History Main / CheeseStrategy

* ''VideoGame/{{Cuphead}}'':
** Defied with Djimmi the Great. In the first phase, you ''could'' get into the small space behind Djimmi to avoid his projectiles... but another projectile will come from the top or bottom of the screen to hit you if you stay there.
** Played straight in [[spoiler:King Dice]]'s battle. If you get all the way to the left or right of the screen before he brings his hand down to do his card attack, you can just stay behind his hand without fear of the cards hitting you.

[[quoteright:350:[[VideoGame/{{Mugen}} https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/cheese_1.jpg]]]]
[[caption-width-right:350:Sometimes, it ''is'' easy being cheesy.]]

!Examples of well-known cheese strategies:

* TabletopGame/Warhammer40K:
** The "[[https://1d4chan.org/wiki/Fish_of_Fury Fish of Fury]]" exploit (which even Tau players didn't like), allowed Tau players to move their Devilfish hovertanks as mobile cover by hiding hard-hitting [[LongRangeFighter Fire Warriors]] behind the surprisingly hard-to-kill Devilfish to protect them from melee attacks.

!Examples of references to cheese strategies in mediums other than gaming include:
* ''WebAnimation/ExtraCredits'' calls these "First-Order Optimal" (or [[FunWithAcronyms Foo]]) strategies in their [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EitZRLt2G3w "Balancing for Skill"]] video, with [[Franchise/StreetFighter E. Honda's Hundred-Hand Slap]] as the main example. An experienced player ''can'' defeat them (which is the difference between this trope and an outright GameBreaker), but they're good enough to get you past most AI and unskilled human players.
* ''WebVideo/GameGrumps:'' Arin pulls one off playing through Ross's ''VideoGame/SuperMarioMaker2'' level "You Are A Monster?" The final boss stage is designed to last until a shell breaks through all the bricks and hits a switch, which allows Mario to pass through to the ending. However, Arin discovers that [[spoiler:by wall-jumping before he passes through the one-way wall, and continuing to wall-jump until the shell hits the switch, he can stay in the passageway without having to fight the boss at all]]. Arin is thrilled, Danny remarks, "Delicious cheese!" and Ross gets so furious that he ''blows out his microphone.''

* Webcomic/TheOrderOfTheStick: [[https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0216.html A half-ogre with a spiked chain]] presents a considerable challenge thanks to its unique tactic (consisting of attacking and retreating, using the chain to attack any melee fighters charging it, and retreating again). This fails in the end because the ogre hadn't noticed the cliff behind it. The combo happens to rely on a misunderstanding of the Attack of Opportunity rules, and he only gets away with it because his opponent doesn't understand them very well either.
* LightNovel/Overlord2012: The Baharut Empire has an arena that hosts battles between strong challengers. Magic was outlawed in fights ever since one team simply cast Fly on themselves, rendering the mundanely-armed opposing team utterly helpless to do anything but surrender. On hearing the story, Ainz agrees not to use magic when he participates, [[spoiler:and seeing him solo a ginormous troll without the use of his magic causes the Emperor to fully submit to Ainz and become his vassal.]]
* Webcomic/RareCandyTreatment has [[https://danbooru.donmai.us/posts/3064892 a battle between Green and Red]] where Green protests that Red is switching out Pokemon on seeing a new Pokemon brought out to get a type advantage (which the AI never does), and again on finding out that Red uses Revives (the AI only rarely uses healing items, but not Revives).

* The ''WebVideo/TwoBestFriendsPlay'' Zaibatsu lampshade their own lack of skill and reliance on cheese strategies with the CatchPhrase, "Lame it out! Lame it out like it's ''[[Videogame/StreetFighterXTekken X Tekken]]!''" A notable example of "laming it out" is the [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iuepMOTzeyY "Mortal Kombat: The Final Challenge"]] video, where Woolie beats the 300th floor of the ''VideoGame/MortalKombat9'' Challenge Tower by playing as Kung Lao and abusing his ability to teleport. Afterwards, someone on Twitter claimed Woolie's victory didn't count because he didn't "do combo" [sic], and [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oelaWxTKIg8 that became a Best Friends meme as well]].

*** The final Protoss Prophecy mission "In Utter darkness" can be made extra cheesy by either barricading the three access points into your fort with either buildings or tight lines of Dark Templar in "hold position mode" (the later is permanently cloaked and won't be detected for a good while). This can make establishing your army and defensive cannons much easier and can render enemy ground assaults helpless while your SplashDamage units mow them down with relative ease.

*** The final Protoss Prophecy mission "In Utter darkness" can be made extra cheesy by either barricading the three access points into your fort with either buildings or tight lines of Dark Templar in "hold position mode" (the later is permanently cloaked and won't be detected for a good while). This can make establishing your army and defensive cannons much easier and render enemy ground assaults helpless while your SplashDamage units mow them down with relative ease.

* TabletopGame/DungeonsAndDragons: 3rd edition had "[[https://1d4chan.org/wiki/CoDzilla CoDzilla]]" (Cleric or Druid + Godzilla), in reference to the fact that those two classes had extremely powerful physical and magical abilities that allowed them to dominate the game.
* TabletopGame/MagicTheGathering:
** A mono-Red "burn" deck consisting largely of direct damage spells is often called a "cheese deck".
** There is a mono-Blue equivalent containing mainly counterspells and bounce spells. Appropriately, it's called "Blue cheese".

** 5th edition's Grey Knights were widely reviled for the immense CharacterDerailment they received in the fluff and for being utterly overpowered in the crunch (notably, one of their special weapons made the Tau ''unable to shoot them'').

* In ''TabletopGame/BattleTech'', the use of massive numbers of small, fast units like the Savannah Master hovercraft (which weighs a mere five tons) is considered this. If the terrain favors them, they can zip around a force of fewer, heavier units and attack from all directions, or make 20 hex ramming attacks that will likely kill the Savannah Master but potentially cripple or destroy the leg of a mech, and if you've got 12 Savannah Masters vs 4 mechs, that's almost always a winning trade off.

** Until it was patched around, the "Olof Boost" on Overpass was considered a cheese strategy. A CT player would boost on top of an ally to be able to peek over a high wall on the map, allowing them to see everything in the middle and snipe freely. Enemy players would be forced to go long ways to points, or else put themselves at risk of getting sniped from a position that was hard to fight back against, and this pretty much forced the entire Terrorist side to commit to one direction and easily be detected and played around.

* A common strategy in {{Fighting Game}}s is "chipping out" an opponent; that is, forcing an opponent to block a series of special abilities that cause [[ScratchDamage "Chip Damage"]] and slowly whittle away their health until they die. This strategy is so derided that the ''Videogame/StreetFighterAlpha'' series literally had a small "cheese" icon appear on the screen instead of the normal victory icon if a player won this way. In later games, the icon was simply replaced with a "C", which can either mean "Cheese" or "Cheap" depending on the game. ''Videogame/MarvelVsCapcom3'' and ''Videogame/StreetFighterXTekken'' both included ways to avoid taking any chip damage completely, while ''Videogame/StreetFighterV'', ''Videogame/Tekken7'', and ''Videogame/SoulCaliburVI'' all made it impossible to lose by chip damage (unless certain conditions are met by the enemy).

* ''Videogame/MarvelVsCapcom3'': In the ''Ultimate'' expansion, Morrigan became infamous for her Flight-cancel/Soul Fist/Astral Vision BulletHell combination strategy. Soul Fist is a projectile that Morrigan can fire in the air or on the ground, and the recovery can be canceled if Morrigan activates and deactivates flight immediately after firing one. On its own, this creates an annoying amount of projectile spam on the screen, but if she has her super move, Astral Vision, active, the problem becomes ''doubled'' because ''two Morrigans'' are doing the same thing. She can make things even more difficult on her opponent by having Doctor Doom as her assist partner, because he can fire missiles that fall from the sky, preventing the few characters that can fly away from the Soul Fists from doing so. This strategy is one of the major reasons that [[UsefulNotes/FightingGameCommunity FGC Pro]] Chris G. became a villain during his dominant run in ''[=UMvC3=]''. You can view it in action [[https://youtu.be/YQkaI0_f7ek?t=315 here]] (also, note the commentators' reactions to the tactic).

** Other "cheese" strats within ''Overwatch'' include the use of "Builder" characters like Symmetra and Torbjorn, who can leave turrets behind at locations they believe the enemy will attack from and make it difficult for said enemies to get close without taking automatic damage. The turrets do all of the work for the player, which can feel ''extremely'' cheap to an enemy.

* Webcomic/TheOrderOfTheStick: [[https://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0216.html A half-ogre with a spiked chain]] presents a considerable challenge thanks to its unique tactic (consisting of attacking and retreating, using the chain to attack any melee fighters charging it, and retreating again). This fails in the end because the ogre hadn't noticed the cliff behind it.

*** A number of missions can be cheesed with the drop pod upgrade, which allows units built to be called in instantly anywhere on the map, allowing you to drop units directly on top of objectives (trivi, in many cases allowing you to beat missions in mere minutes by simply scanning for vision and mass dropping Marines or Reapers onto the target and totally bypassing all AI defenses.

* The infamous ZergRush from ''VideoGame/StarCraft''. Starcraft matches generally follow a typical pattern of early-game build-up, poking and prodding to figure out your opponent's base and army comp, and then finally the lategame where the battles happen. The Zerg Rush utilizes the Zerg faction's ability to churn out cheap units quickly and simply bum-rushes them at the opponent, trying to overwhelm them with sheer numbers, possibly before they've even built up a base defense.
* VideoGame/StarcraftII's single-player campaign had hilariously overpowered upgrades (to the point where in [=WoL=] you couldn't get them all in a single playthrough and subsequent games gave these upgrades to the AI to counteract the new, utterly broken Zerg and Protoss units).

*** One upgrade lets you choose the Hercules dropship, which has an extremely large HP pool, a single one can carry as much as several Medevacs, and it unloads its troops significantly faster. In many missions it allows you to simply ignore enemy anti-air, fly past it, and unload an army directly onto your objective while totally ignoring the AI defense.
*** A number of missions can be cheesed with the drop pod upgrade, which allows units built to be called in instantly anywhere on the map, allowing you to drop units directly on top of objectives, in many cases allowing you to beat missions in mere minutes by simply scanning for vision and mass dropping Marines or Reapers onto the target and totally bypassing all AI defenses.

** Unlike previous games, you can finally gives commands to your entire army instead of one 8-unit group at a time, making Zerg Rushes much easier.
** Each game has an ability that lets you gather vespene automatically, freeing up workers for other purposes or getting more combat units.

*** The Science Vessel allows you to heal mechanical units for free, and flies. This alone causes most players to take it instead of the Raven, a turret-placing robot.
*** One upgrade lets you choose the Hercules dropship or the Predator, a robot panther that deals area damage. However, the Hercules can carry huge armies and several Thors and deposit them behind enemy lines, making it a much better option.
*** One upgrade lets you choose between making units attack faster with every damage upgrade, or get more health with every armor upgrade. The former is much more powerful thanks to using CriticalExistenceFailure (most units function as Glass Cannons, so increasing their damage output is much more important than keeping them alive longer).

*** Zerglings can now spawn in groups of three, Banelings (spawned from Banelings) now have an upgrade that lets them jump cliffs and over other units. Drowning the enemy in explosive death is immense fun.
*** Kerrigan's abilities let her (among others) summon banelings into enemy troops, drop a small Zerg army on the field or essentially use a psychic nuke.

*** Almost every mission lets you call down orbital bombardments. This only increases with time as the ''Spear of Adun'' gets more powerful abilities like stopping time or sending down a superpowered robot.
*** Tempests are flyers with the range of artillery, letting them annihilate entire bases with near-impunity. And unlike other artillery flyers, they can actually defend themselves against other air units.

** The use of "Auto-snipers" and scoped automatic rifles will get a player called out in a competitive match. Oftentimes, the reasons for this being so are silly, such as the scoped rifles being "[[VideoGame/CallOfDuty COD]] rifles", but auto-snipers (sniper rifles that can fire several shots in quick succession rather than needing a bolt pull after every shot) are seen as a no-skill weapon. However, to counter-balance this, they also have the highest price tag of any rifle in the game, outpricing the much more acceptable [[OneHitKO AWP]] by $5,000 to $4,750, only outpriced by the Negev machine gun. Notably, the professional circuit does not use them almost at all, in favor of the AWP, preferring the one-hit kill potential to the idea of a semi-rapid-fire sniper.

** The Ice Climbers were, at one point, considered a TierInducedScrappy of the worse variety, until the player Wobbles discovered the technique of Wobbling. By managing to de-sync Popo and Nana, he would grab an opponent and begin headbutting the opponent. Normally, when Popo and Nana headbutt a grabbed opponent, they do so back-to-back so that there is still some room for an opponent to escape the grab like with every other character, but because of the desync, the opponent would be stun-locked while the Ice Climbers could indefinitely build damage before throwing the opponent out with a guaranteed death. Following the discovery of the technique, [[ObviousRulePatch Ice Climbers had a number of character-specific tournament rules put in place]], legalizing the move but heavily regulating its use (such as a damage cap before an opponent must be [=KOed=]), and now they're a fairly-regularly-used character, but are routinely booed if a player starts using Wobbling with no other strategy.

* In ''VideoGame/ZeldaIITheAdventureOfLink'', Dark Link can be cheesed by crouching in the bottom-left corner and spamming the sword button. Dark Link is a notoriously difficult boss who seems able to react faster than humanly possible, and given the game's already-high difficulty, many opt to simply use this method to bring him down instead.

[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/cheese_1.jpg]]
[[caption-width-right:350:Sometimes, it IS easy being cheesy.]]

* Manga/Overlord2012: The Baharut Empire has an arena that hosts battles between strong challengers. Magic was outlawed in fights ever since one team simply cast Fly on themselves, rendering the mundanely-armed opposing team utterly helpless to do anything but surrender. On hearing the story, Ainz agrees not to use magic when he participates, [[spoiler:and seeing him solo a ginormous troll without the use of his magic causes the Emperor to fully submit to Ainz and become his vassal.]]

* ''VideoGame/{{Pokemon}}'': ''VideoGame/PokemonRedBlueAndYellow'' has "Wrap-spam". In later generations, Wrap would deal damage per turn while allowing both the player and opponent to continue acting, but in generation I, Wrap would hit five times for little damage, but lock the enemy Pokémon from attacking, so it became a common tactic to stun-lock the opponent, especially if the opposing Mon was afflicted with paralysis to prevent it from ever attacking first.

* ''VideoGame/{{Pokemon}}'':
** ''VideoGame/PokemonRedBlueAndYellow'' has "Wrap-spam". In later generations, Wrap would deal damage per turn while allowing both the player and opponent to continue acting, but in generation I, Wrap would hit five times for little damage, but lock the enemy pokemon from attacking, so it became a common tactic to stun-lock the opponent, especially if the opposing Mon was afflicted with paralysis to prevent it from ever attacking first.
** ''VideoGame/PokemonGoldSilverAndCrystal'' have the infamous Whitney fight. As Whitney is a Normal-type gym leader, and this is before the Physical/Special split in Generation IV, sending out a Ghost-type pokemon that can't be hit by any of Whitney's all-physical attacks makes the boss fight a breeze.

What separates a cheese strategy from other more-acceptable strategies is that cheese strategies are considered "no-effort" or "low-skill" strategies by a large chunk of the fandom, be it in a single- or multi-player. Using such a strategy will net you a large about of hate from any {{Scrub}}s playing with you, yet at the same time, these are the kinds of strategies that {{whoring}} players will devote their energy toward.

[[folder:Multi-player Video Games]]

* In ''VideoGame/Left4Dead'', one of the best ways to survive a horde of Infected is to simply have the entire team huddle in a corner while spamming the shove key. With everyone on top of each other and shoving, it's virtually impossible for a Hunter or a Smoker to nab someone, as they're immediately shoved off by another teammate. Meanwhile, normal Infected are left stumbling into each other to be easily shot down, while the Boomer's main weapon (the Horde and the blinding effect of his bile) is rendered ineffective as a result of everyone being so close to each other. Nothing short of a Tank or the Survivors running of ammo will break this formation, making it incredibly unfun to play against in Versus. This is the reason why [[VideoGame/Left4Dead2 the sequel]] introduced Infected specifically designed to counter this strategy, namely the Spitter, which punishes players who sit in one place with ever-increasing amounts of damage, and the Charger, who can toss an entire team with one attack. A stamina gauge was also added to limit the number of times a Survivor can shove consecutively, further neutering this tactic.

INDEXES: ScrappyIndex, UnexpectedReactionsToThisIndex (?), VideoGameCulture, OverpoweredTropes, NotTheWayItIsMeantToBePlayed, VideoGameDifficultyTropes, VideoGameRewards

(to be commented out when trope goes live) EDITING NOTE: This page is NOT the place to complain about strategies you do not like. It is merely here to offer a definition for the term and provide some ''well-known'' examples in relevant games. If you want to add an example, make sure it is a well-known example, and keep the Rule of Cautious Editing Judgement in mind.