History AwesomeButImpractical / TurnBasedStrategyGames

* The Rainbow Array Synergy from ''LuminousArc''. Hitting the damage cap (999) and pretty cool looking...at the cost of deploying all seven Witches (in a game where eight characters is the maxmimum ArbitraryHeadcountLimit) with max Flash Points to pull it off. It's simply more practical to use multiple, two-person Synergies. The player have to go out of their way to set it up to use Rainbow Array.

* A few of the highest-level cards in ''LostKingdoms 2'' were like this. It was rare that you ever actually had 8 levels in any element which would mean that the various high-level cards would cause you to ''CastFromHitPoints'', and by the time you got them a lot of them were simply ineffective. Great Turtle is an incredibly durable independant monster with a volcano on its back - who tended to miss almost constantly, and Ice Skeleton had similar problems as it was really slow. The Emperor, who can only be gotten from the final dungeon either by capture or a 1 in 6 chance, can either randomly kill all monsters of one elemental type (and the hardest opponents are typically Neutral, which is unaffected), or act as a glorified Capture Card. Yes, you could get most monsters easily this way, but enjoy having to go back through an hour-long ''BonusDungeon'' to get another one.

** Generally speaking you can often tell a Prince-level from a Deity-level Civilization V player by how much value they place on building early-game Wonders. Unless you get very lucky with your city/ruin placement you will waste at least forty turns assembling a single Wonder; time almost always better spent bolstering your defences, training Settlers and constructing your key buildings. This is not a hard and fast rule obviously and Wonders like Stonehenge work very well with a Piety opener; but on the whole you are much better off on higher difficulties just ignoring the entire lot.

** Replace "nuke" with "Planet Buster," but otherwise the situation is the same in ''SidMeiersAlphaCentauri.''

* ''VideoGame/AdvanceWars'' has both Megatanks and Piperunners. Megatanks are the strongest land-based units in the game and able to [[OneHitKill one-punch]] most other land units. However their supplies are a miniscule 50 fuel and three shots, they can only move 4 spaces per turn, and have only 1 square of vision in fog of war. Since they practically require an APC to follow them constantly and take so long to get anywhere, most players use them strictly for defense. Piperunners have high stocks of fuel and ammo, can target ''any'' unit, and do a lot of damage, but as you expect can only move along factories and pipelines, making them practically useless on any map except for ones intentionally designed to make use of them. It ''is'', however, sometimes worth losing a factory on a pipe-less map just to keep one parked near your [=HQ=] if your opponent is trying to win by capture.
* The Seaplane in ''[[VideoGame/NintendoWars Advance Wars: Days of Ruin]]'' is arguably one of the most versatile and powerful unit, being an airplane with high firepower that can attack any other kind of unit. The catches? They cost $15000 to build, require a Carrier ($28000 more for a ship that can only shoot subs and air units and build 4 of them maximum), take two turns to be built and deployed before they can be used to attack, and start with only 40 units of fuel (opposed to every other air unit having 99). The constant consumption of fuel can bring it down crashing in few turns. They only have 3 ammo - even less than a War Tank - and no secondary weapon...

** Also, if you send 2 seaplanes out to attack while keeping the other 2 docked at the carrier, and swap them out when they get too damaged or low on fuel/ammo, you can maintain a strong offensive!

** ''Fates" also did away with BreakableWeapons, instead giving each weapon above D rank drawbacks to compensate for their otherwise freely abusable power. This had the consequence of making them quite often a worse choice than the D rank weapon. For example, a B rank weapon will usually reduce your relevant offensive stat (Strength or Magic) and your skill (determines chance to hit) by 2 after every combat the weapon was used in, which recovers by 1 at the start of each of your turns. If you use this too liberally you'll be hitting like a wet tissue even with the powerful B rank weapon (if you hit at all), so you're going to need to at least have another weapon handy.

* You can build a DysonSphere in ''SpaceEmpires IV'', but it costs so much time and resources as to be highly impractical most of the time.
** It's even worse in ''SpaceEmpires V'' - unlike in IV, the spheres take up almost half the system map, rather than just one sector in the middle... and any planets existing inside the sphere will be destroyed when the sphere is constructed! Hope you didn't have a colony there...
* In ''StarWars: Rebellion'', a TurnBasedStrategy game set in the ''StarWars'' ExpandedUniverse, the Empire could actually build Death Stars and Super Star Destroyers, but the cost in resources made them impractical. Anything they do can be done more cheaply with regular ships. The Death Star is especially impractical since it is vulnerable to fighters, the cheapest space units in the game.

* The GBA version of ''YggdraUnion'' has the Fanelia. It's an item that instantly kills enemies if you use one of the 5 elemental based skills. However, by the time you can equip it, the only enemy you encounter is immune to those skills. Too bad.

* The [[{{CombinationAttack}} Final-Typenic Special]] in ''BattleMoonWars'' has the highest base damage in the game, with a thousand point advantage over the second-highest. To use it though, you need to (1) deploy three specific units (one of which is obsolete by the endgame); (2) have those units be adjacent to each other (one unit being a long-ranged fighter unlike the other two); and (3) have those units reach 140 will and have 65 energy to spare (which is a lot).

** The [[HumongousMecha Giant Death Robot]] in ''Civilization V''. An end-game unit that deals a lot of damage but doesn't get any defensive bonuses. The problem? It uses up 2 units of uranium, meaning you could have build 2 nuclear weapons instead of one GDR. {{Nerf}}ed in the ''Brave New World'' DLC and made a part of the "tank" upgrade tree, effectively turning it into a WalkingTank. It also requires only 1 unit of uranium now, so, with decent supplies, you should be able to upgrade many of your Modern Armor units into them. However, the DLC also introduces the CanonImmigrant [[VideoGame/XCOMEnemyUnknown XCOM Squad]], an upgrade of the Paratrooper, with a bonus against robotic targets. Unlike the GDR, the XCOM Squad doesn't tie up any resources.

* ''TabletopGame/{{Mordheim}}: City of the Damned'':

** Two-handed weapons look awesome and hit ''hard'', but they're tiring to use (subsequent attacks after the first become weaker and more costly) and just carrying one hurts the character's dodge and initiative ratings immensely. Attacks performed with two-handers also increase the opponent's chance to dodge them by 10%, so odds are good you won't even do ''any'' damage at all.

* More and less useless in ''VideoGame/MasterOfOrion III''. It still wipes out a perfectly good, conquerable colony, but it just does so but turning the environment into nigh-unterraformable hot slag, which makes recovering the planet far less practical than in the previous game. Good for dealing with Harvesters, I guess.

** In ''VideoGame/FireEmblemFates'', the Skip to Branch of Fate, meant to be AntiFrustrationFeatures so the player doesn't have to replay Chapters P-5 every time they want to play another route, has a few issues. Firstly, it only carries over levels from your most recent Chapter 5 save, rather than letting you choose. The reason this is an issue is because a file that went on to Birthright won't serve well for a Conquest run, as Rinkah and Sakura don't join there so all EXP they gained is wasted. Even worse, players who want to change their Avatar's gender will be stuck with a Lv. 1 Felicia or Jakob as both of them are considered separate characters. This is especially problematic on Conquest or Revelation, as the Avatar's servant is one of the few units they have for a while and so having one who dies in one or two hits makes the already present EarlyGameHell even worse. And the extra levels on the other servant are useless as by the time they rejoin, they're auto-leveled to around 13 anyway. These factors often make it better just to start a New Game.

*** Except in [[VideoGame/FireEmblemTellius the Tellius games]], where your Strength stat has the added benefit of offsetting the speed loss from weight. Which practically means weight in those games is a non-issue, as even medeocre physical fighters tend to have enough Strength to avoid being weighed down by anything. [[SquishyWizard Magic users, however, aren't so lucky...]]
** In ''VideoGame/FireEmblemAwakening'', both Lissa and Maribelle can be promoted to War Clerics, who are basically [[ChurchMilitant NUNS WITH AXES]]. Sadly, both of them have awful strength growths and stats, so they won't be swinging those axes all that hard. Plus, Maribelle will have her movement crippled since War Clerics don't ride horses. Bolt Axes however nullify that problem since they deal magical damage instead of physical; both Lissa and Maribelle have high magic stats when capped in that class and Bolt Axes are the second strongest axes in raw power that you can buy (from L'Arachel[[spoiler: or obtain from a treasure chest in Infinite Regalia]]). On that note, Bolt Axes are very much useless unless you are a War Cleric/Monk or a Dread Fighter, the only classes that can use that weapon properly.

** The Skaven's Legendary unit, the Rat Ogre, is a poster child for this. The Rat Ogre has the potential to become just as strong and tough as the Ogre fielded by the Human Mercenaries, its attacks cannot be parried - unlike those of an Ogre - and [[LightningBruiser it's only slightly slower than your average Skaven warrior (not to mention that it can also achieve a decent Dodge rating and has a pretty high Initiative)]]. The problem? [[DumbMuscle It's Stupid and its maximum Intelligence - the stat on which Stupidity rolls are based - is ten (for reference, that's nearly as low as it gets)]]. This drawback can be compensated by having another warrior use the Guidance skill on the Rat Ogre, skipping the Stupidity test entirely... but that means someone else in your warband has to invest skill points on Guidance, that you have to spend the money to train it, that said warrior will have to spend 3 Strategy Points per turn just to keep the Rat Ogre operational, and that you'll have to keep the Guidance unit away from any melee, since the skill cannot be used if said unit is engaged. Oh, and this unit better have a high enough Initiative to act before the Rat Ogre, otherwise everything will go to waste.

* Golems in ''VideoGame/{{Brigandine}}'' do a lot of damage, have high armour with good health, are immune to negative status effects, can throw boulders when they evolve and are the only unit that with a fourth evolution, the Talos. However, they are very slow and extremely inaccurate at attacking (evolving to a Talos improves their accuracy), so even at high levels they'll often whiff their attacks. Additionally their Talos evolution only happens when they reach Level 20 the maximum level. This means the improvement to Talos won't significantly improve their accuracy and good luck keeping a golem alive long enough to reach Level 20. However, in Brigandine Grand Edition there's a magic item that can be found which can evolve a golem much earlier. If your golem becomes a Talos at low levels, it becomes a devastating powerhouse capable of punishing speedsters like pixies and ninjas.

* Golems in ''VideoGame/{{Brigandine}}'' do a lot of damage, have high armour with good health, are immune to enemy magic, can throw boulders when they evolve and are the only unit that with a fourth evolution, the Talos. However, they are very slow and extremely inaccurate at attacking (evolving to a Talos improves their accuracy), so even at high levels they'll often whiff their attacks. Additionally their Talos evolution only happens when they reach Level 20 the maximum level. This means the improvement to Talos won't significantly improve their accuracy and good luck keeping a golem alive long enough to reach Level 20. However, in Brigandine Grand Edition there's a magic item that can be found which can evolve a golem much earlier. If your golem becomes a Talos at low levels, it becomes a devastating powerhouse capable of punishing speedsters like pixies and ninjas.

*** Weight becomes a particular problem with ''[[VideoGame/FireEmblemElibe Blazing Sword's]]'' [[InfinityPlusOneSword legendary weapons]], which are all absurdly heavy to compensate for their power. [[MightyGlacier Hector]] is built like a tank, so he has no problem with this, but [[JackOfAllStats Eliwood]] and [[FragileSpeedster Lyn]] will almost never have enough constitution to wield their respective weapons without a massive speed penalty. If it weren't for [[spoiler: their effective damage bonus against the final boss]], you'd be much better off giving them lighter, generic weapons that let them continue to double-attack.

* ''GalacticCivilizations'' has the Terror Stars, clear {{Expy}}s of the [[StarWars Death Star]], which can be used to obliterate the enemy star system. Drawbacks? Let's see, it takes an extremely-high level of technology, as each stage of construction needs a prerequisite tech. It takes a long time to build and uses many resources (on top of building constructors). When it ''is'' built, it takes ten turns to bring its only weapon system online. Then, once you have it, it can only move one "square" per turn, making it useless unless you build it right on top of the enemy. In the first game, at least, any station could be turned into a Terror Star, meaning they had other purposes, so the Terror Star could also support fleets or spread influence. In the sequel, it's a different type of station. Also, habitable worlds can be quite rare depending on galaxy settings, so it may not be beneficial to destroy the enemy star instead of simply taking the planets. And as if that wasn't enough, it also has no weapons, so it needs to be babysitted a great deal.

* ''GalacticCivilizations'' has the Terror Stars, clear {{Expy}}s of the [[StarWars Death Star]], which can be used to obliterate the enemy star system. Drawbacks? Let's see, it takes an extremely-high level of technology, as each stage of construction needs a prerequisite tech. It takes a long time to build and uses many resources (on top of building constructors). Then, once you have it, it can only move one "square" per turn, making it useless unless you build it right on top of the enemy. In the first game, at least, any station could be turned into a Terror Star, meaning they had other purposes, so the Terror Star could also support fleets or spread influence. In the sequel, it's a different type of station. Also, habitable worlds can be quite rare depending on galaxy settings, so it may not be beneficial to destroy the enemy star instead of simply taking the planets.