawke the first time comes down to her knowing he will overrun her forces and planning to set herself up as bait to buy Drake time to succeed in the mission objective. She calls him 'lucky' at one point, but it's stressed throughout the two updates fighting Hawke that Rose only isn't nervous because she doesn't allow herself to be nervous or falter.
• Ace Pilot: There’s several, but Peregrine is the most notable example in Let's Play Advance Wars 2, as she loves flying and dogfighting just for the sake of it, and is damn good at it too.
• Action Girl: Pretty much every female character, since they’re all in the army. Special mention has to go to Tina though, who truly embodies the trope.
• Action Mom: In Let's Play Advance Wars 2, Sofia and Tina, both of whom are proud mothers who participate in the war with Black Hole.
• Adaptational Explanation: Though it's noted that Colin's inexperience does play a factor, as the games themselves mention in his dossier, the major reason his units fight at reduced efficiency in this narrative also comes down to the fact Colin is using his connections and talents with being frugal to get Olaf's later Dimitri's Mercenaries and the Snowbound Free Company to work for him at a massive discount. He can buy their services at a reduced price, but they're also going to fight with less morale.
• Adaptation Expansion:
  • As a narrative LP of the Wars World trio of Advance Wars games, the LPs give character and personalities to the soldiers the player fields throughout the games, massively expanding on both the world and the relationships between the countries. Also of note is that, while the original characters tend to get the lion's share of characterization, some COs from the games themselves^note most notably Nell in Let's Play Advance Wars, Sonja in Let's Play Advance Wars 2, and Max, Rachel, Hawke, Lash, and Sasha in LPAWDS also get expanded screentime, either as part of their own dedicated arcs or as major characters in the overall narrative.
  • It's hinted at at the end of the first LP and outright confirmed by Ruin in the second that each of the nations in Wars World have a different religious structure that informs some of their beliefs. One reason why Olaf and Kanbei are the leaders of their nations is that they have divine mandate backing them; Olaf's cryokinetic powers ties him in with the Incarnation, a snow deity that Blue Moon worship, so he's celebrated as a religious figure, while Kanbei is believed to come from a divine lineage. Green Earth, meanwhile, believes in a Goddess found in a Forest of Light, which many of the soldiers are fervently loyal to.
• Added Alliterative Appeal: Every character in Let's Play Advance Wars commands a squad that starts with the same letter of their name, such as the Barold Brigade or the Steve Squadron. Every. Character. This would have been impossible to keep up, and so it is no longer the case in Let's Play Advance Wars 2.
  • The notion does get brought back to an extent in LPAWDS, when my dude is unable to narrate for a chapter and so the task falls to Rose. Like Lucy's Lucy Logs in the first game^* Lucy Logs also return the part after Rose's Report, rendering them present in the third game too, Rose's narration is called the Rose Report.
• Addressing the Player: On a meta level, this is how the Let's Play Advance Wars world truly came to be; Advance Wars allows the player to input a name for their file, positioning them as an Assistant CO for the Orange Star Army in-game, who the other characters speak to. When CP decided to name his file "my dude," an entire narrative was born.
• Affectionate Nickname: The Yellow Comet girls are the most fond of this. Peregrine and Andromeda tend to go by Perry and Andy with the others, and they gave Vanessa the nickname Vanny - but she doesn't like being referred to as this.
• The Alibi: Ruin initially suspects Commander because he has no alibi for the night of Dudecon, plus he mysteriously vanished for almost a year. After some questioning, he reveals that Nell proposed, and his disappearance was because he was training Celestrian to replace him as the head of the my dudes, whilst he focusses on his life with Nell.
• All Deaths Final: Every character that dies is killed permanently, never to return. The only exceptions are Michael, who hits the eject button in his APC seconds before it explodes and Rose, who has such a knowledge of battle that she predicts her own destruction and retreats before the enemy attack. In Let's Play Advance Wars 2, the list is expanded to include Dimitri, who gets meteors dropped on him constantly and Mulligan, who can ‘take a mulligan’, meaning that every country in Advance Wars 2 has one ‘immortal’ character. The same four retain their 'immortal' status in Dual Strike, but with the caveat that being slain by Oozium would kill them for real.
• All Love Is Unrequited: Selena, towards my dude. Word of God has even compared her with the likes of Fire Emblem’s Catria or Cordelia in this regard. Notably averted in the case of my dude himself, though, who actually ends up with Nell by the end of the Let's Play.
• Ambidextrous Sprite: Happens with the narrative-exclusive characters occasionally, with one standout example being The Director, whose shattered mask canonically covers the right side of her face, but the small handful of times she's seen facing right (most characters are seen facing left), the mask changes sides.
• An Aesop: Each of the four campaigns in Let's Play Advance Wars 2 have a few overarching plots in the background. Usually, each one will have a moral lesson;
  • It's better to tell the truth than keep silent out of respect for a promise if staying silent actively harms you physically or emotionally. Dimitri wanted to maintain Wanda's pride by not revealing that she gave him the only medical supplies they had when both were dying, but it led to most of Olaf's Mercenaries breaking away from Dimitri out of fear he had taken control of the unit through underhanded means. It's only after he tells the truth that his life starts to turn around.
  • Everyone has something they're good at, and is potentially worth the time and effort getting to know. Isolating them will only lead to hurt feelings and a lack of cohesion. Rose goes out of the way to befriend Andromeda, who has a difficult time speaking properly to the point she's grown up friendless, and her life is made all the brighter as a result, while Andromeda ends up happy.
  • It's commendable to put your all into making a relationship work, but if you smother your partner and try to control their lives and who they can talk to, you risk isolating not only them, but yourself. Adelaide and Sebastian end up breaking things off because Adelaide tries too hard to make their relationship work, which only causes the relationship to turn toxic. They become much better, happier people once they start actively making friends with other people.
• And Now for Someone Completely Different: Several parts across the first and third games leave my dude unable or unwilling to do the narration for a part or two, causing the task of narrating to fall to one of the soldiers, who each have their own style of approaching it; for example, Lucy writes her Lucy Logs in a dear diary style, while Rose's Rose Reports are straight to the point analysis... reports of the battle.
• And This Is for...: Dave’s speech at the end of the Blue Moon arc names every single deceased soldier during the first 13 parts, and he claims that his victory is for them.
• Arc Words: In Let's Play Advance Wars, it’s “Until We Meet Again”, which my dude and Nell say to one another when Nell has to leave. These words keep my dude going, becoming his mantra. It’s also the name of the credits song, which is heavily implied to be sung from Nell’s point of view.
• Arch-Enemy: By Let's Play Advance Wars 2, Sturm and my dude are mutually this to each other.
  my dude: Sturm. My old nemesis.
  Sturm: So long as he isn't with them, they have no hope of defeating me.
• Armor-Piercing Question: In Part 30 of LPAWDS, a barracks scene, Lucy hits Iago with one of these and it causes even someone as cold and mean as them to back off in silence.
  Lucy: What do you love, Iago? What are you fighting for?
• Ascended Extra: Rin, in spades. Goes from being a generic lander unit to winning Orange Star's Finest Hour popularity poll.
• Awesome Ego: Rose Kuroda will have you know that she is an unstoppable strategic force who cannot be overcome. This turns out to not be hyperbole. Short of only a smattering of the actual COs, she is far and away the resident wunderkind of strategy in Wars World.
• Back in the Saddle: my dude himself during the Black Hole arc of Let's Play Advance Wars 2.
• Badass and Child Duo: Tina and Rose. Played with, in that Rose is just as much of a badass, and in some ways moreso.
• Badass Pacifist: Michael. This is even enforced in his Advance Wars 2 class selections, where all three of his classes are the support units.
• Battle Couple: Many of them form across the games;
  • Wilbert and Tina hook up about halfway into the first conflict. Averted come Let's Play Advance Wars 2, though, as the two agreed that if there was ever another conflict, Wilbert would stay home to protect their child while Tina would go out to fight for her country which is a promise she keeps near the end of the Green Earth campaign.
  • Later on, Lucy and Ingo get together. The two typically fall into a Guys Smash, Girls Shoot mechanic unless aerial combat is involved, in which Lucy, Queen of the Skies, frequently pilots bombers and fighters.
  • Following the end of the first conflict, Mulligan and Howard give things a chance.
  • Starting in Let's Play Advance Wars 2, Dimitri and Zlata come together at the climax of the Blue Moon campaign. Whenever there's grounded combat, Dimitri is liable to take over command and lead his mercenaries into battle while Zlata bides her time to deploy as a Neo Tank to finish things.
  • The tough-as-nails mercenary leader Alina gets together with the compulsive gambler Eva.
• Beleaguered Assistant: Alina isn’t the most clueless leader ever, but the Snowbound Free Company would almost certainly not function without Valeria, the cold and cynical second-in-command. Despite her constant exasperation at Alina’s antics and romantic troubles, she helps out any way she can.
• Beneath the Mask: Dave outwardly: A mission-focused (or revenge-focused, depending on timing) grump. Internally? A caring leader who watches for the wellbeing of the other Orange Star soldiers first and foremost. By Let's Play Advance Wars 2, the mask is pretty thin, especially with regards to Rin.
• The Bet: Lucy and Peregrine bet on a fighter jet race in LPAWDS, when Peregrine convinces Lucy to wager her title as Queen of the Skies, whilst she wagers Clyde, the bomber that was used to destroy the Deathray in LPAW2. The barracks update where this wager is made is literally called The Bet.
• Big Damn Heroes:
  • Sensei and Sami, during the Yellow Comet lab mission, both do their part to prevent Rin from preforming a Heroic Sacrifice; Sensei recognizes that his forces capturing properties draws enemy fire and tricks a bomber into targeting Issam, who can afford to take the hit, while Sami procs her COP before a battle copter can fire on Rin's cruiser, giving the hull just the integrity it needs to survive the incoming salvo.
  • Tina during the final battle of the Green Earth arc in Let's Play Advance Wars 2.
• Bilingual Bonus:
  • Von Panzer. Panzer is German for “tank”, and you’ll never guess what unit Von Panzer is…
  • When Harvey dies, Fleur and Fliss find comfort in one another. They repeat the phrase “nous continuons” to each other, which means “we continue” in French.
• Breaking the Fourth Wall: My dude does this several times during Let's Play Advance Wars 2, as we discover that he is fully aware that he is inside a game. Ruin constantly reminds him not to break the fourth wall for the sake of professionalism.
• Boring, but Practical: Hawke is described almost exactly as this in his introductory part.
• Bunny-Ears Lawyer: My dude himself. Despite many other peoples’ insistence that he is arrogant, outspoken, completely unsuited for high-level military roles and more, he is undoubtedly one of the best strategists in the world, and nobody disagrees with that. Even other strategic geniuses like Rose and Sonja recognise my dude as an equal.
• Call-Back:
  • LPAWDS features several to the prior games, LPAW1 in particular. This comes to a head in part 11, the first time Black Hole uses the Tag Mechanic, where in the span of one part:
    • Lash, while explaining the Tag Mechanic to my dude (and CP/the audience), explicitly cites Lightning Strike as my dude's big weakness. Sure enough in LPAW1 the vs. Eagle maps were among the most casualty heavy.
    • Julian mentions that Ingo is the brother of the fallen Eric... which nobody ever brings up due to it being a touchy subject for Ingo. Indeed, Eric dies in LPAW1 on screen.
    • This is the first map in LPAWDS where Lucy gets to deploy as her main class of Bomber. As she deploys, she momentarily refers to herself as Bomber C-0820, the designation given to her by one of the members of LPAW1's Orange Star High Command.
  • In part 53, Rose remarks that she thought to check the weater around the Black Obelisk's location because her time spent as a detective in Yellow Comet trained her to look out for small details. This was actually her deep cover in the first game, where she was tracking Baltazar.
• Casual Danger Dialogue: During the first Sturm mission of Let's Play Advance Wars 2, my dude needs sacrificial lamb units to bait out Black Cannon fire so he can expedite the process of having Grit's rockets and artillery blow them up without being targeted themselves. This means buying multiple Neo Tanks and standing them in range of Black Cannons to get shot at. The three Neo Tank riders take it well and even start to join up in the one good tank by the end of the proceedings.
  Rose: "Goodness, this is tight lodgings. Selena, Tina, how are you faring?"
  Tina: "Perfectly fine! I think there's a huge-ass cannon pointed our way, though. Ready to get blown to pieces?"
  Selena: "Alongside you two? I was born ready."
• Catchphrase: My dude, becoming sick of trying to find ways of saying that the enemy soldiers have captured a property, settles on “this dick captures a property”, which he uses constantly from that point on. He also teaches Ruin to say it in Let's Play Advance Wars 2. By LPAWDS, he's keeping a tally of how many times a dick captures a property.
  my dude: I don’t know how many variations of “this dick captures a property” I can write before I just throw myself out of a window.
• Character Development: The poster child of this has to be Ingo, who arrives as a carefree bright-eyed soldier, became distant and cold following the deaths of Eric and Bill, before finally casting off the grim reality of war to become chill and more approachable.
• Character Focus: In Let's Play Advance Wars 2 with regards to the COs - Sonja gets a bit more focus than the others, being involved in several barracks scenes as well as Yellow Comet's Christmas Party, and is shown having direct conversations with her soldiers during her missions in-game. In the first Let's Play, there is only one instance where a CO shows up in the barracks scenes.
  • In Dual Strike, Max is essentially a Lancer to my dude's Leader, though as the game goes on, Sasha starts to take the role from him.
• Chekhov's Gun: Clyde, the Bomber. Specifically, the manner of its construction. It's not mentioned by name at the time, but Clyde is the Bomber Peregrine used to blow up Sturm's deathray at the end of Let's Play Advance Wars 2. Lucy wins it in a bet with Peregrine halfway into LPAWDS, and flies it in the penultimate fight. Due to a small blunder on my dude's part, Lucy ends up being attacked by a Fighter. Lucy prepares herself to die, and Ingo calls out to her, but she just barely holds on. It's then brought up that Clyde was deployed for Kanbei's army, meaning it had more extensive work done on it that vastly increased its offensive and defensive capbilities.
• Child Prodigy: Rose. A masterful military tactician and detective working for the Yellow Comet government at just eight years old, she continues to get even more badass in Let's Play Advance Wars 2, becoming an Assistant CO to the Yellow Comet army, known to friends and enemies alike as the Desolate Flower and later on the Flower of Desolation. The bar continues to rise for her in Dual Strike, where by the end, my dude openly admits that she's a better strategist than he is.
• A Child Shall Lead Them: Yellow Comet plays with this in the 2nd and 3rd games. While their choices of COs are standard fare, given the narrative nature of the LPs, it's their star ACO who calls most of the shots: Rose Kuroda, age 11.
• Clingy Jealous Girl: A very apt description for Adelaide, who manipulates Sebastian into mistrusting his other friends. She has a hell of a temper whenever she finds out he’s talked to other girls on the battlefield.
• Conflicting Loyalty: Several characters are not originally from Orange Star. Cassandra and Mulligan, who come from Green Earth, apologise to Eagle whenever they have to fight him, as does Rose whenever she has to face Yellow Comet soldiers.
• Crutch Character: Wilbert, during Let's Play Advance Wars. In earlier missions, my dude essentially swears by him, but by mid- to late-game, Wilbert falls off of combat. Part of this is due to a combination of Max (whose presence nerfs indirect units) and Fog of War making him very difficult for my dude to effectively deploy.
• Cue Card: Early on in LPAW2, after my dude criticises Ruin's commentary of the battles, Ruin brings cue cards to future interviews which allow her to phrase things in a more my-dude-esque manner.
  Ruin: Then... um, give me a second.
  my dude: Are those cue cards?
  Ruin: They help me formulate sentences in the way you taught me... give me a second. Von Panzer is offended by the Black Hole infantry's mere existence and decides to fix it. With bullets.
  my dude: Yeah, there we go! Nice! I could have almost said that myself.
• Curb Stomp Cushion: my dude suffers a humbling defeat at the hands of Rose during their friendly spar, but Rose notes that he kept her incredibly nervous the entire time because one slip-up on her part would lead to a loss on her end. Additionally, though it was ultimately the first front that mattered, my dude was on the path to securing the second front clean.
• Custom Uniform: It’s revealed in the character descriptions in the Barracks document that many of the soldiers take liberties with their uniforms. Lucy goes so far as to wear a skirt instead of standard-issue slacks. This is taken to a natural extreme with Fleur and Kira, who wear dresses instead of their regular uniform.
• The Dead Have Names: In Let's Play Advance Wars, some of the soldiers remark with fondness that my dude, their new ACO, went to the effort of memorising their names. Of course, this makes it hit much harder when they die, but every single fallen soldier is categorised and honoured in the credits video for the Let's Play.
• Deadpan Snarker: Ruin embodies this trope, especially in contrast to my dude’s silliness.
• Death Seeker: In Let's Play Advance Wars 2, we learn that Wanda had a degenerative disease, and wanted to die on the battlefield instead of wasting away, which is why all of her strategies and plans were so incredibly suicidal for everyone involved.
• Discard and Draw: Rin does this with her class options between LPAW2 and LPAWDS, going from pure naval units (Lander, Cruiser and Submarine, Lander also having been her LPAW class) to pure land units (Infantry, Anti-Air, Tank and Artillery). Foreshadowed in her ending card in LPAW2, which mentions her transferring to the ground division to be with her friends more.
• Does Not Like Guns: my dude actually notes that he could never imagine carrying or firing a gun when he sees Grit regularly carries a revolver on hand. Played for laughs, as he's watching a recording of Grit with a gun set up by the woman interrogating him and tries to commiserate with her on the point.
  my dude: Wow, Grit just straight up will cap a bitch. I could never carry a gun. I don't get it. You know what I mean?
  Ruin: *Beat* ...No, I don't. Because I am a, you know, police officer, and I carry a gun at all times.
• Don't Ask: Effectively Ruin’s response when my dude inquires as to her father.
• Double-Meaning Title: Part 8: Meet Mulligan in LPAW is the part that introduces Mulligan, a new character who focusses a lot on second chances. The end of Part 7 was a failed mission, and Part 8 is about doing the mission again - or, you might say, taking a mulligan.
• The Dulcinea Effect: Alina agrees to fight for the rest of the war against Black Hole, despite only being contracted for one battle, simply because she falls in love with Eva, one of the Blue Moon soldiers, after meeting her once. Her Beleaguered Assistant, Valeria, is fully aware of how ridiculous an idea this is, but goes along with it anyway.
• Early-Bird Cameo: During The Final Battle in LPAW1, Andy and my dude are backed by Grit and Eagle, and with them soldiers of Blue Moon and Green Earth. Though only one (Dimitri) gets any real characterization in LPAW1, all of the Blue Moon and Green Earth soldiers go on to become proper party members of their respective nations during the sequels. Even the lone casualty gets brought up during a Barracks Scene.
• Early-Installment Weirdness: A few examples in the early parts of LPAW. Each single unit on the map in the game represents five of that soldier, as CP discovers when he's playing the game. He decides that they all share a name, so the first few parts reference clones of different characters, with five Steves, five Daves, five Colins and so on. This is dropped quite quickly as characterisation of specific units became more important.
• Earn Your Happy Ending: Subverted with Hell. He claims that by killing and replacing Twee, planning and executing everything perfectly, after all of the pain he has suffered, he earned his chance to replace Twee. Ruin sets him straight with a “The Reason You Suck” Speech.
• Ejection Seat: How Michael's functional immortality is justified; when his vehicle is destroyed, he just activates this.
• The Engineer: Zlata, who loves working on various kinds of tanks. At the end of the Blue Moon arc of Let's Play Advance Wars 2, she even tells her new boyfriend Dimitri that tanks are more important than he is.

• Fantasy Counterpart Culture: Hinted at in the Advance Wars games themselves, it is developed further in Let's Play Advance Wars, which contains more worldbuilding in general. The names of the soldiers from each region are usually indicative of the country it’s supposed to represent.
  • In particular:
    • Orange Star is Fantasy America.
    • Blue Moon is Fantasy Russia.
    • Yellow Comet is Fantasy Japan.
    • Green Earth is Fantasy Germany.
  • This is somewhat subverted near the end of Let's Play Advance Wars 2, where we find out a little more about some of the cultures in the countries. Blue Moon is mentioned to worship a being called the Incarnation who brings winter with him, whilst Green Earth believes in a Goddess who resides in the Forest of Light. Yellow Comet’s religion is implied to be similar to Christianity, and it is suggested that the Emperor rules through the Divine Right of Kings.
• First Girl Wins: Tina is the first female character to show up, and she’s the first to develop a relationship. Furthermore, in-game, Nell is the first female character my dude meets, and so of course she's the one that my dude ends up with.
• Flat "What": My dude gets one of these in the final battle of Dual Strike when he expects the enemy to use their Super CO Power on his force of invading tanks... only to have it hit a bunch of weak ranged units at the back instead.
• Flirting Under Fire: The characters are constantly chatting during combat. Wilbert and Tina, both before and after their relationship begins, flirt on the battlefield. In Let's Play Advance Wars 2, Adelaide flatly refuses to allow Sebastian to do this with other girls.
• Fog of War: It wouldn't be an Intelligent Systems series without it... and my dude HATES it. Even in AW2, not even listening to a recount of Sonja being the allied CO can curb his hate for it. He has a subconscious reason for his hate, revealed in LPAWDS and detailed here in Hidden Depths.
  my dude: OH YOU’RE FUCKING KIDDING ME.
  Ruin: You’ve encountered this type of fog before?
  my dude: I made a meme to summarise how I feel right now.
  Ruin: ...When and how did you make this? You’re handcuffed and sat at a desk.
• Foreshadowing:
  • During Ruin's retelling of Test of Time from Black Hole Rising, one of my dude's comments causes Ruin to remark that 'Every anecdote you tell me about your past campaign suggests more and more that you're lying about being the best tactician in Wars World.' It's eventually revealed that, though they are typically dead-even in terms of skill, Rose Kuroda is my dude's better as a tactician, beating him in a friendly sparring match during Dual Strike.
  • Every LP has Selena recount her life story at some point; she was considered gifted from a young age and was set to earn a Masters degree (and was even being fast-tracked towards a PhD), but rebelled against her family out of a desire to get them to stop showing preferential treatment towards her and actually try supporting Selena's younger sister, Lena. ^note And, as Selena bitterly notes, Lena was literally given the name Lena to signify she was a fragment of Selena's potential in their parents' eyes. Though she always sent letters, Selena never recieved replies. Her backstory is the only one gone into in great detail for every LP, but is especially poignant in LPAWDS, where it's detailed in the very first narrative section. Clearly, something about her story is meant to be important. It turns out that Lena is actually an important figure in LPAWDS... as Black Hole's equivalent to my dude, Rose, Vanessa, and Dimitri as an ACO.
  • During the first naval map, Lash has Selena dead to rights, but directs her units to take shots at other units nearby, sparing Selena's submarine. Lash even specifically calls out having them not finish Selena off, which seems rather odd. Though Selena recently stopped sending letters home, Black Hole wasn't aware of it at the time of that map - they still believed her to be an unintentional source of intel.
• Fourth-Date Marriage: Played somewhat straight with Wilbert and Tina. They get together in their third barracks conversation, but they have been flirting consistently for many parts and the readers were dying for Wilbert to finally ask her out.
• Framing Device: Let's Play Advance Wars 2 is framed as a series of interviews between my dude and Ruin, with the events of the actual game having already taken place some months prior. It is revealed near the end of the Green Earth arc that my dude and Ruin have now caught up to the present, just in time for my dude to return to the world of Advance Wars and defeat Sturm again.

• Freudian Trio: A couple sets exist.
  • Orange Star's "Big Three" - Id Dave, who is the most likely to jump to physical means to resolve conflict, Superego Michael, who is quite literally a pacifist, and is quite insightful/rational, and Ego Alfonse, the midpoint of the two.
  • Yellow Comet's "Tactician Triad" - Id Vanessa, who is hot blooded and passionate, Superego Rose, quite possibly the most stoic member of the entire cast, and Ego Sonja, the CO who keeps both Vanessa and Rose in check when needed.
• Funny Foreigner: Von Panzer has a thick accent, saying replacing ‘w’ with ‘v’ and coming out with German words every now and then. Fleur lapses into French now and again, though there were several commenters debating on the accuracy of her French.
• Fun with Acronyms: Von Panzer is described by my dude as the MVP, which he claims stands for “Most Von Panzer”. We later find out that Von Panzer’s canonical first name is Mathis, which means his initials are quite literally MVP.
• Gambit Roulette: Rose is so militarily intelligent that her abilities are rumoured to be close to precognition; she can recognise her own death before it happens and take actions to avoid it. This is taken to even greater extremes in Let's Play Advance Wars 2 when she claims to Hawke that even luck itself is factored into her planning and therefore no amount of luck could overcome her. This gets taken to its ultimate extreme in Dual Strike where she successfully defeats my dude in a friendly spar.
  Rose: You're... really pushing me now. I have already calculated the steps needed to beat you.
• Gameplay and Story Integration:
  • In several parts, my dude inserts commentary between character dialogue which fits in perfectly with the conversation, as if he was an actual interlocutor. Dual Strike takes this a step further, in which my dude is not only inserted, but also responded to as if he'd been there all along. CP acknowledges this with italic dialogue in scenes being from the game proper, while not italicized is my dude and edits to accomodate him.
  • Taken a step further with perhaps the most glorious use of this trope during the Yellow Comet test fight. After the proper mission, Rose arrives on the scene and expresses a desire to test herself against my dude. What follows is a playthrough of the same mission, in its hard mode incarnation, with CP hand-editing the screenshots to remove the COs from the map and turn it into a pure "Rose vs. my dude" battle.
  • During Ring of Fire, Lena remarks that all of the vehicles she is proficient in operating (I.E., the vehicles CP will deploy them as for all the missions) are ones meant to counter her sister, Selena. Sure enough, her usage of Cruisers hard-counters Submarines, Selena's favored vehicle, (and the one Selena is most known for using) and Lena enjoys deploying in Neo Tanks, as they are superior to Selena's second most used vehicle, Medium Tanks. As noted multiple times, Copters are another vehicle that gives Medium Tanks a hard time, and Selena flies a Battle Copter in the very chapter where she remarks on choosing vehicles that give Selena a hard time. Taking this even further, Lena does not have a vehicle that counters Selena in a Mega Tank, because Mega Tanks were still in development at the time Selena stopped sending Lena letters; Lena had no way of knowing Selena would use Mega Tanks, so she never figured out a counter.
• Genki Girl: A few are in the various armies;
  • Orange Star's standouts are Lucy and Rin.
  • Yellow Comet has Peregrine.
  • Green Earth's Petra is one of the most excitable members of the cast.
• Gosh Dang It to Heck!: Played straight in the game itself (it is rated E after all), but averted in Let’s Play Advance Wars, with most characters swearing frequently, my dude being the worst offender. Played straight with Lucy and Rose, who never swear.
• Girls Love Stuffed Animals: Tina has a teddy bear named Marlon, and while she herself never really shows the trope, in her 3rd support with Rose, Tina bequeaths the bear to them, and they proceed to play the trope straight, even into Let's Play Advance Wars 2.
• Graceful Loser: Hell admits defeat and surrenders quietly when Ruin comes to arrest them for the murder mystery.
  Hell: The last six months? They’ve been the best of my life.

• Has a Type: my dude notes that he has a thing for badass women, especially ones who skew gender norms and initiate. According to him, Nell proposed to him. This is a large reason why he likes Nell - she's the confident and competent commander and chief of Orange Star, capable both as a military strategist and a career woman.
• Heads I Win, Tails You Lose: In the final barracks of the Blue Moon arc of LPAW2, Alina confesses to Eva that she has feelings for her. Eva, being the gambler she is, responds to this by pulling out a coin and telling Alina that she'd flip it to see if they got together... while invoking the trope in Alina's favor. Alina, in her excitement and stress, doesn't realize that Eva is skewing things entirely in Alina's favor.
  Eva: Alright… heads, you win, and tails, I lose.
• The Heart: Michael. As a pacifist and peacemaker amongst the soldiers, he's pretty solidly the emotional heart of the army, but nowhere is this proved further than in Dual Strike when he forgives Lena for her actions and convinces the rest of the Allied Nations to accept her as one of their own. It's hinted at that this is the biggest factor in why he's Orange Star's resident immortal; though Dave, Rin, Tina, and others all do their part in keeping the Orange Star family together, Michael is in effectively everyone's friend circle and inspires them with his kindness; the Orange Star soldiers would be lost without him, thus he needs to survive.
• Heel–Face Turn: In Dual Strike, Hawke and Lash as they do in the game on its own. Immediately after them though, The Director.
• Hello, [Insert Name Here]: The protagonist goes by “my dude” for the entirety of the game. None of the characters mention this as being out of the ordinary; “my dude” is a legitimate name in Wars World, apparently.
• He-Man Woman Hater: Blue Moon's Mark is noted to have a displeasing view of military women, and especially takes issue with Ludmilla, a woman who is proud to be sexually active with many of Olaf's later Dimitri's Mercenaries. The two butt heads frequently, but Mark starts to change his tune and become more respectful once he recognizes just how much work people like Lucy and Zlata put into protecting their countries.
• Hero-Worshipper: Rin starts out as one of these for Dave, and their support chain in LPAW1 discusses and deconstructs it before reconstructing it into a genuine bond between the two.
• Heroic Comedic Sociopath: Fred. Carl is another good example, but it’s clear from his barracks conversation with Gareth that he is treated as an outcast for his insane bloodlust.
• Heroic Sacrifice: Both Dave and Rin play this at two separate points in Let's Play Advance Wars 2. Rin subverts the trope by narrowly surviving her attempt, while Dave flat-out gets rescued by Tina.
  • This is also done by Wanda, who gave Dimitri her gauze and told him to live and lead Olaf’s Mercenaries in her stead. Unfortunately, the mercenaries believed that Dimitri had stolen the gauze and left Wanda to die, and thus the group break up until Dimitri reveals the truth.
  • In the late game of Dual Strike, Abelard goes out hold-the-line style, despite Rose and Petra's protests, to maintain an advantageous position as well as protect the units behind him. Unfortunately for him, it ends up sticking. ^{In-Game Context} Abelard was a megatank being ganged up on as opposed to Black Hole's units going for the squishier units behind him near a one-tile-wide pipe seam hole. It took an entire dual strike ganging to kill him, leaving the path open for the rest of the good guys to finish the job.
• Heroic Willpower: It's believed that Von Panzer's sheer refusal to fall in battle stems from this; he believes so hard in his status as the man who can withstand any force that he actually becomes that man. It's noted during Rin's supposed last stand against Adder's copters and bombers at his lab's site suggests that Rin may just be able to draw on that power, as she narrowly survives a copter's missile salvo that should have, by all rights, sunk her cruiser.
• He's Back!: Said pretty much verbatim when my dude returns to the Advance Wars world just in time to face Sturm. Though Nell knew where he’d gone, the other troops were not sure if he was alive or dead.
• Hidden Depths: Most characters get developed in their barracks conversations, and several barracks conversations reveal that some characters actually have history together already. There are some notable ones throughout the Let's Plays, however.
  • Rose would like to remind you that, despite her hypercompetence in battle, she's no more than 11. She just doesn't get many chances to show it.
  • Dimitri’s entire backstory is revealed through his barracks scenes in Let's Play Advance Wars 2, where we find out what happened to his commander, Wanda, and why Olaf’s Mercenaries broke up in the first place.
  • Even my dude gets in on this; most would simply assume his hatred of Fog of War to be, well, a projected disdain for a Scrappy Mechanic. In Part 11 of LPAWDS he's seen talking with Sasha about it, and with her help realizes that he associates the Fog with losing soldiers, painting his disdain for the fog in a much more serious tone.
• Homoerotic Subtext: My dude is absolutely convinced that there’s tension between Grit and Olaf, to the point that he refers to them as Military Santa and Mrs. Claus. This becomes even more amusing in Let's Play Advance Wars 2 when Colin joins the group, as my dude finds it hilarious that since he left, they’ve adopted a child.
• I Just Want to Be You: This is why Hell murdered Twee. Considering the sheer difference in tone between Disgaea and Animal Crossing, it’s hard to blame Hell for it.
• I Know You Know I Know: A huge part of what led to my dude's first canonical defeat at the hands of Rose was the weaponization of this trope. ^{Here's how (spoilers for LPAWDS part 25)} Rose is known to have Battle Copter as her primary unit class. My dude knows this. He also knows Rose is a fighter and would take to the field herself. Rose knows this. Rose's initial units include an absolute swath of Battle Copters, which she expects my dude to devote considerable effort to dismantling to remove her. He does, and this is where she gets him: by deploying as the lone copy of her secondary class, Medium Tank, meaning every single Battle Copter my dude spends time and resources dismantling is but a decoy. My dude's Oh, Crap! when this sinks in is priceless.
• Identically Named Group: The my dudes from all different universes get together in the same sub-dimension for a party every year called Dudecon. To tell each other apart, they all have nicknames based on the game they originate from - Commander, Persona, Professor, Dragonborn, etc. Sword also heavily implies that the my dudes vote to choose each other’s nicknames.
  Sword: I’m from the Galar region. I think my nickname was voted as being Sword?
• Idiosyncratic Episode Naming:
  • Not too obvious at first, but every even-numbered part of Let's Play Advance Wars features the name of a character. Several parts also take song lyrics as their titles, such as “Part 11 - Oh The Weather Outside Is Frightful”, “Part 15 - Shot Through The Heart”, “Part 20 - Every Rose Has Its Thorn” and “Part 23 - We Are The Ones Who Will Never Be Broken”.
    • This is referenced in Let's Play Advance Wars 2 near the end with “Interview 47 - Let’s See How Far We’ve Come”. This is potentially because the final few parts of the Let's Play are done in the first Let's Play's style, without Ruin.
  • In Let's Play Advance Wars 2, the interview titles are formed of two quotes, i.e. “Interview 7 - “Sami’s Secret Agenda” (Or, “Mother Fucking Planes”)”. The first, more serious quote is from Ruin, with the second sillier one being from my dude.
• Improbable Age: Lucy pushes the boundaries of army recruit ages by being just 16, but this is replaced by the even-more-improbable Rose, who is eight years old when we first meet her.
• In-Series Nickname: Partway into the first game, my dude gets sick of Andy's questionable intelligence, and starts calling him Dipshit, exclusively and even in the sequels, save for the Wrong-Name Outburst listed below. Dual Strike character development sees my dude start moving past this near the end, using Andy's actual name more following the fight with his clone.
  • Several among the soldiers too, such as Dave being the Tankslayer or Dimitri being referred to as the Meteor.
• Insistent Terminology: Raynald of Chatillon does not fly (he deploys exclusively as a bomber) to areas on a map - he crusades.
• Inexplicably Identical Individuals: In the first part, when my dude realises that each sprite on the map represents a whole troop of units, he gives them all the same name - Dave commands a squadron of men called Dave, Barold leads the Barolds, etc. This is phased out as the characters become more developed.
  • Taken to even sillier extremes in Let's Play Advance Wars 2, where we find out that my dudes are ‘universal constants’, meaning they crop up in multiple universes. Each one is the named protagonist of a different videogame, including Fire Emblem: Three Houses, Persona 5, Dragon Quest IX, and so on.
• Infallible Narrator: Ruin is this in Let's Play Advance Wars 2. Early on, my dude asks how she can remember everything that happened in every battle during a long six-month campaign. Ruin reveals that her infallibility comes from having an eidetic memory.
• Inherently Funny Words: My dude thinks spelling “boat” like “bote” is inherently funny. He continues doing this throughout both Let's Plays, much to Ruin’s chagrin.
  my dude: Ah, you’re referring to botes.
  Ruin: I can tell that you're pronouncing that like 'b-o-t-e-s' and not 'b-o-a-t-s'.
  my dude: It’s botes and you’re wrong
• Innocently Insensitive: Tina calls Red a deadbeat dad, which leads Lucy to reveal that her mother is the abusive one, and Red couldn’t deal with the strain, so he started drinking. The only reason he’s even in the army is to make enough money to help keep his daughter happy.
• Innocent Swearing: Rose partially regrets introducing Peregrine and Andromeda when the kind, quiet Andromeda begins to pick up Peregrine's more... colourful language. It isn't made clear if Andromeda knows what they mean or not, but it is evident that she is only using them because she's been hanging around Peregrine.
• Ironic Echo: Pretty much everything that comes out of clone my dude's mouth during the lategame of LPAWDS is an echo of something that my dude has said at some point throughout the entire trilogy.
• It's a Small World, After All: The very first battle in the Let's Play is two Orange Star soldiers versus two Blue Moon soldiers in the Spire Hills. Way, way later on, midway through Let's Play Advance Wars 2, we discover that one of the Blue Moon soldiers was Dimitri, and the outcome of that battle was responsible for his entire backstory.
• It's Personal: Dave. His entire motivation for fighting Blue Moon is avenging the death of Craigsworth, and he’s the one who finally captures the Blue Moon HQ.
• I Want My Beloved to Be Happy: Selena, eventually. In LPAWDS, she and my dude have a conversation about their feelings for each other in light of my dude getting married, and both eventually agree to keep being friends and partners in battle, as neither want the other to be unhappy.
• The Juggernaut: Tina, to the point of being considered a legend for it in AW2. She proceeds to demonstrate this by rescuing Dave from his Heroic Sacrifice attempt.
• Kicked Upstairs: My dude, during his fight with Clone Andy, remarks that this happened to Andy; he believed that Andy was promoted to CO, and he was left as the assistant, in order to ensure that Andy's orders went through him before they went to the troops.
  my dude: I knew now why Nell had kept me as the ACO - I was the filter for your stupidity.
• Kill and Replace: My dude remarks to himself that my dudes look very similar, though he doesn't think it has anything to do with the murders. Later on, we find out it's how Hell got away with Twee's murder for so long. Since my dudes all look the same, it was pretty easy to pull off.
• Lightning Bruiser: Selena, Dimitri, Rose and Conrad all have Neotank as a class, and become one of these if they get to deploy as one. So does Tina.
• Like Brother and Sister: Several examples, including:
  • Dave and Rin. Dave more-or-less confirms it during the Let's Play Advance Wars 2 Christmas Party.
  • Cassandra and Mulligan.
  • Petra and Conrad.
• Little Miss Snarker: If Rose's sheer hypercompetence is not her defining trait, then this is.
• Lonely at the Top: Rose confides in her Rose Report about the battle of Frozen Fortress that, following her success over my dude, she's been left feeling listless due to the fact he, having lead the allied nations to beat Sturm twice, quite literally was the summit of strategic warfare. Beating up my dude was both exhausting for Rose to pull off but also terrifying, because she had nowhere to go from there.
• Made of Iron: Dimitri. Not only did he eat every meteor strike in the first Let's Play's final battle (against Sturm, anyway) and live, but in Let's Play Advance Wars 2, he's Blue Moon's immortal unit via this trope - when he “dies”, his enemies leave him for dead and he's able to retreat to safety, though this turns into Dented Iron in the ending, which reveals that he took so many wounds that he was honorably discharged from the military after LPAWDS. Von Panzer can also be considered this, as he survives several crucial battles with barely any HP remaining.
• Mama Bear:
  • When Tina hears about Lucy’s difficult upbringing and abusive mother, she promises right then to bust up anybody who gives her trouble in the barracks. She also has a notorious temper when anybody is killed on the battlefield.
  • Double subverted with Sofia, whose actual name is Marissa. At first, Lysander makes his mother out to be incredibly meek and weak-willed; she loved her son dearly but couldn't stand up to her abusive husband, who sent Lysander off to the army to straighten him out. However, Sofia eventually worked up the courage to chase after Lysander, and joined the Yellow Comet army for his benefit, swearing to protect him. Talora, who was already something of a mother to the rest of the Yellow Comet army, had already taken on a protective and comforting role for Lysander, so the two work in tandem to protect the boy they care so much for.
• Meaningful Name: For most characters, their name is quite ordinary, though some have names very fitting for their character.
  • Peregrine's full name is Peregrine Siddeley Lockheed. As an air pilot and bomber specialist, it's no surprise that both her middle name and surname reference the names of aerospace engineering companies (in particular Hawker Siddeley and the Lockheed Corporation). Her first name could either refer to the Gulfstream Peregrine, a type of jet aircraft, or, owing to her specialism in flying bombers, it could reference the fact that the design of the B-2 Spirit, the first of the stealth bombers, was based on a peregrine falcon.
  • Rose Kuroda is a genius strategist, and is the primary ACO of Yellow Comet, a nation led by a man named Kanbei. Ladies and gentlemen, Kuroda Kanbei.
  • CP goes on to apply this to one of the proper COs, namely Sensei. On multiple occasions in LPAW2 and especially LPAWDS, he's seen giving Rose and Vanessa strategical advice (as any proper sensei/teacher should) that either one proceeds to apply to their planning. Rose even thanks him for such in the leadup to her spar with my dude.
  • Rin Fisher primarily pilots naval vessels.
  • Paul's title is Hard Campaigner, referencing the actual Paul.Power's LP of Advance Wars 2: Black Hole Rising's Hard campaign.
  • A sad backstory example: Selena's sister, Lena, is noted to have that name - literally Selena's own minus the first two letters - because their parents saw Lena as a mere fragment of Selena's potential. A fact that is utterly instrumental in making the all-too-aware-of-this Lena become The Director.
• Meaningful Rename: Well, Retitle, but in Part 41 of Dual Strike, Rose slightly retitles herself, from Desolate Flower to Flower of Desolation. She does this while slamming Kindle with a "The Reason You Suck" Speech, as payback for Kindle's own attempt to insult her. Said speech includes her logic for the change and is listed on the quotes tab.
• Meaningful Titles: My dude is referred to as “Kingmaker” in the credits video for Let's Play Advance Wars. This is true on two accounts: he defeated Sturm, preventing him from taking over the world and restoring the rulership of the other countries, but his victory was also directly responsible for Nell becoming the leader (or ‘king’, if you will) of Orange Star.
• Mildly Military: Subverted in that every character does, to a point, wear the official uniform of their country.
• Mirror Character:
  • This comes up in AW2 when Lash taunts Sonja about them being very similar, approaching war like a game. My dude finds this extremely uncomfortable, as he, too, feels like he shares some similarities with Lash.
  • Among the personalized units, many of the soldiers have similarities to the COs of the countries they serve. Typically, each army has one unit per CO whose core personality, way of dress, motives, or approach to life reflects a CO, and typically, the COs they emulate acknowledge them in some way. Examples include;
    • Orange Star has Tina, an unabashed meathead who initially struggles with her lovelife. Unsurprisingly, her favorite CO is Max, who loves pumping iron as much as she does and launches into scraps with aplomb. Max himself was unwittingly part of a love triangle involving Nell and Grit.
    • Blue Moon's units as a whole mirror the fact that half of the Blue Moon COs manipulate the economy in some way, as the vast majority are mercenaries being paid directly to fight. This is most apparent with Jacqelyn, who comes from money and knows how to get a discount on the various items she enjoys collecting, much like Colin and his ability to haggle down unit prices.
    • Yellow Comet's best and brightest all heavily take after Sonja, being gifted tacticians with strong egos. Rose, Vanessa, and Sonja all draw parallels to each other, and an entire arc in Let's Play Advance Wars 2 is devoted to the fact that Vanessa and Sonja are tactical equals in every way but differed in their personalities, which gave Sonja a leg up. Kevin is just as gung-ho and dogmatic as Kanbei is, and is primairly noted for the fact he dresses, thinks, and even carries a sword like Kanbei.
    • Green Earth is the most blatant about this, and are noted for being associated with the COs they emulate. Mina, as Drake's student, has slowly been developing the hydrokinesis Drake is capable of using; Petra, like Eagle, is a flygirl confident in her skills and trained by Edgar; and the Green Earth Old Guard almost all swear by the efficiency and love for the normal soldiers that Jess espouses.
    • Interestingly, Raynald of Chatillon is a mirror character for someone outside his nation; both he and Javier style themselves after chivalrous knights, though from different eras and geographical locations.
    • Lena, like Hawke and Lash, is a local 'bad girl' who ends up defecting to the heroes' side. She also focuses on comptency and properly acknowledging her opponents as actual threats, as Hawke is wont to do.
• The Mole: Dual Strike has one, who is the source of The Director's intel on our heroes. It's an unwitting Selena, for her letters to home were read by her sister Lena, who defected and became The Director. Selena does not take either "Director Lena" or "Selena is the unwitting mole" very well.
• Morality Chain: Rin is Dave's. The sweet, idealistic kid of the group got through to the revenge driven murder-seeker, turning him into The Leader, and by the end of Let's Play Advance Wars 2, they're Like Brother and Sister. Word of God has confirmed that if Rin were to die, Dave would not take it well. At all.
• Most Common Card Game: In Part 49 of LPAWDS, the Allied Nations encounter oozium in the desert, and make their battle preparations... all except my dude, Sasha and Jake, who are busy playing Go Fish.
  Rachel: Oozium...it's everywhere! Five...ten... How many of them are there?!
  my dude: Oh, got any tens?
  Sasha: Here.
  Rachel: You three! Would you focus, please?!
• Moveset Clone: Because of what his known favored units are, my dude is actually exactly the same as Jess in the capacity of a CO when he gets into a friendly match with Rose, having exceptional land units. Rose, meanwhile, takes after Sensei and Grimm depending on the front. From a meta perspective, this is to set up a rival battle between the two as being even possible for the narrative LP, because otherwise there'd be no way to represent the fight properly given the confines of the game being played. It does, however, fit in with their favored strategies, so it works for the narrative purpose.
• My Name Is Inigo Montoya: Throughout LPAW2 and LPAWDS, several characters are given a canonical last name, but true to the Let's Play's overly dramatic and anime-esque nature, they tend to reveal them through incredibly badass statements of intent on the battlefield, typically in a crucial battle or when the final blow is about to be dealt: the readers often refer to these as Last Name Upgrades. These include:
  • Lucy Ophelia Maxwell.
  • Dave Ruston.
  • Rin Fisher.
  • Mathis Von Panzer. In an inversion it's his first name that got revealed in LPAW2, and it completes the "MVP" motif of his name.
  • Dimitri Volkov.
  • Vanessa Kita Farid.
  • Rose Kuroda.
  • Tina Van Koning, though her maiden name was McCoy.
  • Peregrine Siddeley Lockheed.
  • Ingo Easford-Martin, not only the first reveal in LPAWDS, but retroactively names both Eric (Easford) and Bill (Martin) from LPAW1.
  • Fliss (and Fleur) de la Fleuve.
  • Michael Lambert.
  • Alfonse Strickland.
  • Howard Miller.
  • Mulligan Zweite.
• Nominal Importance: In LPAWDS, Rachel offends my dude by not explicitly naming specific units on the map.
  Rachel: Well, we've got to get in there and rescue those grunts.
  my dude: Grunts? I'll have you know they are PEOPLE and they're cooler than you.
  • This is also an unfortunate consequence regarding many members of the armies, as some maps simply start you out with massive deployment numbers or require excessive force to be beaten in a timely manner without losing any units, requiring CP to name characters who will rarely have any lines for the rest of the story. Fittingly, like Fire Emblem, the most important characters for CP's campaigns are the ones he most frequently fields.
• "Not So Different" Remark: 'We’re not so different, you and I' is used by Sonja to improve relations with Vanessa and bury the hatchet on their rivalry. It also serves as something of a Meaningful Echo to Lash's own insistence on her similarities with Sonja. In Black Hole Rising, Lash tells Sonja a small variation of this ('You're exactly like me. You and I / We're not different at all, Sonja') following her defeat in A Mirror Darkly, causing Sonja to question if she's secretly a sociopath like Lash and merely views war as a fun game. In Let's Play Advance Wars 2, Sonja is shown to resist the thought and then turn the phrase into the foundation for her rebuilt professional and platonic relationship with Vanessa, indentifying Vanessa's devotion to strategy but more saliently compassion, cementing that she, Rose, and Vanessa will never be become Lash at her worst and are all rather similar to one another.
• Obnoxious In-Laws: Turns out Rachel is this to my dude^* Nell's husband by the end of LPAW2 in LPAWDS. My dude for his part tries to be cordial, but he isn't above snarking at Rachel when the opportunity presents itself. A fair portion of Dual Strike's narrative touches on both of them gradually working to improve this standing.
• Odd Friendship: Michael is a few years older than Lucy, but they both bond over the trashy TV show they both watch.
• Officer and a Gentleman: Most of the Green Earth Old Guard are this, but especially Edgar and Abelard, who are excellent soldiers and incredibly polite on the battlefield.
• Oh, Crap!:
  • Hawke of all people gets a subtle one in Interview 35 of Let's Play Advance Wars 2, once Rose gets deployed.
    Hawke: ...The Desolate Flower is here? Then I must not hold back. I give you credit for pushing me this far.
  • The same character elicits another one, this time out of my dude, during their spar in Dual Strike when my dude commits a large effort to eliminating their battle copters, assuming Rose to be in one of them... before Rose reveals she's in the medium tank.
    my dude: Oh, fuck. The medium tank! Of COURSE!
  • In part 35 of LPAWDS, Abelard (piloting Green Earth's Megatank) has one when realizing the infantry who had the nerve to fight the Megatank was none other than Dave Ruston, the Tankslayer, moments before Dave makes good on that title.
    Abelard: You're not just any infantry unit... are you?
• One of the Girls: Michael. On more than one occasion across both LPAW2 and LPAWDS, the primary girls of Orange Star^* Lucy, Rin, Selena, Fleur, Fliss are the stars of a Barracks Scene, and Michael is right there with them.
• The One Thing I Don't Hate About You: Hyper Upgrade, in regards to my dude's opinion of Andy.
• Once a Season: Paul is a living cameo representing Paul.Power, a well-known Something Awful Let's Player who did a playthrough of the Hard Campaign for Advance Wars: Black Hole Rising almost a decade prior. His noted skill leads him to being deployed in each game on one map with a high unit count as a mysterious member of the Orange Star army who is notable for attracting almost no attention while simultaneously assisting in a crucial part of the map he's deployed in.
• Only in It for the Money: Played with in regards to the Snowbound Free Company. Initially contracted to help Grit in a single map, they intend to leave once the mission is done and they’ve been paid… that is, until their leader Alina meets the delightful Eva and experiences Love at First Sight, leading her to sign up for the entire rest of the campaign. When they reappear in LPAWDS, this time it's clear that they're only in it for the money. However, Eva's frustrated when she finds out that Alina took the job for just 80% of the mercenary group's going rate.
  Valeria: Did you just sign us up to a war because a girl was cute?
  Alina: ...Maybe. But she is really, really cute.
• Operation: [Blank]: This is how my dude names all of his military operations, and Ruin herself comments on how silly the names are. This includes Operation Stand On HQ And Don’t Fucking Die, Operation HQ Road Trip and Operation Saving Private Obvious Movie Cliche. This continues well into LPAWDS, with Operation Bomberstorm. Lategame gives a subversion of sorts, when the time comes to make The Director do her Heel–Face Turn, my dude declares Operation time, and Rachel snarks him about pulling this trope before he reveals that he went with the rather mundane and to-the-point name of "Operation Save Lena." It turns out to be a Double Subversion when my dude admits to Sasha that the op's true name is "Operation Hey Soul Sister."
• Opposite-Sex Clone: Dudette, the only known female my dude.
• Outliving One's Offspring: Wallace. His son, Roland, took a lot of risks to prove himself in front of his father, but Wallace's constant teasing attitude made it hard for Roland to ever feel appreciated by him. In a blind rage, he decided to scout out more of Hawke's lab, and ran right into the range band of several rockets. Wallace ends up shellshocked and regretful of his actions following the loss of his beloved son.
• Patchwork Fic: Sonja's glasses are mentioned in one of the narrative sections. Sonja did not wear glasses outside of Japan until Re-Boot Camp, which was announced after that particular scene was written, making this both a proactive case of welding the canons together and an international nod to the Japanese versions of the games.
• Perfectly Cromulent Word: My dude is very fond of this, having invented several words in his tenure, including “tankicide”, “destructinate”, “heckfuckler” and “murderfuck”. Even Ruin gets in on the action later on when she invents “bombnihhilate” to describe how a bomber defeats its foes, though more often than not, she finds my dude’s new lexicon exhausting.
  Ruin: You come up with so many ridiculous and meaningless words that it's a wonder anybody can understand anything you say.
• Photographic Memory: Ruin has an eidetic memory, which is why she can remember every single detail of the Advance Wars 2 campaign to relate to my dude.
• Plot Armor: Each nation has a resident 'Immortal,' as Ruin describes them, that through their strategic acumen (Rose), emotional importance to the rest of the soldiers (Michael, Dimitri), or just plain belief and nature (Mulligan) can't die under normal circumstances, as they'll always have a convenient escape plan not available to the other soldiers. It's played with in that my dude becoming cognizant of the resident Immortals leads him to abusing this trope and using them for risky ploys that could get the other soldiers killed out of an interest to protect everyone. However, as the survival of these units needs to follow a narrative format, it's noted that Oozium will kill even the Immortals, since Oozium simply swallows units whole, leaving no narrative wiggle-room for survival. As revealed in the back half of LPAWDS, units who share vehicles or squadrons with an Immortal also get this narrative leniency, as Diana should have died to a medium tank but was paired with Dimitri in a tank at the time.
• The Power of Friendship: Used by Kanbei and Peregrine to deliver the final blow to Sturm in Let's Play Advance Wars 2. Peregrine has her transceiver open to all the countries fighting against Black Hole and Black Hole itself, and through Kanbei's Morale Boost, gets the eponymous addition to her overall power just in time to give Sturm a speech about the unity of the nations before destroying his deathray.
• Pretentious Latin Motto: Lampshaded. My dude, after checking on Google Translate, claims that the motto of the My Dude School of Military Tactics is “vos can nunquam satis medium obterere”, and Ruin doesn’t need to look it up to guess that it translates to “you can never have enough medium tanks”.
• Punny Name: Fliss is just a nickname, as revealed by her sister, Fleur. Fliss' actual name is Felicity. Fliss is a noted coward, and Felicity is a name often associated with felines - Fliss is a scaredy-cat.
• Ragtag Bunch of Misfits: Definitely the Orange Star army. My dude is about as misfit as they come, and his army is just as strange.
• Rapid-Fire "No!": During the last leg of Dual Strike with the clone battles, my dude takes the first three clones' identities fairly well, but this is his reaction to seeing the fourth; considering it's a clone of Andy, it checks out coming from my dude.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: A few get doled out over the course of all three games. Noteworthy examples include:
  • Rose to Flak early in the Yellow Comet arc of Let's Play Advance Wars 2.
  • Rose to Hawke early in the Green Earth arc of Let's Play Advance Wars 2.
  • Ruin to the Culprit when the time comes to arrest them.
  • Rose to Kindle shortly after the latter insults her. If it isn't obvious, Rose is rather effective with these.
  • my dude delivers an absolutely scathing one to Clone Andy near the end of Dual Strike, though he's really directing it at the real Andy and is essentially letting it out while he can.
• Red Baron: Lucy Ophelia Maxwell, Queen of the Skies, and Rose Kuroda, The Desolate Flower/Flower of Desolation.
• Red Herring: One of the main narrative arcs of Dual Strike revolves around the presence and identity of The Director, a mysterious woman working for Black Hole who wears the shattered remains of Sturm's mask, and who knows a fair number of details about our heroes, leading them to believe there is a mole. The herring comes in the form of Julian, a newcomer to Team Orange Star who has, put simply, done his research. The true Mole is a very unwitting Selena, for her letters to home were being read by her sister, Director Lena Hartford.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: There's a few pairs of these throughout the three games. Key standouts include:
  • my dude (Red) and Ruin (Blue), narrators of LPAW2.
  • Vanessa (Red) and Rose (Blue), chief strategists of Yellow Comet.
  • my dude (Red) and Rose (Blue), Head ACOs of the Allied Nations in LPAWDS.
  • Rachel (Red) and my dude (Blue), who are siblings through my dude's marriage to Rachel's sister, Nell.
• Red Shirt: Notably averted in that every single character is given a name and personality. Of course, some characters are throwaway even after this, the most notable examples being Cedric and Jimmy.
• Revenge: Dave, during the early parts of Let's Play Advance Wars, is driven by this. By the end of the Blue Moon Arc, it becomes full Roaring Rampage of Revenge. It isn't until a while later when he gains a Morality Chain in the form of Rin that he starts to veer toward being The Leader for Orange Star.
• Rousing Speech: Several characters get the chance to do a rousing speech prior to big battles, though special mention should go to Peregrine’s speech at the end of the Let's Play Advance Wars 2 final battle.
• Running Gag: In the early parts of LPAW2, the phrase "I'm gonna kill this fucking kid" is repeated several times. My dude and Ruin both say it about Andy, and Dave says it about Carter. This comes back in Dual Strike and is Played for Drama there when my dude says it in the leadup to the fight with Clone Andy.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here:
  • Played for laughs with my dude, of all people, during Rivals, the final mission of Advance Wars. There are a couple other points where he invokes the trope too, with Lucy taking over commentary via her Lucy Logs.
  • Mulligan weaponizes this as Green Earth's resident Immortal, since he'll decide, when there's too much heat on him, to just walk away. Other Green Earth soldiers that see him casually do this liken it to him just suddenly deciding to dodge bullets, as shots veer away from him before they can land critical blows. Dimitri also does this as Blue Moon's resident Immortal, but he also takes some actual damage. This distinction is important, because he eventually has to retire honorably due to being unable to serve effectively anymore from all his battle scars.
• Screw Yourself: Several my dudes sleep with one another. Commander and Dudette did so at Dudecon 2018, and at Dudecon 2019, Persona and Summoner are implied to have slept together. Later on, Persona and Dudette end up sleeping together.
• Sequel Hook: Let's Play Advance Wars ends with my dude going missing, and it is revealed where he went in Let's Play Advance Wars 2. Meanwhile, the epilogues for Let's Play Advance Wars 2 contain more than a few for Advance Wars: Dual Strike, chief among which is a mention of my dude's sister-in-law Rachel. Dual Strike in turn, remarkably, contains a single major one for Days of Ruin, a tabletop RPG hosted by my dude, featuring soldiers as the players.
• Shout-Out:
  • In LPAW, when talking to the readers about voting for which character to play as next, my dude refers to Andy, Max and Sami is multiple ways, including but not limited to:
    • Eliwood, Hector and Lyn
    • The Prequels, the Original Trilogy and the Sequels
    • Nintendo, Sega and Sony
    • Freddy, Bonnie and Chica
    • Kirby, King Dedede and Meta Knight
  • The credits song at the end of LPAW contains the names of several of the LP’s parts in the lyrics, including “Up Ship’s Creek Without A Paddle”, “Shot Through The Heart” and “Much-Needed Relaxation”.
  • Paul himself is a living shout out to Paul.Power, a reader and commenter of the Let's Plays who is extremely skilled in Advance Wars and offered CP advice throughout both LPAW and LPAW2. In fact, during LPAW, Paul's unit name is even "The Paul Power."
  • Several characters reference Fire Emblem characters, either through design, name or the things they say:
    • Selena and Lucy were names suggested by readers of LPAW, who confirmed that they were intentionally referencing the Fire Emblem: Awakening characters Selena and Lucina - though they turned out very differently in Let’s Play Advance Wars.
    • In Let's Play Advance Wars, several characters say lines most often associated with Fire Emblem characters. Rose claims “I will open the way”, a line spoken by Alfonse in Fire Emblem Heroes, and shortly afterwards, Peregrine says “I’m still hyper! Let’s go!”, a line spoken by Mae in Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia. Furthermore, Mae and Peregrine both have pigtails.
    • There's also a reference to Five Nights at Freddy's during Part 57: when Sasha uses Market Crash, my dude references one of the iconic lines from Henry's speech in Freddy Fazbear's Pizzeria Simulator. The original line is "And to you monsters trapped in the corridors: be still, and give up your spirits. They don't belong to you.", which my dude changes to "And to you COs trapped in this battle: be still, and give up your stars. They don't belong to you."
• Show Within a Show: Well, Show Within A Game, but Tabitha High, which Rin, Lucy and Michael are all fans of and have been seen watching together on more than one occasion. Based on what little we hear about it, it is implied to be a mixture of Teen Wolf, Riverdale and Twilight.
  • During LPAWDS, we also learn that Rin and Michael are watching a new show called Spann Island, though it isn't explained what it's like.
• Simple, yet Awesome: How CP approaches his desire to keep every unit alive during Two-Week Test from a meta-perspective. This map, more than any other map in Advance Wars: Black Hole Rising, is about throwing soldiers into a hopeless meat-grinder slugfest with Lash that is intentionally stacked so heavily against the player that the only realistic option is to do as the mission's title suggests and hold out for fourteen days. To get around this and keep his units alive, CP just refuses to engage. Since a map can only be lost if the HQ is taken or all allied units are downed, CP cannot lose if he never deploys troops if Lash decides not to take the HQ, and her AI is set to park an Anti-Air unit on Colin's HQ and never move the unit off that tile to allow her soldiers to take it. In effect, CP overcomes the most brutal map for a player devoted to low-death count by passing fourteen days.
• Situational Sword: In the base game of Dual Strike, Sasha is considered great when it comes to forcing a battle of skill between players, since her COP cuts down her opponent's own power bar dependent on her money, but otherwise has no outstanding qualities like Kanbei or her brother. In LPAWDS, Sasha quickly becomes my dude's favored CO to partner up with and operate under, because his entire focus in combat is bucking the typical trend of Advance Wars playstyles and only fielding a certain number of troops that he intends to keep alive, meaning he typically has his CO's funds reach into the hundred-thousands by the end of a given map. Because of this, Sasha constantly has money to work with using Market Crash, which proves integral to her shutting down Black Hole's forces and, crucially, preventing Dual Strikes from occuring against her side, making it so much easier for my dude and Sasha to keep their forces alive.
• Skewed Priorities: During the Yellow Comet lab mission, Issam is targeted by a bomber while securing a property. He's more worried about the damage it did to his outfit, as he is very particular about looking nice. It's even stated that his efforts to heal on other properties are really just Issam swapping outfits to look nice again.
• Sliding Scale of Gameplay and Story Integration: Several, which is a given considering that CP writes in large amounts of his own story and characters, some of which have an effect on the gameplay.
  • Aside from the Final Deaths aspect for (most) characters, a deliberate example comes up near the end of Advance Wars, where my dude gets taken off the case for the fight against Sturm, but leaves his soldiers with a standing order to retreat if wounded; in practice this allowed CP to show off his first, completely blind, attempt at The Final Battle. My dude gets put back on the case afterward, leading into the successful run.
  • In Rivals and the missions where the Allied Nations fight each other in the sequels, they're always stated to be tests or mocks. In these missions, Final Deaths are disabled, since it would make zero sense for allies to be killing each other. LPAWDS even goes on to confirm these fights to be glorified paintball matches.
  • In LPAWDS, when the soldiers first reunite with the Snowbound Free Company, Alina and Eva are arguing over the pricing of their services, and Eva remarks that they're working for 80% of their usual cost. The CO that hired them is Colin, and wouldn't you know it, his special perk in Advance Wars 2 and Advance Wars: Dual Strike is being able to afford units for 80% of their usual price, at the cost of slightly weaker firepower. Eva even offers a reason why Colin's cheaper units have weaker firepower:
  Eva: I’m just gonna say it, though - I’m not putting in 100% if we’re not earning 100%.
  • It's noted that, following Flak's sound loss to Kanbei's troops during Silo Scramble, Hawke had Flak demoted from his CO position due to his incompetence, especially considering Kanbei's field commander for that mission was a child only eleven years old. Sure enough, Flak is never the CO in any other map, as, in the game itself, Silo Scramble is one of the last times Flak can be faced in the story mode.
  • Something the LP enjoys doing is leading into a CO's Pre Ass Kicking One Liner that they spout whenever they're about to use a COP or SCOP, integrating it into the actual dialogue. It particulary fits with Sonja, who in the source material is very prideful and prone to bragging, and Hawke, who shows proper respect to his enemies while fighting them at all times.
• Sole Survivor: In the Blue Moon arc of LPAW2, we discover that Dimitri was the sole survivor of a 2-man mission that he went on with Wanda. The catch? Wanda was the one who had the gauze, so for Dimitri to survive, he had to have taken it from her...
• Speech Impediment: Rin's lisp. Between LPAW and LPAW2 she starts speech therapy, and so while it's still present in 2, its far more subdued. Taken to the logical conclusion in Dual Strike: the lisp is essentially gone by then.
• The Squad: With Advance Wars being an entirely military world, there’s several of these throughout both Let's Plays. Orange Star’s group can better be summarised as a Five-Man Band, but there are a few mercenary groups that fit this trope.
  • Olaf’s Mercenaries, who are honor-bound to Olaf and only Olaf - when he joined Orange Star, they served him, and when he defected, they defected alongside him.
  • Dimitri’s Mercenaries, the group formed from the dregs of Olaf’s Mercenaries.
  • The Snowbound Free Company, a group of mercenaries working for Blue Moon.
  • The Green Earth Old Guard, an aged group of soldiers who are still fighting to help out the younger soldiers.
• Straight Man and Wise Guy: Ruin and my dude are absolutely this pair, though throughout Let's Play Advance Wars 2, Ruin makes the odd wisecrack here and there.
• The Strategist: My dude. Despite his ditzy behaviour and general unprofessionalism, when things are getting serious, he can step up and outwit virtually anybody. In Let's Play Advance Wars, his talent for minimising losses are considered so good that Nell stakes her entire career on his victory against Sturm. In a fun case of continuity, it is implied that his victory is what indirectly leads to her becoming the effective commander of Orange Star in Let's Play Advance Wars 2.
  • After a certain point, Yellow Comet has a triad of them, in the form of Sonja, Rose and Vanessa.
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: The LPs go into quite a bit of detail as to how some of the CO powers work and tackle some of the story concepts somewhat seriously, applying a bit of realism to what is otherwise a fantasy modern-war setting.
  • Dudecon, the meeting all my dudes have annually, isn't some exciting party where the my dudes talk at length about their accomplishments or do anything really exhilarating - in fact, half the fun of Dudecon for the my dudes is the ability to take naps. As the my dudes are all the male (with one exception) avatar player characters for various different video games, most of which are heavily action-oriented or take place in dangerous fantasy worlds, most of the my dudes just want a day off. The only one who really gets into any hijinks is Twee, who comes from the fun, lackadaisical world of Animal Crossing.
  • Dudecon has a policy akin to 'what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas,' as most of the my dudes tout Dudecon as basically a place of no consequences. A direct result of this is that cheating happens constantly in the realm, because most of the my dudes are sexually active and honestly don't think it's cheating when they're effectively having relations with variants of themselves. Only a few of the my dudes abstain from sleeping with each other given the freedom it gives them.
  • Max's powers preclude indirect units from firing to their maximum range normally because it's noted that Max is clumsy in the games. Sure enough, within the narrative itself, Wilbert and Fred, two of Orange Star's most prominent indirect-proficient squad leaders, note that Max's instructions and guidance are lacking when it comes to indirect units, making it more difficult for them to target their enemies - even as crackshot soldiers armed with long-range weaponry, they still need to be directed where to fire for an engagement by a commanding officer, and are reliant on that commanding officer giving them proper intel.
  • Colin is adept at penny-pinching and getting discounts on his units, but most of Blue Moon's forces are mercenaries. It's noted by Eva that, as mercenaries, they're being paid directly by the COs to fight their threats, and even if Colin can convince them to fight for him at a reduced cost, that won't prevent them from fighting at reduced efficiency due to not feeling properly motivated.
  • Blue Moon infilitrating deep into Orange Star territory is handwaved away massively for tutorial missions in the first Advance Wars game, but here it's shown to have massive repercussions. A lot of the soldiers in the original LP are conscripts, because Orange Star needed to restock their military in the short time they had between my dude getting involved and my dude pushing out Olaf's forces entirely.
  • Played humorously in regards to the Framing Device for Let's Play Advance Wars 2. Ruin, the Omniversal Police Detective assigned to the my dude murder case, has the my dude from Wars World in lock-up, and has a deal going with him as part of her investigation and interrogation regarding his case; she'll explain what's been happening in Wars World regarding Sturm's second invasion in return for him recounting his whereabouts during Dudecon. Ruin is shocked to learn that my dude's recounting of Dudecon only lasts until halfway into her account of Blue Moon's actions during Sturm's invasion - not even halfway into the actual game of Advance Wars 2. my dude sums it up pretty well;
  Ruin: I expected your story to last as long as mine.
  my dude: You thought a story about a single party one night would last as long as a story about a world-hopping campaign set in four countries?
  Ruin: …In hindsight, it was not a bright conclusion to come to.
• Take My Hand!: Ruin says this verbatim to Zlata during Final Front, just as Zlata's bomber is shot down.
  Ruin: Take my hand if you want to live!
• Talk Like a Pirate: Lloyd, unironically. In Let's Play Advance Wars 2, my dude lapses into pirate speak every time Ruin mentions a port being captured.
  my dude: Aye! Incomin' fire, lads, batten down the mizzenmast!
  Ruin: Oh my god please stop.
• Technician Versus Performer: Ultimately the root of the rivalry between my dude and Rose Kuroda, though both completely respect each other and only really come to blows for the sake of a fun, team-building spar, like the COs before them. ^note Grimm challenged Rachel to a fight to get to know her, and staked following her orders as the impetus. There was no bad blood. Rose is the Technician, as she values brutal and efficient strategies that only ever rely on trickery when she's setting up decoys to save her own skin, and accounts for everything her opponent can do, including their capacity for getting lucky. My dude, meanwhile, is the Performer. He enjoys 'styling' on enemies with unnecessary shows of power when possible but otherwise proves himself to be a legitimate strategic threat due to his off-the-wall strategies and eagerness to betray expectations to secure victory. The Technician wins. Because Rose accounts for everything, she understands the tricks my dude will use and is not above predicting lucky breaks on his part. It even shows up in the actual fight proper, as Rose immediately engages with a very aggressive assault that puts my dude on the back foot on the first front, while my dude surprises everyone by borrowing Rachel's SCOP on the second front to come out ahead there.
• Theme Music Power-Up: When my dude loses pretty hard to Eagle in Let's Play Advance Wars, he tries the map again, but with his so-called theme (The Plan - Z3BB3) playing.
  • My dude does this again in the final battle of Let's Play Advance Wars, where he prepares to listen to "Twilight of the Gods" from Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia whilst doing the map.
• This Cannot Be!: Heroic example in Dual Strike, when my dude sees just what The Director is wearing (namely, Sturm's mask, though damaged). Rin and Dave have a more subdued version of it in the battle right before my dude's reaction.
  my dude: That... that mask! It can't be...
• Time Police: Ruin is a member of the Omniversal Police, said to travel space and time in order to maintain order in the omniverse.
• Token Evil Teammate: Carl, who is clearly unhinged despite being on the side of good.
• Took a Level in Badass: Alfonse, who appears in Let's Play Advance Wars as the fodder soldier who cannot hope to shine amongst heroes like Dave, Wilbert, Tina, Barold and Barry, and is constantly afraid for his life. Slowly, over the course of LPAW, he becomes more confident, and when he appears in Let's Play Advance Wars 2, Dave remarks that he’s taller and has been working out; he’s now a stone-cold badass equal to Dave himself.
  • All the allied COs become this in Black Hole Rising as a result of learning my dude's tactics between conflicts. The number of early casualties are drastically reduced in comparison, and everyone becomes a lot more capable of leading the soldiers. This leads into;
• Took a Level in Kindness: Though the static dialogue from the games themselves still has the COs say some callous things from time-to-time, everyone from Andy to Eagle is much more cognizant of the lives of their soldiers in Let's Play Advance Wars 2 and sometimes even directly involve themselves with them.
• Tragic Keepsake: Dave wears Craigsworth's Iron Bracer, a reminder of his desire to fight for those who he has lost.
  • Friendship Trinket: In Let's Play Advance Wars 2, and carried into Dual Strike, said bracer is replaced by Rin's Friendship Bracelet (of which she has the other), a reminder to fight for those he can yet save.
• Tranquil Fury: More than once over the course of the series, one of the characters will fall into this trope. Standouts include Dave when Gordon dies early in Let's Play Advance Wars 2, and Rose, when Iago bullies Andromeda, and when she finds out that Adder tried to kill Rin.
• True Companions: While every one of the Allied Nation armies qualifies to at least some extent, none exemplify it better than the Orange Star army. Even the soldiers who were in Orange Star during LPAW, but went to another country during Let's Play Advance Wars 2, have some sort of lingering bond that continues to tie them to Orange Star.
• Unobtainium: Nell remarks in Let's Play Advance Wars 2 that the Black Hole factory is made out of an unknown material that cannot be harmed with their weapons. My dude gets extremely exasperated about this when he realises how inefficient it is.
  Ruin: Is that such a surprise? They don’t want the factory to be destroyed.
  my dude: Well- yes! Why the hell don't Black Hole just, you know, make their fucking tanks out of the same stuff?
  Ruin: Maybe it’s too expensive.
  my dude: They built a CITY-SIZED FACTORY and a SEVERAL KILOMETRE-LONG PIPE out of it. If anything, making all their tanks impervious would've been cheaper!
• Unstoppable Rage: When used for the first time by the LPer, Eagle's extra-turn granting Lightning Strike is played off as the combined Green Earth forces being so incensed at the loss of one of their youngest (and Wallace's son, at that) that they unite under Eagle's leadership to press on beyond their limits, backed only by their all-consuming rage.
• Vague Age: Averted in that almost every single character’s age is stated in the Barracks documents. Played straight with my dude himself, who never mentions or discusses his age.
  • It continues to be averted in Let's Play Advance Wars 2, as it is set eighteen months after the first Let's Play, and the character’s ages change accordingly.
• Verbal Tic:
  • Andromeda often has to pause to find the words for what she's thinking and wishes to vocalize. Most of Yellow Comet is understanding and patient with her, and the one guy who isn't gets a bad time for it.
  • As in the games, Sonja sometimes grunts and fumes quietly when caught off guard or surprised. As with the games, it's always vocalized as 'ooh!'
  • Ruin, as pointed out by my dude, has a habit of saying 'indeed.' After refuting him, she nearly says 'indeed' again while detailing a battle, only to catch herself and say 'correct.'
• Walking Spoiler: LPAW2's 11th-Hour Ranger. After all, the narrative had LONG made it seem that Tina wouldn't be joining the team this time.
  • In Dual Strike, while The Director herself isn't the trope, she becomes this trope after both her Heel–Face Turn and the reveal of her identity as Selena's sister Lena.
• War Is Hell: Played with. Whilst there are several characters who recognise the brutality of war, and each loss hits hard, it is still a kid’s game at the end of the day. Soldiers approach battles with colourful anime-esque excitement, merrily snarking back and forth as they mow down the enemy, showing off their powerful tanks and the like as if it was a completely normal thing.
• Wham Line:
  • Several in the barracks conversations for LPAW.
    • Dave and Michael 3: Dave: ”I’m thinking about quitting the Orange Star army.”
    • Cassandra and Lucy 2: Cassandra: “His name... is Mulligan.”
    • Rose and Balthazar 3: Rose: “I… I am a child genius, as you know. I was quickly enlisted into the government of Yellow Comet... as a detective.”
  • Let's Play Advance Wars 2 has its fair share of these too, including one that dramatically changes the narrative flow.
    • Ruin: "I've been very cagey about whether the unified armies defeated Sturm, and for good reason. To put it simply, my dude... the reason I don't know the outcome of the final battle is because it hasn't happened yet."
    • Tina: "...But you, you scum-sucking, country-conquering wannabes... You will remember me as Tina Van Koning!"
  • And of course, Dual Strike:
    • Rose: "Commander my dude... I know it's my most notable proficiency in combat, but when on earth did I say I was in a battle copter?"
    • Selena: "The letters were going to Black Hole... or more specifically, to my sister, Lena Hartford - the Director."
• Wins by Doing Absolutely Nothing: Colin successfully executes this during one of his missions in the Blue Moon arc of Let's Play Advance Wars 2, much to the utter disbelief of my dude. A barracks scene in Dual Strike expands on this slightly: turns out a mixture of Colin's fear of being absolutely decimated and Lash's utter boredom at Colin not acting at all due to this fear led to her basically throwing the battle because she couldn't win if he didn't play.
• Worthy Opponent: In terms of strategical skill, Rose and my dude are mutual after the first game. Neither one is afraid to talk positively about the other, and neither one ever underestimates the other. Indeed, when LPAWDS's bonus battle is about to begin, both of them admit to knowing and fearing the other's strength, but needing to know who's stronger.
• Wrong-Name Outburst: Subverted with my dude, who, after almost two years of exclusively referring to Andy as Dipshit, accidentally calls him his actual name, Andy, when he tries to take on Sturm by himself and gets into serious danger.
  • Played straight with Rose in LPAWDS, when she accidentally calls my dude "my dad" and, as you can imagine, gets incredibly embarrassed about it.

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