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Nintendo Wars

redirected from Main.AdvanceWars

The Advance Wars series, known in Japan as the Famicom Wars series, is a series of Turn Based Strategy video games produced by Nintendo. The original Famicom Wars was developed in-house by Nintendo's R&D1 staff (the same team behind Metroid and Kid Icarus), while the sequels were all made by Intelligent Systems (of Fire Emblem fame), with Hudson behind later parts of the Game Boy Wars series and Kuju involved with the Battalion Wars series. The series is comprised of the following games, with most of the titles being named after the platform they were released on:

  • Famicom Wars (1988)
  • Game Boy Wars (1990)
  • Game Boy Wars Turbo (1997, made by Hudson Soft)
  • Game Boy Wars 2 (1998, the second one made by Hudson Soft)
  • Super Famicom Wars (1998)
  • Game Boy Wars 3 (2001, the third and last one by Hudson Soft)
  • Advance Wars (2001, known as Game Boy Wars Advance in Japan)
  • Advance Wars 2: Black Hole Rising (2003, Game Boy Wars Advance 2 in Japan)
  • Advance Wars: Dual Strike (2005, Famicom Wars DS in Japan)
  • Battalion Wars for Nintendo GameCube (2005, Totsugeki!! Famicom Wars in Japan)
  • Advance Wars: Days of Ruin (2008, Advance Wars: Dark Conflict in Europe/Australia)
  • Battalion Wars 2, officially abbreviated BWii (2008, Totsugeki!! Famicom Wars VS in Japan)

The original Famicom Wars had no plot at all. You would choose to control one of two rival armies, Red Star or Blue Moon, and fight off the other until completing all the maps. Super Famicom Wars is essentially a remake/sequel, featuring all the maps from the original, as well as brand new ones. It was also the first game to feature 4-player maps, with the Green Earth and Yellow Comet armies joining the battle, as well as selectable commanding officers (COs), each with their own specialty and weakness that affect the whole army.

The original Game Boy Wars follows the same premise as the original Famicom Wars, but uses hexagonal maps instead of square-based maps in a bit of a departure from the rest of the series. The Hudson Soft developed sequels, Game Boy Wars Turbo and Game Boy Wars 2, were essentially expansions to the original Game Boy Wars, featuring new maps and a sped-up decision-making process for the CPU. The third and last of the Hudson-produced sequels, Game Boy Wars 3, is a complete departure from the rest of the series, being modeled more after Hudson's own Nectaris series of war sims than the rest of the Wars series.

The Advance Wars games for, obviously, the Game Boy Advance, were the first games to be released internationally, as well as the first to have an actual plot. Oddly enough, the first Advance Wars was for a couple of years not released in Japan, only showing up in a compilation pack with its sequel. The Advance Wars name has stuck in America even as the series moved to the DS, while Japan reverted to the name Famicom Wars for the DS and Wii installments. The Advance Wars series expande upon the CO system from Super Famicom Wars, giving each CO their own ability which they can summon during the brink of a battle in order to change the odds in their favor.

Advance Wars: Days of Ruin is a completely new continuity, set in a Darker And Edgier After The End world which actually works. It manages to have a level of character and plot development and story depth easily rivaling any Final Fantasy or Dragon Quest game, though some elements differ significantly between regions. With the new story comes a massive overhaul of the CO system as well as the units themselves. As it ends with peace and about half the cast dead, It is unlikely to have a sequel.

The Battalion Wars games are for the GameCube and Wii and are Real Time Strategy games with a view and style more reminiscent of a Third Person Shooter than an overhead game like Warcraft. They form their own separate continuity and story. In addition to commanding your forces in real time, all gameplay is from the point of view of a single unit that the player can switch between at any time, while at the same time actively controlling the viewpoint unit itself.

The various series provides examples of:
  • Ace Pilot (Eagle; According to his Back Story, his father was much the same.)
    • If you think Eagle's bad, you've never met Waylon/Finn, who manages to be a complete Jerk Ass at the same time.
    • Don't forget Tasha/Zadia, whose Image Song sums her up perfectly: "Goddess of Revenge".
  • A Commander Is You
  • After The End (Days of Ruin)
  • And This Is For (in the ending of the first Battalion Wars, Nova punches Ubel for Tundra, then throws a K Oing punch for his father)
  • Anti Climax Boss (Borderline — whereas his predecessor Sturm was horribly overpowered, Von Bolt from Advance Wars: Dual Strike is barely above average at best and up against a roster full of new overpowered COs. Not to mention that the maps you battle him on are rather... pathetic, to the point where the last mission should have been called Mean To The End instead. Intelligent Systems learned from this and made doubly sure Caulder/Stolos from Days of Ruin didn't fall into the same pit trap.)
  • Anti Villain (Forsythe/Carter in Days of Ruin. Also, most of the characters in Advance Wars bar the protagonists and Sturm)
  • Artificial Stupidity (the APC fetish in the first Advance Wars, as well as the Battlestation's method of attacking the destruction objective in the last mission of Battalion Wars 2)
  • Avoid The Dreaded E Rating: In order to solidify itself as a Darker And Edgier Retool, Days of Ruin has some mild gratuitous swearing in it, earning it a E10+ rating from the ESRB for Language and Mild Violence.
  • Big Damn Heroes (Will/Ed in Days of Ruin, Pierce in Battalion Wars 2)
  • Blood Knight General Herman and Tsar Gorgi in Battalion Wars
  • Bonus Level Campaign of Hell. (In the Advance Wars group, you beat the main campaign, you unlock the Hard Campaign, which is usually the standard Campaign, but modded to give your opponent a ridiculously unfair advantage.)
    • Only really true of Advance Wars, which has the hellish Advance Campaign. Hard Campaign from Black Hole Rising is hard but fair, and Hard Campaign from Dual Strike is easier in many respects than Normal Campaign due to the fact that you can now choose any pair of COs. Days of Ruin doesn't have a Hard Campaign, perhaps due to normal already being plenty hard, especially if you want gold medals.
    • Bonus Mission 3 in the first Battalion Wars, right to the point of being That One Level.
    • Three words: Rivals! Advance Campaign.
      • To clarify, on Normal Campaign, Rivals is a moderately difficult map unlocked by a moderately difficult method. It's Andy vs. Eagle, and the map is HUGE, composed mostly of tiny islands connected by bridges, and there are no seaports, so Eagle's sea weakness isn't a factor. Both sides have three infantry, but Eagle has a lot more of the map on his side, so he'll have more funds so you better get crackin'. On Advance Campaign, not only is the task of unlocking the level harder (Technically thesamebutmore), but you have the same infantry force, and Eagle's force is HUGE, making a war of attrition utterly unfeasable. To top it all off, Advance Campaign added Fog Of War. Your only indication of Eagle's insurmountable force is the sound of each and every one of his units moving. Good luck.
      • Capturing his HQ by spamming Infantry and T Copters is about all you can do to defeat him. Now would be a nice time to be able to choose which CO you're using...
  • Born Lucky (Nell, and to lesser extent, her little sister Rachel)
  • Boring But Practical (infantry spams, especially mixed with indirects—thankfully, not a problem in Game Boy Wars 3 despite the Mech being able to move and blast armored stuff from two spaces away on the same turn)
  • Bragging Rights Reward (Dual Strike only provides a wallpaper for obtaining all 300 medals; some of those 300 medals have borderline ridiculous conditions to obtain)
    • Days of Ruin is even worse. Getting all the medals doesn't get you anything.
  • Butt Monkey (Davis/Cole in Days of Ruin, who is treated as a loser in love to the point of not having his name remembered well, and also can't stand up to Greyfield killing soldiers along with Brenner, and later ends up dying from the Creeper virus. Of course, the only indication of the latter in the European version is his lack of later appearances after the equivalent scene.)
  • Bunny Ears Lawyer (Most of the COs in the Advance Wars series before the Days of Ruin retool)
  • The Caligula: Greyfield. There's a reason why his theme is called "The Madman's Reign".
  • Cerebus Syndrome: The plot got somewhat more serious between the original Advance Wars and Black Hole Rising, the plot between Black Hole Rising and Dual Strike was even more so, and the Days of Ruin was as serious as ever.
  • Character Select Forcing (Dual Strike has God knows how many examples—and considering Eagle can rip apart two Survival modes, this troper could just cry)
  • Cloning Blues (barely touched upon in the first 3 Advance Wars games, but a huge part of Days of Ruin)
    • To clarify, the main characters were all cloned by the enemy in the first 3 games to lead enemy troops, but the issues with that were never discussed.
  • Cold Sniper (Gage/Trak from Days of Ruin)
  • Compensating For Something: Sturm and Von Bolt both have powerful Super CO Powers with really long power bars (I jest, of course).
  • Companion Cube (Penny with her Mr. Bear. One case where an European renaming is not necessary, as the European translation didn't add that particular Woolseyism.)
  • Complete Monster Caulder/Stolos. He engineers a virus to wipe out the remaining survivors of the meteor shower, raises his cloned children as test subjects, and gleefully indulges in the suffering and bloodshed of others under the pretence of scientific research.
    • And Greyfield.
  • The Computer Is A Cheating Bastard (there's a case that helps the player in Beachhead in Battalion Wars 1; the CPU-controlled Artillery can snipe off the infantry climbing up the hilly terrain that makes seeing them difficult, from inside the fort on top of the hills. However, in Battalion Wars 2, while there is another case that involves a playable unit in the last mission, it does not help the player whatsoever: the Battlestation attacks the guns that fire the weak green lasers coming from the Mining Spider before attacking the blasted digging machine itself, but you don't get to aim at these guns whatsoever. This makes no sense because the Fighters you get are harder, albeit generally more rewarding, to control than the no-brainer Battlestation, but at least the Heavy Tanks fire at the guns too if commanded to attack the Spider.)
    • As a more conventional example, in AW 1 and AW 2, the CPU-controlled armies were not affected by vision ranges in fog of war and could attack your unit even if none of their units could technically see it (although they did have to uncover your units hiding in forests before they could attack it - the computer acts as if they don't exist otherwise).
  • Cool Old Guy (Sensei and Hachi in Black Hole Rising and Dual Strike; Forsythe/Carter in Days of Ruin)
  • Crippling Overspecialization (Played straight in Advance, averted in Battalion.)
  • Crowning Music Of Awesome (This Troper loved the "Super CO Power" music from Black Hole Rising, and then the Tag Power music from Dual Strike rocked even harder.)
    • Days of Ruin also bring us awesome songs, to name a few os the most awesome of the bunch: "Flight of the Coward", Waylon's theme; "Mr. Bear", Penny's theme, and the absolute kickass CO power themes, "Power Up" and "Stomy Times". Funny how the CO power got degraded, but the song got upgraded, huh?
  • Cutscene Incompetence (Colin in Black Hole Rising and Dual Strike: Always portrayed as under confident, put upon by his big sister Sasha — yet in game terms he's one of the most powerful COs and a Game Breaker)
    • Kanbei as well. His troops are extremely strong, despite being more expensive, and yet, Kanbei is constantly lectured by his daughter Sonja, and in one scene, when Sonja runs in with important news, Kanbei's first response is to ask if she's seen his sock. Oh, and being extremely overprotective of his daughter (although that is mostly positive)
  • Cutscene Power To The Max (played straight with Black Hole in Dual Strike)
  • Darker And Edgier (Days of Ruin and Dark Conflict. Done reasonably well.)
    • Could be argued Black Hole Rising did it as well; the graphic style became less cartoony.
  • Death Of A Thousand Cuts (Played straight in the Advance Wars series, averted in the Battalion Wars series. It's possible to destroy a gunship with a tank round, but a bunch of grunts firing on it will only serve to be a mild annoyance until they're blown to smithereens. Unless, of course, you only have one anti-air unit left and need all the help/distraction you can get.)
    • Played straight in Battalion Wars by the combat roll (essentially a third-person circle strafe).
  • Demonic Spiders (Anti-Tanks in Days of Ruin, Pillboxes in the first Battalion Wars, Fighters and Strato Destroyers in the Battalion Wars II)
  • Disproportionate Retribution: Rachel and Koal have the worst tagging firepower penalty in the game. Olaf and Lash get a 20% penalty to firepower when tagging because Lash used some weird invention to rearrange and destroy his hometown. Eagle and Hawke get a 30% penalty when tagging because Hawke knocked Green Earth around quite a bit. What did Koal do to Rachel for a 35% penalty? He DISSED HER FACE. Sure, she's going to need some lotion for that burn, but it's nothing compared to the previous two penalties mentioned.
  • Doomed Moral Victor (Brenner/O'Brian in Days of Ruin)
  • Do Well But Not Perfect (Dual Strike and Days of Ruin rewards medals for A, B, and C ranks)
  • Easy Amnesia: Isabella, who remembers tons of useful information right when it is needed.
  • Escort Mission (Advance Wars series, and quite a few in Battalion Wars 2.)
  • Enigmatic Minion (Hawke in Dual Strike. Performs a Heel Face Turn, helps defeat the Big Bad and then fakes his own death and takes the Big Bad's ultimate doomsday weapon for himself, which he then uses to undo the damage it did during the events of the game.)
  • Everyone Calls Him Barkeep: Sensei and Days of Ruin/Dark Conflict's "Mayor".
  • Evil Albino (Caulder/Stolos from Days of Ruin.)
  • Evil Counterpart (Flak, Lash, Adder, and Hawke from Black Hole Rising seem to be evil counterparts of Max, Sonja, Grit, and Eagle)
  • Evil Old Folks: Von Bolt. Caulder may or may not be old, but he's certainly too old to be a White Haired Pretty Boy.
  • Expy (Several of the Days of Ruin COs have similarities — rather jarring ones — with the earlier Advance Wars ones)
    • Also, Nell (aka Catherine) from Advance Wars is an expy of Caroline from Super Famicom Wars.
  • Eyes Of Gold: All of Caulder's "children".
  • Fantasy Counterpart Culture
  • Five Bad Band in Black Hole Rising
  • Five Man Band in Days of Ruin/Dark Conflict
  • Fog Of War
  • For Science! (Caulder/Stolos' motivation)
  • Fragile Speedster (the Buggy in Game Boy Wars 3; cheap and fast, but its defense is right inbetween that of the Infantry and the Mech if you can believe it)
    • And Recon units in the Advance Wars series, although the higher than normal movement cost for tires over plains makes them less on the "speedy" side and more on the "fragile" side.
  • Game Breaker (Infantry spam in particular. Though this trope was bound to happen anyway with Crippling Overspecialization.)
  • Gameplay And Story Segregation (some cases, but the mission Omens and Signs in Dual Strike makes a later story event seriously over the top about it)
  • General Ripper (Greyfield/Sigismundo.)
  • Genre Savvy: Sami shows Genre Savviness if you team her up with Eagle for the final mission of Advance Wars: Dual Strike.
    Eagle: "I want you to promise me something, Sami. Promise that if we both return from this battle alive..."
    Sami: "Oh no you don't! Stop it right there! If two people make a promise like that, one of them is going to end up dead! You may as well tell me that you're two days away from retirement! Save the promises for later, OK? We'll talk when we get back in one piece."
  • Geo Effects
  • Giggling Villain (Lash, in keeping with her role as a Psychopathic Manchild. "Tee hee hee!")
  • Glass Cannon (In Advance Wars, Mechs have the attack power of Tanks, but the armor of Infantry.)
    • Ironically, Mechs and Infantry often get used to defend frontlines, because their defensive power per unit cost is better than most units. Other, more traditional examples of Glass Cannons include Artillery, Rockets and Missiles.
    • Game Boy Wars 3 has a few examples:
      • The Mech, of course. They get to snipe armored stuff from a small distance too.
      • The Humvee, sometimes known as the Battle Car. It has the same armor class as the infantry (although more defense too), since any vehicles that don't look like ones designed primarily for war do; this results in the Anti-Air Tanks being able to shred it with a first attack. But it's also armed with an anti-tank weapon as its primary. Its promoted form also has a miniature anti-air machine gun.
      • Any land indirect, of course. The Humvee can One Hit Kill any of them. Of course, in this game, they get to move and attack on the same turn.
      • The Tank Destroyer isn't this power-wise, but it is when it comes to Initiative, a stat used to determine attack order. If it moves anywhere far, kiss the first attack advantage goodbye.
      • Air units in general. If they're attacked up close and right away (or can't deal any damage anyway), expect at least 6 H Ps of damage to be taken, unless it's the Attacker S, which would be this game's standard Bomber anyway if not for being a promoted unit.
      • The Aegis Warship is an odd case of making itself this; its defense ratings are among the highest in the game, but it has a powerful weapon that has massive attack power against ships (7 H Ps of damage in its own matchup, even) and can fire away from a whopping seven spaces.
    • Submarines, although when submerged they're Nigh Invulnerable.
  • Goddamned Bats (The 'Mech Rush' tactic from Advance Wars is based on this trope. In particular, Sensei's CO Powers - spawning Infantry or Mechs on every city he owns - can quickly drive opponents insane)
    • Colin, with his power to increase his funds by half every couple of turns on top of normal income and having cheaper units, can out Mech-Swamp even Sensei, and when partnered with Hachi or Sensei in Dual Strike, this is made even worse.
  • Gosh Dang It To Heck (Windsor's "Dash it all" in Battalion Wars 2)
  • Gotta Catch Em All (hacking suggests that the All Unit Medal in Game Boy Wars 3 is obtained this way—and it's gold plated)
  • Guide Dang It (in Battalion Wars, how to have your other units attack more actively)
    • Also, a meta-game based example in Days of Ruin: the Anti-Tank's cost ineffectiveness against infantry.
    • And Game Boy Wars 3 has a few Medals as this. Check the Guide Dang It page for more details.
  • Heel Face Turn (Olaf at the end of Advance Wars, Hawke and Lash during Dual Strike, Penny/Lili and Cyrus during Days of Ruin)
  • He Knows About Timed Hits (Advance Wars series)
    • And Battalion Wars too, resulting in the hilarious impression that your character is some sort of bodyjacking ghost whom the Western frontier have tricked into helping them and kept from leaving the battlefield using some kind of magical Invisible Wall.
  • Heroic Albino (Cyrus in Days of Ruin)
  • Heroic BSOD (Will/Ed after Brenner/O'Brian dies in Days of Ruin. Followed by...)
  • Hes Back
  • Hero Unit (CO usage in Days of Ruin, as well as an interesting twist in the Battalion Wars games)
  • Hypercompetent Sidekick (Sonja, Grit and Drake in Advance Wars and Black Hole Rising)
  • I Am Legion: Countess Ingrid in Battalion Wars.
  • Idiot Ball (One sentence: "What's an airport?")
  • Improbable Hairstyle (Days of Ruin suffers from this — After The End it may be, but Will/Ed's Spiky Shonen Hairdo™ is always impeccable, crippling lack of supplies be damned. Maybe he managed to make away with the entire military academy's supply of hair lotion...)
  • In Soviet Russia Trope Mocks You (Blue Moon, which also resembles Canada. The Tundran Territories in Battalion Wars really takes this and runs away with it (Their leader is an Expy of Ivan Drago).)
  • Insurmountable Waist Height Fence (Pipes in Black Hole Rising and Dual Strike. Air units can't travel over them (long-range units like Artillery and Rockets can fire over them, however). Particularly egregious in Dual Strike with the Piperunner unit - not only does it run along pipes, but in the battle animations involving the Piperunner, the pipe looks little more daunting than a steep humpback bridge)
    • For that matter, the fact that air units have their movement blocked by land and sea units at all - yeah, that's right, air units can be 'ambushed' and stopped by running into infantry hiding in woods, or dived submarines. Best not to think about that one too much (world's tallest periscopes?).
    • Also applies (reversed) to naval and land units attempting to pass under air units. Speaking of ships, bridges of the first Advance Wars continuity cannot be sailed under by ships, even submarines. Pre-battle unit placement ignores this, leading to the 'battleship in a lake' meme.
  • I Was Just Passing Through: In ''Black Hole Rising, Hawke describes turning up after faking his own death, killing Sturm and saving everyone else's lives as "a test of his power".
  • Jeigan Character (Game Boy Wars 3 in particular has some, although units are generic)
  • Jerk With A Heart Of Gold (Olaf and Eagle in Advance Wars.)
  • Justified Tutorial (Game Boy Wars 3 to an extent.)
  • Kill Sat (Shows up a few times in Advance, and is the super weapon everybody's looking for in Battalion.)
  • Lightning Bruiser: Sturm, who levels forests instead of walking through them. For units, there are Neotanks and Bombers.
  • Lost Forever (the Excellence Medal in Game Boy Wars 3 requires you to clear all 45 maps in 54 battles)
  • Luck Based Mission (100% Power in any Battalion Wars 2 mission where the final objective is to capture a facility capable of making units respawn fast)
  • Mad Scientist (Caulder/Stolos in Days of Ruin.)
  • Manina Kilt In Battalion Wars 2, the Anglo Empire veteran soldiers all wear kilts(and have fancy handlebar mustaches).
  • The Mario: Andy. As far as units go, tanks are pretty average.
  • Mighty Glacier: MD Tanks, Mega Tanks, War Tanks, Anti Tanks, Battleships, Carriers, and Oozium. Stealth Planes and Seaplanes also fit, not because they move slow, but because they constantly have to head back to be resupplied.
  • Military Maverick (Grit regularly backchats to Olaf, while Drake's response to an impending invasion in Advance Wars is to continue sunbathing. Most of the COs have a bit of this).
  • Mission Control (COs in Advance Wars that aren't actively fighting take this role)
  • Moral Dissonance (It's unclear whether or not people actually die when units are destroyed during the game's battles. Sometimes the characters care, and sometimes they don't.)
    • (Given that several times in Dual Strike, you meet up with allied CO's who demand that you fight them to prove your own worth, it seems like the characters treat their soldiers as chess pieces. Which is, arguably, with as much care as the average player, so perhaps it's justified!)
      • There's some handwaving about these games merely being 'friendly' practice battles, which is to say they use... I don't know, paintball or something. Not that the animations show it...
      • ...Paintball artillery shells?
      • Bags of flour. That's what the military does.
      • So, imagine laser tag. Now, take the laser emitters, strap them on the end of a normal rifle, and set them up to go off when the recoil from a blank affects the gun. Add some additional systems for things like artillery. What do you get? MILES gear!
      • This troper is willing to simply chalk it all up to the cast being a bunch of jerks.
    • In Days of Ruin, the dissonance is removed. The bad COs treat soldiers like expendables and toys. The good COs agonize over the losses, recognizing the sheer pointlessness of several conflicts.
  • Mordor (Xylvania in Battalion Wars is revealed to be like this, due to Vlad's abuse of the environment for military resources. In fact, one of his primary reasons for expansion is to gain more resources.)
    • Although, oddly enough, Old Xylvania looks just about the same in Battalion Wars 2, except everything's on fire instead of poisonous and green.
    • Similarly, the Black Crystals in Dual Strike turn all of the land around them into desert.
  • Mysterious Waif (Isabella/Catleia in Days of Ruin)
  • Names The Same - Yamamoto may refer to Mr. Yamamoto from Super Famicom Wars or Sensei's name in the Japanese versions of the Advance Wars games.
  • No Campaign For The Wicked (all games in the Advance Wars series, including Days of Ruin. In the first Battalion Wars, however, you could play as other countries including Xylvania and Iron Legion in certain bonus missions. There's also an entire campaign (albeit with 3 missions) in the sequel where you play as the Iron Legion.)
  • Non Indicative Difficulty (Hard Campaign in Dual Strike allows you to use all of the C Os at the start as opposed to regular campaign)
  • Nostalgia Level - The Advance Wars games recycled many of the maps from the earlier Famicom Wars games. Notably Bean Island, the very first map in the original Famicom Wars, appears in all four games.
  • Not So Different and If You Kill Him You Will Be Just Like Him (Von Bolt to Jake, in the ending to Dual Strike; also, Greyfield/Sigismundo to Lin in Days of Ruin (unfortunately for the latter, Lin is an Anti Hero and shoots him anyway)
  • Obviously Evil In Battalion Wars Xylvania and its predecessor, the Iron Legion
  • Old Master (Sensei in Black Hole Rising and Dual Strike)
  • Perky Goth (Lash.)
  • Power Trio (Particularly in Black Hole Rising, each good guy team seems to have one)
    • Orange Star (more of a power quartet, but...)
      • Id: Andy/Max
      • Ego: Nell
      • Superego: Sami
    • Blue Moon
      • Id with a dash of Superego: Olaf
      • Ego with a dash of Superego: Colin
      • Superego with a dash of Id: Grit
    • Yellow Comet
      • Id: Kanbei
      • Ego: Sensei
      • Superego: Sonja
    • Green Earth
      • Id: Eagle
      • Ego: Drake
      • Superego: Jess
    • Also Black Hole.
      • Id: Flak
      • Ego: Lash
      • Superego: Adder
    • Also in Battalion Wars, although not all factions are trios. (Note that these also fall under Two Guys And A Girl)
      • Western Frontier - General Herman (Superego), Colonel Austin (Ego?), Brigadier Betty (Id)
      • Tundran Territories - Major Nelly (Id), Tsar Gorgi until his death at least and Marshal Nova (Ego/Superego interchangeably)
      • Xylvania - Kaiser Vlad (Superego), Countess Ingrid (Id), Kommander Ubel (Ego)
  • Quirky Miniboss Squad (Adder, Lash and Flak in Black Hole Rising; Koal, Lash and Jugger in Dual Strike, Caulder/Stolos' children in Days of Ruin also count, although you only actually fight two of them.)
  • Red Oni Blue Oni (Tasha/Zadia and Gage/Trak from Days of Ruin.)
  • Replacement Scrappy (Von Bolt, who replaced Sturm.)
    • Koal/Zak and Jugger, almost. The two CO's they were supposed to replace, Adder and Flak respectively, ultimately didn't get cut, but they don't appear in the campaign and have fewer tags than anyone else.
      • On the plus side, Jugger is AWESOME.
  • Retool (Days of Ruin; also applies somewhat to Game Boy Wars 3, which involves various stuff inspired by Nectaris)
  • RPG Elements (Game Boy Wars 3 in particular)
  • Scrappy Level (Crystal Calamity in Dual Strike, Their Finest Hour in Battalion Wars 2, and Sunrise from Days of Ruin.)
    • In a classic example of Your Mileage May Vary, Sea Fortress and Sinking Feeling from Black Hole Rising. Players fall neatly into two camps: those who think Sea Fortress is a Scrappy Level and Sinking Feeling a Breather Level, and those who think the opposite (okay, a handful people find both easy or both hard, but they're statistical flukes). Given Sea Fortress is a highly tactical mission with limited resources and an emphasis on unit placement and management, while Sinking Feeling is a highly strategic mission with a time limit and a very freeform (thus hard to Walkthrough) general strategy, it's easy to see where this comes from.
  • Screw The Rules I Have Money! (Sasha, who uses her vast wealth to... get even MORE wealth.)
    • Don't forget Colin, who uses his money to do things like One Hit KO Megatanks with Mechs.
  • Self Deprecation (Drake, particularly after the "Navy vs. Air" mission in Black Hole Rising)
  • Single Palette Town (Used in Advance Wars to distinguish between nations)
  • Shoot The Dog (In one of the endings of Dual Strike, Hawke shoots Von Bolt's life-support system because Jake can't bring himself to. Given he also kills Sturm at the end of Advance Wars 2, he seems to be making rather a habit of this. Note that this is averted if Jake chooses to shoot Von Bolt.) (Also in Days of Ruin, when Lin leads the final battle against Greyfield/Sigismundo and executes him rather than leave it up to Will/Ed.)
  • Smug Snake (Adder in Black Hole Rising, Greyfield/Sigismundo and Waylon/Finn in Days of Ruin. These are just guys you love to hate.)
  • Spoony Bard (Dual Strike in particular. Game Boy Wars 3 also has this, but has a higher variety of units and only 2 or 3 of them are plagued by this trope.)
  • Stop Having Fun Guys (Increasingly prevalent with the rise of unofficial online clones and WFC in Days Of Ruin, allowing people around the world to play each other and establish game breaking strategies)
    • In addition, here's a tip for being taken seriously in the Advance Wars communities: never, ever suggest a sniper unit. Something about such a thing being impossible to balance right or something. Just mention the word sniper and you might very well have been better off mentioning the name of the guy from Freakazoid who takes away people who mention his name. Yes, I know his name is C-...oh no you don't. Think you could get me kidna Think you're clever? You linked to my name.
  • Tastes Like Diabetes: Isabella's theme in Days of Ruin, despite the Darker And Edgier setting. That doesn't mean the song isn't good. As it's a song from Advance Wars, it pretty much has to be really good. I'll stop there.
  • The Dragon (Hawke in Black Hole Rising (subverted once you get to fight Sturm, who is considerably more powerful than his second-in-command); Kindle/Candy in Dual Strike; Ubel in Battalion Wars.)
  • The Enemy Gate Is Down (HQ Captures in all the games, but also factories, Black Cannons and so on from Black Hole Rising onwards).
  • The Man Behind The Man (Sturm in the first Advance Wars game, Kaiser Vlad in both Battalion Wars games, and Caulder/Stolos in Days of Ruin.)
    • The latter shows up fairly early on though, but his real role doesn't get revealed until much later.
  • The Messiah (Jake in Dual Strike; Brenner/O'Brian and Will/Ed in Days of Ruin)
  • Theme Music Power Up (Whenever a CO Power is activated in any of the Advance Wars games, it's time to RAWK!)
  • The Obi Wan (Captain Brenner/O'Brian in Days of Ruin)
  • The Quiet One (Hawke in Black Hole Rising and Dual Strike. Gage/Trak in Days of Ruin)
  • The Smurfette Principle (Most of the factions in the Advance Wars series have more male COs than female ones)
    • Although this is somewhat justified, real life armies don't have that many female officers either. Also averted in Days of Ruin, exactly half of the COs are female.
      • The female COs also tend to be Closer To Earth (with the exception of the female villains). And Orange Star's commander-in-chief (Nell) is female.
    • Lampshaded in Battalion Wars, where Nova's promotion of Mjr. Nelly to CO is a Really Big Deal to the traditionalist Tundrans.
  • The Theme Park Version (Every nation in Battalion Wars is this, with the Western Frontier as the US, the Tundran Territories as Soviet Russia, the Solar Empire as a combination of China and Japan, the Anglo Isles as Britain, and Xylvania as WWII-era Germany... but kinda sorta vampires!)
    • Advance Wars pre-Days of Ruin had trappings of this as well, though not as strong as in Battalion Wars. Orange Star is America, although they suffer the least from this, since they were the sole protagonist country of the first game. Blue Moon is Russia, while Yellow Comet is Japan. Oddly enough, Green Earth is an amalgam of all of WWII Europe, despite that including opposing forces in real life. Since Green Earth turn out to be good guys, the only influences from Nazi Germany come from military tactics; Eagle has a strong air force and a power that allows his units to take another turn to represent blitzkrieg.
      • Also note how Green Earth tanks are turretless (most of the turretless AF Vs during WWII and arguably ALL of the prominent ones were German), whereas the tanks of the other four factions are turreted. Also, Blue Moon tanks have some similarities to the T-34, Blue Moon medium tanks have some similarities to Isoif Stalin tanks, Orange Star tanks have the high profiles of American WWII tanks, Yellow Comet tanks look a bit like more slanted Type 89 I-Gos and Yellow Comet medium tanks look a bit like Type 5 Chi-Ris with heavily overemphasised turrets.
      • If you look at the units in Days of Ruin you can notice that the units for both Rubinelle and Lazuria are modeled after real world examples from the U.S.A. and Soviet Union respectively. Even the infantry are distinct!
      • Notably, in the original Japanese, it's Red Star.
  • This Is Unforgivable (the Andy clone's death in Dual Strike)
  • Those Wacky Nazis (While not technically Nazis, the Xylvanian commanders from Battalion Wars cover most of the character types.)
  • Timed Mission (all missions in Game Boy Wars 3, and a few in Advance Wars series; most cases in terms of turns, not actual time)
    • Dual Strike is the only installment with an actual timer in normal game play, although Days of Ruin also uses a timer in wifi-play to prevent stalling.
      • Although in Dual Strike the timer is set for such a long time you can basically start the battle, have a shower, walk the dog, go to work, have an extended summer vacation and the timer still wont run out.
      • That's only true of the first timed mission, though. The second one, Crystal Calamity, is one of the hardest in the game (although admittedly the time limit only plays a small part in that difficulty).
  • Too Dumb To Live The civilians from Days of Ruin. Although understandable that they don't want to get involved in conflict, they keep forgetting that the Battalion is just about the only thing standing between them and oblivion. In particular, the "Mayor" turns the civilians against the Battalion primarily due to his fear that they will usurp his authority. Near the end, he makes a deal with Caulder/Stolos for the cure to the Creeper and to be left alone. Caulder/Stolos, being the Complete Monster that he is, reneges on his deal and kills the Mayor with the supposed "cure".
  • Totally Radical (Due to another Woolseyism (see below), Jake from Dual Strike speaks in a somewhat grating 90's slang dialect, using "words" such as "sup?" and "dude" when they're not especially appropriate. His Japanese counterpart, John, is extremely serious and uses his headphones for military communications.)
    • Waylon in Days of Ruin pulls a pretty similar "Why are these Lazurians all up in my business?" Somewhat ironically, he's otherwise a total Jive Turkey whose slang is stuck in the 50s. Granted, Waylon was clearly intended to be an annoying jerk, unlike Jake, who is somehow supposed to be a likable protagonist.
  • Unexpected Genre Change (Combat mode in Dual Strike)
  • Unfortunate Implications - In the Japanese versions, the Orange Star army was originally called the "Red Star" army. You can see why they changed it for the international versions.
  • Vaporware (Did you know that a 64 Wars was planned for, you guessed it, the Nintendo 64?)
  • Videogame Caring Potential
  • Villain Exit Stage Left (Justified; the commanders presumably use radio to communicate and can therefore run away long before they're actually in any danger. Usually averted sooner or later, as the villains run out of territories to run to when defeated.)
  • Wall Banger (everything involving the 7 Aircraft Carriers in Dual Strike mission Omens and Signs)
  • War For Fun And Profit (Sturm in the first Advance Wars. Caulder/Stolos in Days of Ruin does War For Fun And For SCIENCE!, but explicitly not profit)
    • Seeing as how in Days of Ruin, Caulder's company IDS sold to both sides of the conflict, he has already profitted.
  • War Has Never Been So Much Fun (Until Days of Ruin, anyway.)
  • We Have Reserves: Rachel: "These troops are on loan from Blue Moon!" On loan? Don't they DIE? Although this is pretty much a given, see War Has Never Been So Much Fun.
  • Woolseyism (Most of the CO names in the English localizations.)
    • Particularly Days of Ruin/Dark Conflict: Nearly every name (and themes), many missions, several units (sometimes contradicting the same unit name in earlier games) and the entirety of the script differ due to an independent European localization. The European version is closer to the original Japanese, for the better or worse.
  • Worthy Opponent (Eagle in the first game. Hawke in Black Hole Rising and Dual Strike. Forsythe/Carter in Days of Ruin)
  • You Fail Biology Forever: Viruses cannot make plants grow under people's skin.
  • You Fail Physics Forever (Plasma? Arcing between two or more fallen meteors?)
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