Zerg Rush - Television Tropes & Idioms

In D.Gray-Man the Millennium Earl launched a siege on the Exorcist's base to retrieve a bit of Applied Phlebotinum from them. It consisted of vast numbers of Akuma, which most Exorcists are capable of dispatching with relative ease. It nearly worked too.
This was part of the defense of One Piece's Enies Lobby. A 10,000 man force of Mook Marines and other forces set to defend against any attempt to attack against it. While Luffy single handedly defeated a good tenth of that force and more fell to the allies the Straw Hats brought with them, the power of the Zerg Rush kicked in after the Straw Hats got to where their battles with CP9 would take place and their allies were subdued and captured.
- Don Krieg and his pirate armada presumably utilized this tactic as well. While they call themselves the strongest pirates in the East Blue, Luffy informs them that they're just the one with the most people.
Naruto frequently has this tactic used by the titular character, who can summon a large number of copies of himself. However, the individual clones are so fragile it rarely manages to hurt anyone. Ultimately he find out that making a lot of them is better for scouting.
- When he begins to seriously utilize them for scouting is after he realizes that any knowledge the clones gain is assimilated back into himself when he dismisses them. Along with his unusually-high chakra this allows him to summon entire fields of himself to all train at the same time - enabling him to do so hundreds if not thousands of times faster than a regular person.

This is basically what the "weenie horde" deck archetype in Magic: The Gathering is all about. The inherent problems with it are the relative frailty of small cheap creatures and the one-new-card-per-turn bottleneck that ultimately limits the size of the horde one can muster; good weenie deck designs generally include cards to help deal with both. Screaming "elf deck!" can scare Mt G players not prepared for weenies nearly as well as screaming "zerglings!" can RTS players not adept at dealing with rushes.
- Saprolings are the prime example of a weenie horde, although usually a slower one. There is a deck that involves a combination of cards allowing the player to generate a literally infinite amount of saprolings creatures which ran over any opponent in short order.
- Ravager Affinity is a particularly scary example of a Zerg Rush deck, with rapidfire Arcbound creatures and Frogmites and Myr Enforcers materialising at rapid speed, the offensive bolstered by the synergy between vast hordes of Artifact Creatures, Artifact Lands, Atog (eats artifacts for a temporary power boost), Arcbound Ravager (an artifact Atog that can transfer its +1/+1 counters, acquired by devouring artifacts, upon its death), Shrapnel Blast (Toss an artifact at an opponent or their creatures For Massive Damage), Skullclamp (effectively kills 1-toughness creatures for two cards and adds +1 power to attackers), Aether Vial (mana-free, Instant-speed creature deploying artifact), and the Disciple of the Vault (Inflicts life-loss upon your opponent whenever any artifact hits the graveyard from play). Turn 1 Frogmite, turn 2 twin Myr Enforcers, and turn 3 "Leave you hanging at 3 life" scenarios crop up far too often.
  - This differs from classic Zerg rushing in that Myr Enforcers, the namesake Arcbound Ravager, and other creatures common in Affinity aren't weak at all. Also, Ravager Affinity is a Genre Savvy use of Conservation Of Ninjutsu, with the basic early rush tactic compounded by sacking all the artifacts to power the Ravager when it comes on board.
  - The main trick of Ravager Affinity is to force at least one attacker through unblocked by the Zerg Rushing, 'then'' feed the Ravager and cannibalize it to transfer the +1/+1 counters to the unblocked attacker.
- Another classic example of a rushing archetype is Sligh. Variants of this deck put into play small red creatures, which are generally among the worst in the game compared to other colors, and attack with them into the opponent as quickly as possible, then finishing the opponent with fire. Despite the relative poor quality of small red creatures, mono-red Sligh and other similar decks using different balances of creatures to fire spells appear in every tournament, and their speed is the standard all other decks are measured against in Magic The Gathering's Meta Game.
  - The Onslaught Block enhanced the Goblin tribe until the strongest Goblin decks superseded classic Sligh.
- Somewhat closer thematically to the Tyranid example are the slivers, in both the actual game and the world the game takes place on.
  - The combination of Conspiracy, Sporesower Thallid, Sporoloth Ancient and Hivestones in the Time Spiral block allowed for something even worse: saproling-slivers. Every creature is a fungus, which can produce new saproling-sliver-funguses every turn, each of which produces further saproling-sliver-funguses, all benefiting from the sliver's All Your Powers Combined ability.
  - The generally-recognised ultimate sliver combo, which effectively allows an infinite number of sliver tokens in one turn, is that of heartstone/ashnod's altar/sliver queen. Spawn a token from the queen, sack it using the altar then produce two more with the bonus from the heartstone, and repeat until your opponent forfeits.
  - The card coat of arms is seemingly designed especially for the zerg rush tactic, as it gives +1/+1 to all creatures for those of the same type(s) in play.

In Enemy Of My Enemy, the Brutes try a version of this, charging in a solid wave of fur and fury against a wall of Jackal-shield-wielding Elites, in a scene reminiscent of soccer hooligans rushing a fence. In this case, the fence pushes back and holds firm, while the Elites' human allies fire down on the Brutes. It's stated that the Brutes were so tightly packed, dozens were dead on their feet because there was no room to fall to the ground once they were killed.

Starship Troopers (movie version). The manner of assault initially chosen by Earth's Mobile Infantry against the Bugs was to basically use a Zerg Rush. However, it met the Bugs' own Zerg Rush tactics, and conclusively failed.
- The book deals with it properly. The main character notes that if one human soldier dies but takes 100 bugs with him, it's still a net gain for the bugs.
Arguably, Agent Smith (all of him) used this tactic to attempt to overwhelm Neo in The Matrix Reloaded.
- He eventually abandons it when he realizes the Conservation Of Ninjutsu is in effect.
An old, old version of this was used by the mooks in Akira Kurosawa's The Seven Samurai: attacks on the seven protagonists generally took place in large numbers with each attacker cut down with one or two strikes. Kurosawa is believed to have used this technique since Kenjutsu focuses on doing maximum damage in one or two cuts, and to keep the sequences interesting whilst still observing Kenjutsu's principles — a cinematic Zerg Rush was the answer.
- The peasants also used their own Zerg Rush in the final battle by only letting one or two bandits into the camp at a time and then swarming them with spears from all sides.
The Empire's standard TIE fighters are designed specifically to be expendable and cheap. They have no shields, no life support, no ejector seat; heck, they don't even have landing gear. They're really just flying laser cannons with human pilots that the Empire generally throws at its enemies with the expectation that superior numbers will win the day.
- It's stated somewhere in the Expanded Universe that, given the size and general hostility of space, there isn't much point in having ejector seats. This is averted in the TIE bomber, because it's more likely to find itself in atmosphere.
- Similarly, the droids of the Confederacy's army have the military prowess of a brick, but the sheer numbers of droids they can field allows for plenty of Zerg Rushes. In a classic case of Hollywood Tactics however, the clones of the Republic don't have numerical superiority but employ Zerg Rushes anyway.
  - One of the Expanded Universe novels involves them launching something like two thousand of the droid fighters at once. This is when Star Destroyers only carry around 72 TIE-style fighters each.
- The "TIE Fighters are weak" thing was mostly a creation of the EU — in the movies, they were about equal, with both kinds of ships dying in very few hits. (Though X-wings still had more guns and missile launchers.) ~~Terrorists~~ Rebels having better weapons than an actual military does sound strange, but the EU does give reasoning: companies are nationalized by the fascist Empire just as easily as people get oppressed by it, and more than one such company outright defected and started churning out good ships. Not to mention that the Empire's foundation of power is massive capital ships, and both manufacturers and Fleet men don't like the idea of giving lowly troopers or pilots any more independence than necessary. Lastly, in the EU, for quite some time the Empire still does have the best fighter (the TIE Defender), but these were reserved only for the very best, as producing them en masse was not considered cost effective.
  - Despite popular belief (see above), TIE Fighters do have ejector seats (although they are rarely used, because pilot rescue is rare at best) and are supposedly designed to be able to land on the flat bottoms of their wings.
  - Tie fighters aren't so much weak, as the X-wings are designed more on keeping the pilots alive, than dishing around damage. X-wings' one major bonus is that it has shields. This means that a glancing blow could be negated. They could potentially take a shot and keep going. In the books they always say this like Shields are little more than that one small tiny lifeline that could potentially keep them alive if its a glancing blow. Otherwise the lasers could punch right through and just blow them away in one shot. That's why X-wing fighters are more free to fire if they think they have a shot, and TIE's have to more pick and choose their targets, because if they miss, and one of their friends happens to be in the way, They just lost a friend, and helped their enemies. Also note: The TIE fighters have two laser guns strapped together, almost no spread. This means that there *are* no glancing blows, unless you're extremely lucky to jerk away at just the right time.
  - The Alliance and Empire have different strategic and tactical priorities. The X-Wing is made for long-distance raids: it can jump from hyperspace, survive ground-based defenses and enemy fighters for a short time (thanks to a combination of speed, shields and onboard astromech droid), and carry enough firepower to strike telling blows on major targets before jumping away again. The TIE Fighter is made for planetary and station defense—it doesn't require range or heavy firepower, since its only job is to counter enemy fighters attacking its base. All it needs is maneuverability, and since it doesn't have all the extra features of an X-Wing, it's cheaper to churn them out by the squadron.
Romper Stomper features a gang of brawny, racist skinheads who pick on one Vietnamese immigrant too many, sending endless waves of enraged Vietnamese factory workers to overwhelm and hound them across the city.
The Axe Gang in Drunken Master 2 uses swarm tactics.
As does the Crazy 88 in Kill Bill. Unfortunately for them, Conservation Of Ninjutsu is in effect.
The end of Stargate features the previously oppressed slaves of Scary Dogmatic Aliens zerg rushing their former overlords, some with nothing more than sticks (or even just their bare hands), not even slowing down when some of them get killed by the panicking aliens' weapons.
The Lord Of The Rings films feature this heavily, with massive hordes of orcs swarming much smaller human armies. Possibly subverted by Sauron's use of heavier units such as trolls alongside the orcs.
- Also when we first see the orc army attacking (during the War of the Last Alliance) they do so mob-handed. When Sauron next makes his play for power, his armies attack in disciplined formations.
  - By the third movie the Orcs are using clever manuevers and combined-arms tactics to greatly increase the advantage their numbers give. The humans just charge in regardless.

This ends up being the only real recourse of the forces of hell in The Salvation War: Armageddon. Due to the fact they're at bronze age levels of technology and are up against modern armies, its not like they have much of a choice...
Jim Butcher's Codex Alera novels feature the Vord, basically a fantasy Captain Ersatz of the Zerg. Fighting against Roman legionaires with Elemental Powers.
- However, what makes the Vord absolutely terrifying is that they don't just rely on Hollywood Tactics; Vord Queens are brilliant strategists. For instance, the first time the protagonists went up against a hive, the queen got the steadholders to split their forces in half so she could take over quietly, then when the reinforcements arrived Zerg Rushed them from ambush. After inflicting heavy damage, she had her warriors draw back, knowing that the legionaires would take their wounded inside, where she had Takers waiting to turn sleeping soldiers into drones. She specifically targeted the healers and Knights, crippling their combat force. In other words, one five-minute Zerg Rush = half the army down.
In Halo: Ghosts of Onyx, this was the purpose of the Spartan-III soldiers, since most of the Spartan-IIs has been killed by that point. It's a slight subversion in that they're physically and mentally tougher than the average shock troop, but they're still treated tactically as an expendable resource.
- In Halo: Fall of Reach, Spartan-117 along with the rest of his team observe a formation of roughly 1000 Unggoy (grunts) and reminds himself that while they can be cowardly, he is also aware instances where they have attacked in such numbers that even though the Human defenders keep mowing them down wave after wave, eventually they run out of bullets... at which time another wave of grunts steps forward. (which happens to be a main tactic of the Tyranids see below)
The Lord Of The Rings and some of JRR Tolkien's other works feature Zerg Rush tactics, typically by orc or goblin forces.
- The forces of evil can also be surprisingly clever tacticians, though, as several major defeats for the good guys show. They just almost always have the numerical advantage and decide to make use of it.

Doomed, dying heroes in Japanese legends are capable of enormous slaughter before they are finally brought down by overwhelming force. This is attributed to their single-minded dedication and disregard of death; their foes are weaker because they lack this dedication. Yoshitsune's vastly outnumbered followers still bought him time enough to commit Seppuku.
This is not limited to legendary Japanese heroes. Irish and Norse do it too.

A The Far Side cartoon showed an amoeba army with the strategy "divide and conquer".

Warhammer 40000: Tyranids all over. Also a fairly valid tactic for Orks, Imperial Guard and Chaos cultists/mutants/plague zombies, too. (Note that of the abovementioned factions, the Imperial Guard is the only one without a hive mind, berserker bloodlust, mind control, or all of the above. Needless to say, their morale is not good.)
- Of course the Guard do have an advantage the others don't. Lots of artillery.
- Also worth noting that Tyranids were actually the inspiration for the Trope Namer, making them a sort of proactive Trope Codifier.
- The 'nids really do take the cake here, their main soldier, the 'guants (in all forms) main job is to rush at defences so they'll run out of ammo when the bigger 'nids show up, most of the time it takes weeks of non-stop rushing, in fact most 'nids don't even have a digestion system. The main reason why they do this is because since the Hive Fleet eats everything, they eat their dead (and their still living forces) so it's still a net gain even if they loose billions.
  - 'Gaunts can be returned to the table every time they are killed to represent the endless swarms of them that exist. In apocalypse battles (Very big games with lots of 'gaunts) actually have a rule where opponents troops will run out of ammo if they shoot too many of them.
- Warhammer Fantasy Battles also has notable examples of Zerg Rush applying armies: Such as the Skaven, Orcs and (mostly) Goblins and the Gnoblars (the latter only existing as an army list published in Games Workshop's "White Dwarf" magazine).
It's a standard method of attack of kobolds in most Dungeons And Dragons adventures.
- Err... hardly. The entire point of Kobolds is to lead opponents through deadly traps and mazes, and areas where they have the edge (eg, leading medium sized creatures into Kobold sized spaces). They only attack en-masse when there is no other option.
- You have obviously never encountered the horror known as Tucker's Kobolds.
- This is expanded on in Races of the Dragon, the 3.5 supplemental book covering Kobolds and other races descended from dragons — Kobolds take a very socialist view to life, being extremely Lawful Evil (leaning Lawful Neutral) — while the first defense of a Kobold city is going to be it's hundreds of extremely deadly traps, ambushes, etc., as a last resort, the Kobold men will throw themselves en mass at attackers to buy the women and children time to escape with the eggs, the idea being that their lives are a small price to pay to ensure the survival of the town.
According to Moneyball, a player of tabletop naval combat simulations did this with PT boats and won every round in a particular tournament, although most of the boats were destroyed each round. The next year the rules were modified to emphasize mobility, which PT boats lose when damaged—so he scuttled every boat as soon as it took damage.
- Doug Lenat, playing in the Traveller Trillion Credit Squadron tournaments, 1981 and 1982. Made still more awesome by the fact that Lenat was not a wargamer, but a computer programmer using an AI on the rulebook.

Named for the Zerg in Starcraft, whose main tactic is pretty much this in a nutshell — overwhelming numbers of cheap, disposable troops. (Memetic Mutation follows usage of this term with "Kekeke", the Korean equivalent of "hahaha.") Though as mentioned above, the meaning of the name in Star Craft is rather different than the above description.
- The classic Zerg rush refers to using the zerg's advantage in the early game of being able to quickly churn out weak units (e.g zerglings) to sack the enemy's base before they can set up their slower-to-build but more powerful defenses. This tactic is somewhat less cheesy than what the term has come to mean: Acting quickly with whatever troops you can muster to take advantage of a small window of opportunity, as opposed to meeting a strong opponent with a copious amount weak troops.
  - A modernised version of the classic rush was witnessed in a recent Korean tournament, where one of the players went "4-pool" (use only the initial 4 Drones, then plant a Spawning Pool) and threw a very early batch of zerglings at his opponent, who was was playing a slower standard build.
- Old fashioned Zerg Rush tactics have pretty much died in the Tournament Play metagame. It's now all about the mutalisks, lurkers, and defilers.
  - Taken to the extreme by the Sauron Zerg endgame tactic. The Zerg player, having already taken control of most of the map's resources, starts producing Zerglings and Hydralisks as fast as possible, typically at a rate of several per second, and throwing them at the opponent's base as necessary to stay below the Arbitrary Headcount Limit.
- In Terran mission 9, the Zerg pull the other kind of Zerg Rush. Your base is placed in front of a Zerg base with orders to protect it while destroying the Protoss bases spread over the map. Except the Zerg aren't on your side and will send units over to your base to destroy it (you're allowed to kill Zerg units, but you fail the mission if you blow up one of their buildings). When you've wiped out the Protoss, the Zerg un-burrow 100+ Zerglings and overrun your base.
  - Actually, any half-competent player, who knows the attack will come, can just build half a dozen bunkers and survive the (supposedly) hopeless fight without any losses. But the taking of your base (or rather, a particular character in it) is a major plot point, so even if you do this the game will just pretend you were overrun.
  - Despite all this, an actual Zerg rush in-game is still viable and effective.
This is the AI's strategy in any Tower Defense game, in which the player's goal is to prevent their base from being overwhelmed by sheer weight of numbers.
In Warcraft 2: The Tides of Darkness, it was a common (and much cursed) strategy of the Orcs to use a "Grunt Rush" to win battles — the father of the Zerg Rush.
- To clarify - In Warcraft 2, unlike Starcraft, you started with only 5 workers and no buildings. The thought was to build a Town Hall with the gold the game started you with to get an economy going. Some players, however, build a barracks instead and used whatever gold left to make basic fighting units and go attack the enemy, who would be lucky to even have a barracks started, much less have any units to defend with.
In Warcraft 3, the Undead have an exploding Zerg Rush. This is because Necromancers casting "Raise Dead" raise two skeletons from every corpse - so if you send in a rush of ghouls backed up by a couple of Necromancers set to auto-cast "Raise Dead" the resultant explosion of skeletons from friendly and enemy corpses alike can be very destructive.
Kingdom Hearts has this with The Heartless. The section in the second game where you have to fight off one thousand Mooks springs to mind.
Most side-scrolling Beat Em Ups have this, with the player character facing off against hundreds of faceless, weak Mooks who are more than capable of wearing you down over time.
Dynasty Warriors. Any enemy faction against the player character.
Zerg Rushing is fairly common in Nintendo Wars, including the classic "Mech Rush" tactic and its infantry-and-artillery variant in the AW 2 and AW:DS era. Even in situations where foot soldiers are ineffective, it is usually wise to deploy multiple cheap units rather than fewer, stronger ones (copters instead of bombers is a prime example).
- Some COs have specializations that seem to have been designed with this trope in mind. Colin of the original Advance Wars series is the epitome of it, since his troops are weaker but cheaper. Hachi, Sasha, and Sensei are also particularly capable of using sheer numbers to overwhelm.
For most Fire Emblem games, this is a favored tactic of the AI opponents; they'll typically field armies that are anywhere between twice to four times the size of your party and, unless they're on the defensive, will send units to attack you in large numbers. This is offset somewhat by the player units having better stats, better equipment and the benefit of support relationships, so a properly-leveled party will take little/no damage from the resulting Rush. Hard/Maniac Modes, however...
The Russians in Age Of Empires III. Their light infantry is weak and has low HP, but they're built by tens and are the cheapest units in the game.
- You can rush with Hittite elephants in Age Of Empires. Much like real elephants they're hard to get rushing but man, once they start it's hard to get them to stop.
  - The Yamato cavalry rush was another staple of the original game.
  - Plus the late-game Shang villager horde, involving villager-only upgrades that turned them into passable fighting units. When you consider that the Shang had the cheapest villagers in the game...
- For a dramatic demonstration of this, play AoE2 with the "aegis" cheat activated. That cheat allows all players to create buildings and units instantly, but may also make the game damn near impossible to win as your opponents will inevitably send an endless stream of constantly-replenishing units at you.
- For whatever reason, Anti-Zerg Rushing Scrubs are particularly common in the Ao E community. Many games are played with a house rule that neither side can attack for some fixed length of time, sometimes ranging up to 45 minutes.
Overlord, definitely. Your "Minions" are extremely expendable, and quite often, the easiest way to handle any given encounter, is to just keep throwing minions at it 'till it breaks. Sure, there are probably more elegant ways to do it, but...
Final Fantasy XI has this in spades... mostly on the part of the players. Over the years, a common phrase for beating endgame monsters is to "Throw Rangers/Black Mages/Summoners/Melees/Samurai/Dark Knights at it." Hell, the strategy is named Zerging.
- Many a player can tell a story about the time they range-attacked a weak monster on the other side of an impassable obstacle, only to see the monster go charging off in some random direction... only to appear fifteen minutes later, having finally navigated the zone to find the player, and having alerted all its friends that it met along the way. Twenty floppy little bunny rabbits equals quick death.
- One of the missions in the Crystalline Prophecy expansion involves 30 mandragoras attacking you in waves of about 5 or 6 each. They're comically weak and take an enhanced amount of damage, so it's part zerg rush and part whack-a-mole as the mandragoras die in one hit each.
  - However, if you leave these enemies alone long enough they can Zerg Rush you by performing a move that takes nearly all of their HP and turns it into about 300ish damage. This attack can be used by the entire crowd in quick succession if you let them, which results in a near-instant and humiliating death on the player's part.
  - The mini-expansion which came out after Crystalline Prophecy, A Moogle Kupo d'Etat, features another such battle where a swarm of Cardians attack the player. They are exceptionally weak, much like the previous expansion's mandragoras, until you realize that half of the crowd attacking you are in the middle of casting some of the most powerful spells in the game.
As fitting for a Blizzard game, World Of Warcraft also has the zerg rush as an encounter in the Zul'Farrak instance.
- Many instances feature large packs of weak enemies that have to be killed by area of effect-attacks or they simply owerwhelm the players. Particularly notable are the ones like the boss encounter in Zul'Farrak where the enemies just spawn when an event is triggered and immdediately attack the players.
- Also, at the Battlegrounds (side vs side PvP areas), zerging (which is called just that, even by people who use it) is usually the most common tactic for defeating the enemy. Suggesting anything more complicated will either get you ignored or insulted. However, the final bosses of Alterac Valley are designed so that zerging them will only result in lots of unnecessary deaths.
- This type of instance event is usually called a "gauntlet" where waves of enemies will attack the party, with little to no downtime between waves, followed immediately by a powerful boss. A couple of notable gauntlets in the latest expansion include: The Violet Hold which is nothing more than 3 gauntlets, one after the other; Gothik the Harvester in Naxxramas, where the waves of enemies you must defeat before you can fight Gothik return in waves of undead after you kill them.
  - The "wave boss" of Halls of Stone follows this pattern for the most part, but has no final boss. Instead, the waves consist of 2-3 elites, which can Charge past you instantly into the room you're protecting. Unlike Violet Hold or the gauntlet from Culling of Stratholme, waves are on a set timer, which is shorter than most geared-at-level parties can kill them. Also, the room you're protecting is firing lasers at you from behind. This is considered one of the most challenging encounters in the Heroic tier, especially when running with a tank without a Zone of Threat capability.
- The infamous Leeroy Jenkins incident. The dragon eggs in the particular room must be touched to hatch initially, but once they start hatching it usually results in a chain reaction which leads to entirely too many dragon hatchlings all heading towards the party at once....
Basically the entire premise of Pikmin.
- The C-stick in the game is used to direct the mass of pikmin following you in a more precise direction, and when facing an enemy, is circled around to rush the entire pack in even faster. There's nothing more satisfying than swarming a tiny little Bulborb with all 100 of your minions from all sides.
In Sid Meiers Alpha Centauri, this is the main tactic of the Free Drones, a faction of socialist proletariat who have a distrust for the well-educated upper echelons of society that once oppressed them (and so have a certain Dumb Is Good ethos). They feature an industry bonus (the citizenry being made up almost entirely of blue-collar workers) and a research penalty (...the citizenry being made up almost entirely of blue-collar workers), resulting in being able to deploy vast quantities of units but having subpar equipment. The Hive, the only other faction with an innate industry bonus, usually works similarly but to a lesser extent, mainly because they don't have a research penalty. They do have an economy penalty, though, which negatively effects their ability to research.
- Another faction that likes to Zerg Rush is the Believers. They have a bonus to Support under their preferred political system which allows them to field larger armies, combined with a bonus to attack and lack of research that causes them to have lower-tech units then normal (albeit not exactly weaker so long as they strike first). They can't build as quickly as the Hive or the Drones, but they can maintain a larger army and their bonus to attack is incentive to strike first.
The Brotherhood of Nod in Command And Conquer makes use of this at lower tech levels, able to produce huge numbers of cheap, expendable militia troops, as well as light, fast attack bikes, buggies, and tanks.
- Ultimately not the best example however, because while most soldiers fighting for The Brotherhood are poorly trained poorly armed rabble the other end of the spectrum is comprised of a much smaller group of super elites using technology that's actually superior in many ways to that of GDI. If Nod has a single overarching approach to warfare it's not just zerging the enemy, it could probably best be described as sending favored sons to stab him in the back with a billion dollar dagger made from alien technology while he's too busy fending off the ragged but very fanatical mob in front of him.
- Seriously, there is no need for this conversation. The Scrin can readily spam Disintegrators and buzzers while building an army of tripods in the background. THEY are the real Zerg. And let's not mention the mind-controlling cultists used by Traveler 59.
China, in Command and Conquer: Generals. Red Guards, the basic infantry, are built two at a time. Troop carriers come with 8 Red Guards free. To further encourage massing, groups of five or more of the same unit in close proximity get a damage bonus.
- Then again, the GLA faction has Angry Mobs, which is 9 civilians with pistols and rocks (unless you Arm The Mob with AK-47s) counting as a single unit. They're not very effective, but it's fun to throw a mass of 200 people at your opponent's base.
  - Not very effective? They're highly effective against infantry and vehicles! Once they clog up the enemy's defenses, it's just a matter of time to mow down the rest of them.
  - And those "rocks" they throw are Molotovs.
Rise Of Nations has the Terra Cotta Army wonder, a Zerg Rush kit, basically. Every thiry seconds (initially; it goes up by half a second for every infantry you control), you get a free basic infantry unit. Read that again.
- And, once you get the research (wonder?) that makes all timers complete instantly, you can basically send a never ending line of basic infantry trudging across the map towards your enemy. More like a Zerg Irressistable Force.
- Also present in the game are the Chinese race, whose main bonus is instant villagers. Depending on Age, villagers can be upgraded to simple military units. This makes for a semi-effective anti Zerg Rush tactic, as a Chinese player with adequate resources can spam their city with villagers up to their population cap. Which can mean several hundred instant soldiers.
- There is also the upgrade "Artificial Intelligence": All units are created instantaneosly, regardless of power or cost in resources. (Assuming you can pay, otherwise it doesn't work at all)
The Mordor faction in the Lord Of The Rings: Battle For Middle Earth RTS is a prime example. Their basic unit is weak but free and comes in large groups. An even more extreme example is the Orc Labourer from the Isengard faction, an unarmoured orc wielding a woodcutter's axe. They each take up 1 command point, in a game where the command point cap is usually 300 at the very least.
- This very much applies to the armies of Mordor (and to a slightly lesser extent Isengard) in the original novels as well. Sauron is practically the poster boy (poster-Eye?) for the 'plenty more where they came from' school of evil strategy. His Orcs are clumsy, cowardly fighters and only effective in huge numbers, especially against skilled warriors like (most of) the Fellowship.
Scout Rushes are a frequently-suggested (if rarely-executed) strategy in Team Fortress 2. If the Scouts are all really good, it can actually work.
- Its worth noting that a scout rush gives you the advantage of speed, not of numbers-–it allows your team to reach the objective before most of your opponents. If the enemy uses some scouts, though, a full-on scout rush will have numerical superiority until the rest of the opposing team arrives.
- Technically there is a number advantage, at least maps where you need to capture. Simply because a Scout has twice the capturing power.
In Total Annihilation, the equivalent tactic is the Flash Rush (or, inevitably, "Flush"): Arm's Flash light tank isn't quite the fastest or cheapest unit, but for its armour and firepower (dual energy machine guns that provide a slow but steady stream of damage, while also sounding awesomely like the Hyper Blaster from Quake II: the light laser of Core's equivalent unit, the Instigator, just isn't the same) it is very cost-effective and very brutal en masse.
- The Peewee Rush was even more brutally effective, but tended to crash the game due to having too many units on the screen...
- In Open Source remake - Spring - most mods still feature flash rush. Peewee rush is usually not as effective though - bigger maps and rebalanced stats mean that it won't reach the target before dying, unless their amount is really big. Ao E units tend to deal with hordes of weak units in seconds, which reduces usefulness of this tactic. Peewees still have a role in the game, but it's not rushing.
World In Conflict has America being overrun on being esentially Soviet Zerg Rush. No missiles, just bunch of parachuting armies and war machines.
In Warhammer Online, whichever of the two opposing realms (Destruction or Order) outnumbers the other is often accused of using this tactic to win in Rv R, using their increased numbers and over abundance of tanks to steamroller the opposition. Trouble is, the tactic often does work if the underpopulated side can't put up a decent melee line to slow them down whilst their ranged take them apart.
One of the Event Matches in Super Smash Bros Melee is called "Super Mario 128", where 128 smaller, weaker Marios swarm the field and you have to defeat every one of them.
- And just so you get the point of how weak Zerg Rush soldiers can be, these soldiers can be defeated with any attack in one hit. Even Luigi's taunt.
  - Ah, so that's how you're supposed to get that bonus! Wait... event matches don't give out the bonuses... crap.
Darwinians, basic Virus units a.k.a. Virii and especially Multiwinians in the Darwinia series include such sheer number of units at disposal that they outnumber Zergs at least from eight to one during peak moments.
The coliseum in Tales Of Vesperia uses this trope. You're forced to fight wave after wave of monsters, and it isn't too bad until you start fighting stronger Mooks that have the ability to stagger you. From there, you'll probably get staggered over and over and over again until you die. If this wasn't bad enough, bosses join the rush at set intervals.
Both your side, and the enemies' side can employ this trope in Final Fantasy XII: Revenant Wings. If you don't capture a summon gate quickly enough, then often you can end up pratcially wading through espers, in order to reach/capture it. On the other hand, if used against a level III esper (provided that most of the other espers have been taken care of), it can be quite helpful.
Star Wars ~~Age of The Empire~~ Galactic Battlegrounds, since most of the differences between forces are in unique units and cosmetic changes, can let anyone do this. It's comparatively easy to sledgehammer a nearby opponent into the ground simply by hurling a swarm of basic troopers and mounted troopers at it. Of course, this can come back to bite you when everyone else upgrades tech levels first and curbstomps you with pummel siege engines and assault mechs.
- The republic however get the ultimate Zerg Rush ability, They can put out troop units a lot faster then everyone else and their Tech tree is meant to send clone troopers to the field (Their tech gives you more food and better med droids to keep your men alive), the Rebels get slightly sturdier troops with decent anti armor to compensate for their lack of Zerg Rushing production and the Trade Feds have no housing required but lacks the resources to produce soldiers.
Left 4 Dead has this for the regular zombies. Whether the AI Director summons them or if a player gets vomited on by a Boomer, a huge swarm of zombies will all rush after the team, surround them, and proceed to beat the crap out of them. In VS mode, infected players may adopt the rush strategy by either having everyone attacking at once or rushing in after a Boomer player does his job.
- For that matter, any self-respecting zombie horde in any medium.
Absence of Justice makes a reference to this after the first battle of the final chapter. After Mao smothers a Prinny bomb set by the brainwashed Vatos and Champloo helps them resist brainwashing relapse, a squad of brainwashed seniors appears to take down the group. The Vatos get a brief CMOA at this point by calling in their relatives for a diversion - all two hundred thousand of them!
Almaz: Heh... when you can't get good help, get more help...
Sapphire: Indeed. Numbers are power. Human wave tactics of this scale can only be called amazing.
Serious Sam often has moments where rather weak Kleer skeletons or Marsh Hoppers can overwhelm the player just by having so many of them at the same time.
While Supreme Commander doesn't have a single faction that utilizes this tactic, the scope and scale of the game lets the best fulfillment of this, since the Arbitrary Headcount Limit is much higher than the usual FPS. One interesting (although ultimately doomed even against poorly placed defenses) strategy is to build 10+ factories with assisting engineers and pointing the freshly made robots and tanks towards the enemy base, sending a constant, never ending stream of units. This tactic can even work if you take the chance to send some siege-breaking units to destroy the front rows of enemy defenses, or use this stream as the distraction for a better localized attack.
- Possible the best thing ever about Sup Com? Artillery rush! That is, building a continuing stream of artillery up to the enemy base and laugh with glee as his outer defenses are shredded to pieces by 50+ small artillery placements. Or better yet, if you can muster the resources, building 5 HEAVY artillery placements 10 Kms away from the enemy base and watch as the base simply vanishes by the 3rd or 4th salvo. Considering you manage to keep such a grand project hidden from your foe.
  - Maybe you can destract him using waves and waves of T1 bots rushing his base...
X-COM: Apocalypse has what's called the Hoverbike swarm, where you buy lots of cheap, weak, but highly evasive hoverbikes which you use to absolutely overwhelm attacking Flying Saucers. It works very efficiently for most of the game until the aliens start using Dimensional Multi-Bomb Launchers to take out many bikes in one shot.
Star Wars: Empire At War absolutely adores this trope. Bombers are fairly inexpensive, and have powerful weapons that bypass the enemy's shield. The downside is that they move slow and only come 3 to a squad. However, since Ea W lets you drop reinforcements right next to your other units, you can drop 12 or 15 bombers essentially right on top of the enemy station in around 3 minutes, usually before the enemy has a chance to upgrade their space station.
The Egyptians in Age Of Mythology are the ones with cheap weak troops that build fast. Throw in a few production speed upgrades and a Meteor god power dropped on a hostile chokepoint, and it's Wall of Slingers time, especially if you go with Isis and use your priests to empower military buildings. [Isis also boosts population cap. This is very bad for whoever's on the receiving end.]
In Civilization III' the Aztecs are made for this tactic. Their Jaguar Warrior unit is the earliest fast unit in the game, and fast units retreat at one health unless fighting other fast units.'' This allows for multi-turn rushes of epic proportions very early in the game. As a bonus, the Aztecs are Militaristic, which means that military buildings (such as Bunkers, which increase the total health of any unit produced in that city) cost half their normal price.
Parodied in Mario And Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story where Bowser states that running into people's feet is basically all The Goombas learn in their military academy. He invokes this with the "Goomba Storm" special where he orders Goombas to rush the enemy, though when done right it becomes Death From Above with flaming Goombas.
In the Halo series, most skirmishes allow you to take on one squad of a few grunts/jackals backed by a brute/elite at a single time. When the drones show up, they go down easily and typically carry piss-weak weapons, but show up in really large groups. The flood also tends to send in wave after wave of infected (even more annoying in Halo 3, as flood infection forms can revive the combat forms you just put down).

The Order Of The Stick: This was Redcloak's main tactic in his assault on Azure City, until he was on the receiving end of a Diving Save Heroic Sacrifice and realised that he was sacrificing actual lives to fulfill a grudge.
See this strip of The Noob.
- Also this one for basic tactics behind zerging and rushing in general.
"Achievement Unlocked -- Way to play like an asshole, asshole."

This is the primary tactic of the Yamani Empire in Open Blue. The Zerg Rush, combined with bushido. So Yeah...

In several episodes of Futurama, Zapp Brannigan reminisces about winning one of his many "victories" using this tactic with human troops. What happened was there was an attack by "Killbots", in which he just sent waves and waves of his own men against them until they filled their pre-set "kill limit" and stopped. Yes, he did just devoid the purpose of attempting to fight the Killbots in the first place.
- There's also the episode where he plans to send wave after wave of ships to clog the enemy's weapons with ship wreckage:
  Zapp: The alien mothership is in orbit here. *points to map* If we can hit that bullseye, the rest of the dominoes will fall like a house of cards. Checkmate!
  Kif: *sigh*
  Zapp: Now, like all great plans my strategy is so simple an idiot could've devised it. On my command all ships will line up and fly directly into the alien death cannons, clogging them with wreckage.
This is how the title insects of Antz storm the termite colony. It partially backfires, as all the termites are killed, but the only ant to survive was the one who barely did any fighting at all.
- It plays with the trope, however, in that this is what is supposed to happen. As it turns out, all the soldiers involved were loyal to the Queen instead of the head Soldier ant, which was supposed to leave him free to carry out his plan.
A G-rated version in A Bugs Life: Hopper makes it clear to his soldiers early on that they have to keep the ants' morale low, because the ants outnumber the grasshoppers a hundred to one...
A Zerg Rush gives the Monarch's henchmen a rare and costly victory over Brock Samson in The Venture Brothers.

When you really think about it, humanity itself works on this principle. Although there are exceptions, individual people are Mostly Harmless until we have the support of others, directly or indirectly, behind us. Almost every major achievement we've pulled off has been the result of tens to thousands of people working together.
It may be surprising, but the more soldiers there are in a unit, the less likely they are to be killed. There's a reason for the saying "strength in numbers".
- On the other hand though, that would make them an attractive target for an artillery strike...
- That's a trick of statistics. If you've got four people in a unit, and one gets killed, that's a 25% death rate. If you've got 20 people in a unit, and one gets killed, that's 5%. So it's less that troops are less likely to die, and more that there's less chance of any particular trooper to die.
- Actually no. Lanchester's Square Law means that marginally larger units can have dramatically improved survival rates in battle. The larger group inflicts more casualties, which makes it even larger comparitively, which means it causes even more casualties compared to the enemy...
There was once a military manoeuvre/unit known as the Forlorn Hope. These were the first men into a breached wall in a siege situation, so called because of their chances of surviving (also possibly a corruption of the Dutch for "Lost Company", Verloren Hoop). Anyone who did survive was automatically made an officer.
- Among the French. While a British officer who survived the Forlorn Hope was promoted, for the men it was just the glory of having taken part.
- A lieutenant became a captain and sergeants were promoted to ensigns. If anyone were to survive it'd be them but it didn't happen very often...
About a year ago, a massive ten square-mile pack of jellyfish swarmed a salmon farm, killing its entire population of about one hundred thousand fish. The water was so thick with jellyfish that the farm's boats could hardly even move, preventing the personnel from saving any of their salmon.
During World War I, trench warfare was fought in a style strikingly similar to this tactic, as countless infantry squads were sent over No Man's Land to charge enemy machinegun nests. The Russians had even based their initial strategy on just how many of them there were.
- This sort of tactic had actually been the cornerstone of Russian warfare for at least 200 years by this point, hence the term "Russian Steamroller".
Defense mechanism employed by Japanese honeybees against a particular type of hornet.
- Zerging is a beehive's response to pretty much everything, really...
Russia's victory in World War II was partially due to this. While many of their battles in the early parts of the war were fought against equal or greater Axis forces, they had the ability to replenish their forces much faster than the Axis, and by a year into the war they were also churning out well-designed armour at a ludicrous rate; the combination let them take advantage of their early victories by cleverness (Moscow, Stalingrad) and transition into the overwhelming forces of Kursk and the drive through Eastern Europe while the Axis never had a chance to regroup.
- Well, I'd say it's more presented as Zerg Rush in fiction (Western, mostly) than it was in Real Life. It's expected that an invaded country would have faster means to replenishing its reserves due to, well, the battlefield being located where they live. While there were many examples of Zerg Rush during the first part of the War (usually being just desperate attempts to stop the Germans' advancing at any cost), the Victory was mainly due to superior technologies and designs discovered by the Russians (e.g., the T-34 tank).
  - Part of the reason that this aspect of Soviet tactis is typically over-emphasised in Western fiction seems to be that it acts as a straightforward reminder that the Soviet Union was only the lesser of two evils.
  - This was the Russian strategy in World War I, and they got slaughtered by germans with machine guns. Eventually the people got sick of being reserves and revolted in favor of communism, hoping to gain a better government. This worked poorly.
- By the way, Russians are often shown in non-Russian fiction as preferring Zerg Rush in warfare (see the Ageof Empires III example earlier). However, in Real Life they often subverted this stereotype. Case in point: the famous Russian general Alexander Suvorov, one of the few generals in history who have never lost a battle. In 1790, he stormed Izmail, a Turkish fort that was deemed impregnable. Russians lost 4 thousand (of 30), the Turks - 26 (of 35).
  - The Turks trying to overrun the Russian position with human waves added a lot to it.
- A lot of the "Russians were callous Zerg Rushers" proponents also conveniently forget that this was also essentially what the Americans did in World War II. America is big, it has a huge population, and a lot of industrial capability. This, of course, meant that they could churn out far more troops and equipment faster than the Axis could. So what if one Sherman is easy meat for the larger German tanks? American essentially had more Shermans (and other armored vehicles) than the Germans had anti-tank ammo.
- America's method to combat the German U-boats patrolling the Atlantic was to simply overwhelm them with sheer numbers. Thus, the Liberty ship was born. Between 1941 and 1945, 2,710 were completed and played a major role in keeping a steady stream of supplies moving to Europe.
- Blitzkreig would be an example of the actual Zerg Rush tactic.
  - The Panzer I and II were inferior to french tanks in every way. Rommel got around that through flanking manuevers and using rear area strikes to cut supply lines. Just like the starcraft namesake the point is the destroy the enemy's military economy.
The Korean War had many examples of the Zerg Rush. North Korean and/or Chinese forces would sometimes attack in massive waves usually with inadequate armament. One example being a human wave of people carrying nothing but baskets of grenades. Another being human waves of men armed only with submachine guns, charging over clear terrain from far outside their weapons effective range, against Americans armed with long-range rifles. These moments were still tense for the Americans, but they also found that the closer the Koreans and Chinese got, the more effective their rifles got, as their bullets would start going through their attackers, and continue on to hit another person in the wave.
Ants do this. It's called Marabunta. Everything is wasted. They are probably the inspiration from which human wave attacks are drawn.
- One African species of ant actually invades the major orifices of its prey and bite at once, inside and out.
  - I saw a documentary on these ants; they literally crawled down the mouth of a crab to bypass its armor.
- Driver ants (the siafu) use similar tactics for downing prey and are capable of blanketing a forest floor for miles around their nest. They even apply zerg rushes to physical obstacles, when they encounter an impassable barrier they use themselves as ramps.
During the American Civil War, the Union generals who typically won more battles were unafraid to lose massive amounts of men. In particular, several politicians rallied for Lincoln to fire Ulysses S. Grant due to the massive casualty rates of his soldiers. However, since Grant was one of the few generals Lincoln could count on to strike hard at the Confederates, Lincoln kept him on.
- The Federals also had a higher population density then the Confederates. Thus Federal units could be mass produced as needed, while Confederate units were basically local military fraternities. The Federals also made extensive use of the Scorched Earth doctrine, using their quickly assembled units to smash Confederate economy and thus fufill the RTS definition of a Zerg Rush.
- This is a exaggerated. While the union did suffer (roughly) 60% more casualties, the KIA excess was only 10%. Considering that the confederate usually enjoyed the defending position (in the later years of the war, at any rate), and that the civil war constituted the early days of trench warfare, with the known results during World War I, the numbers don't exactly point to rash tactics and disregard of one's own troops. Politicians lobbying against Grant had more to do with politicking after they decided the war was as good as won, using casualties as a pretext, than concern for the troops or about the general conduct of the war.
In the fallout after Iran's 2009 presidential elections, this a strategy on the protesters' side. These riot police don't seem too confident.
- Any sizable riot going up against riot police is essentially this trope.
  - All attempts to control a population with force, even if it's just ordinary police patrols, have this problem. It is logistically impossible to have a police force that can take the rest of the population on if they are determined, or even come close. Most areas have more carreer criminals than police, nevermind the law-abiding majority.
At Trafalgar the Royal Navy did this. There was no appreciable difference in numbers between them and the French though.
The Anzacs tried to do this in Gallipoli. It didn't work.
European warfare in the 18th century, after the devastation of 16th and 17th century total wars, had become a sort of song and dance with opposing generals actually meeting each other to mutually minimize their casualties, and to avoid destroying the actual resource they were fighting over. The rule of warfare was to wear brightly colored uniforms so that everyone knew just who was on whose side, and to use thin files so one row at a time could fire, then get out of the way while they reloaded. This was not a very effective way to win (or kill), but was (relatively) predictable, respectable (in context), and (relatively) civilized; it was generally agreed to because highly disciplined, professional soldiers in this form of warfare were expensive to train, keep, and equip. This system ended with the French Revolution; suddenly you have a French army five times its pre-Revolution size, much less trained as a whole, and directed by a government more encroaching on the general populace than the kings could ever manage and declaring war on most of its neighbors, with generals who had none of these dainty sensibilities and qualms about where replacements for killed soldiers were going to come from or what the upper crust in snooty aristocratically-run nations would think....
Highland Charges in the 17th and 18th century. Unlike what happenned in Braveheart, traditional Scottish tactics called for tight and disciplined blocks of infantry. When newer firearms made those tactics obsolete they switched to a screaming charge at the enemy line, which was extremely successful when their enemies would break ranks. When other armies started training their armies to defend against them, they got massacred.
What the major powers' nuclear arsenals were designed to do in the Cold War.

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