History ZergRush / CardGames

** When it comes to modern M:tG decks, most "Zerg Rush" tactics - if they can really be called that outside of the weenie deck archetype -- basically boil down to perpetual motion systems, since the developers try to avoid letting you win without thinking. Example: the above mentioned Ashnod's Altar gives you 2 mana when you sacrifice a creature to it. [[http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=46126 Myr Retrievers]] cost 2 mana to summon, but they pull any artifact out of the graveyard the moment they die, and since they count as artifacts, they can resurrect each other. A [[http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=136156 Cloud Key]] can and/or an[[http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=176435 Etherium Sculptor]] always does reduce the cost of artifact spells. With an extra Myr Retriever in the mix of this combination, one literally has an endless supply of mana (sac Myr to Altar = 2 mana; Myr is dead, get other Myr; summon Myr for 1 mana; 1 mana left over). Add this to an artifact or creature that spawns 1/1 counter creatures and you instantly have an endless Zerg Rush powered by infinite resources, and Kerrigan would be proud. This combo also works with "plink cards" that cause a single point of direct damage for the cost of one mana, making this a [[DeathOfAThousandCuts painful way to die]].

* In the ''TabletopGame/{{Deadlands}}'' CCG ''Doomtown'', lots of cheap dudes + We Got Ya Surrounded = big shootout bonus (and they're easier to heal in case the bonus still isn't enough). The original Blackjacks home is good for this; the more Blackjacks dudes (or Deputized drifters) you have, the more you can boot to rob ghost rock and buy more dudes.
* The short lived ''Franchise/KingdomHearts'' CCG is a huge example of this, if a Light Deck has a bunch of low level friends (0's and 1's, for instance), or any Dark Deck, which can basically get up to level 8 friends in a few turns if they can, it doesn't help that the only Level 9 Dark Card (Dragon Maleficent) allows you to discard cards from your hand to lower her level and play her sooner, meaning, if you decide to play her with a full hand of six cards, you can discard the other five cards and make her a level 4 Dark Card. Then you can start bringing out big ones that block your opponent from playing friends, (Captain Hook prevents Peter Pan and Tinkerbell from being played, Oogie Boogie prevents Jack Skellington, Maleficent prevents Beast, and so on). Or if you really want to be a douche, play Darkside, which removes all Level 1 and 0 friend cards in play from every player's (up to four) playfield.
* This is basically what the "weenie horde" deck archetype in ''TabletopGame/MagicTheGathering'' is all about. The inherent problems with it are the relative frailty of small cheap creatures and the one-draw-per-turn bottleneck that ultimately limits the ''size'' of the horde one can muster; ''good'' weenie deck designs generally include cards that deal with both. Screaming "elf deck!" can scare [=MtG=] players not prepared for weenies nearly as well as screaming "zerglings!" can RTS players not adept at dealing with rushes.

*** The card [[http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=207927 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.
** When it comes to modern M:tG decks, most "Zerg Rush" tactics - if they can really be called that outside of the weenie deck archetype - basically boil down to perpetual motion systems, since the developers try to avoid letting you win without thinking. Example: the above mentioned Ashnod's Altar gives you 2 mana when you sacrifice a creature to it. [[http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=46126 Myr Retrievers]] cost 2 mana to summon, but they pull any artifact out of the graveyard the moment they die, and since they count as artifacts, they can resurrect each other. A [[http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=136156 Cloud Key]] can and/or an[[http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Card/Details.aspx?multiverseid=176435 Etherium Sculptor]] always does reduce the cost of artifact spells. With an extra Myr Retriever in the mix of this combination, one literally has an endless supply of mana (sac Myr to Altar = 2 mana; Myr is dead, get other Myr; summon Myr for 1 mana; 1 mana left over). Add this to an artifact or creature that spawns 1/1 counter creatures and you instantly have an endless Zerg Rush powered by infinite resources, and Kerrigan would be proud. This combo also works with "plink cards" that cause a single point of direct damage for the cost of one mana, making this a [[DeathOfAThousandCuts painful way to die]].

* The ''Manga/{{Naruto}}'' CCG has the card "Power of the Youth", which lets you send out as many teams as you want as long as all your in-play Ninjas have an entrance cost of 3 or less. Combine this with cards like Idate, [SUPERHUMAN SPEED] effect Haku, and [PARTNER] effect Akamaru, and you can quickly build up your own little army and swarm the opponent before the [[GameBreaker gamebreaker]] ninjas start showing up. Did I mention this card lets you Zerg rush for '''2''' turns straight?
* In ''TabletopGame/SmashUp'', this is the [[MechaMooks Robot]] faction's [[PlanetOfHats hat]]. Having only 2 Action cards but 18 minions[[note]]Most other factions have 10 of each[[/note]], they focus on drawing masses of weak minions to capture bases. They have minions that summon more minions, minions that can destroy stronger foes if the player has many minions on a base, minions that power up others, and one that is powered up by having minions in play. Needless to say, Robots are great at dropping off multiple units on a base in ''one turn'' and potentially strengthening them.

* The short lived ''Franchise/KingdomHearts'' CCG is a huge example of this, if a Light Deck has a bunch of low level friends (0's and 1's, for instance), or any Dark Deck, which can basically get up to level 8 friends in a few turns if they can, it doesn't help that the only Level 9 Dark Card (Dragon Maleficent) allows you to discard cards from your hand to lower her level and play her sooner, meaning, if you decide to play her with a full hand of six cards, you can discard the other five cards and make her a level 4 Dark Card. Then you can start bringing out big ones that block your opponent from playing friends, (Captain Hook prevents Peter Pan and Tinkerbell from being played, Oogie Boogie prevents Jack Skellington, Maleficent prevents Beast, and so on). Or if you really want to be a douche, play Darkside, which removes all Level 1 and 0 friend cards in play from every player's (up to four) playfield.

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* The short lived ''Franchise/KingdomHearts'' CCG is a huge example of this, if a Light Deck has a bunch of low level friends (0's and 1's, for instance), or any Dark Deck, which can basically get up to level 8 friends in a few turns if they can, it doesn't help that the only Level 9 Dark Card (Dragon Maleficent) allows you to discard cards from your hand to lower her level and play her sooner, meaning, if you decide to play her with a full hand of six cards, you can discard the other five cards and make her a level 4 Dark Card. Then you can start bringing out big ones that block your opponent from playing friends, (Captain Hook prevents Peter Pan and Tinkerbell from being played, Oogie Boogie prevents Jack Skellington, Maleficent prevents Beast, and so on). Or if you really want to be a douche, play Darkside, which removes all Level 1 and 0 friend cards in play from every player's (up to four) playfield.
* In the ''TabletopGame/{{Deadlands}}'' CCG ''Doomtown'', lots of cheap dudes + We Got Ya Surrounded = big shootout bonus (and they're easier to heal in case the bonus still isn't enough). The original Blackjacks home is good for this; the more Blackjacks dudes (or Deputized drifters) you have, the more you can boot to rob ghost rock and buy more dudes.
* The ''Manga/{{Naruto}}'' CCG has the card "Power of the Youth", which lets you send out as many teams as you want as long as all your in-play Ninjas have an entrance cost of 3 or less. Combine this with cards like Idate, [SUPERHUMAN SPEED] effect Haku, and [PARTNER] effect Akamaru, and you can quickly build up your own little army and swarm the opponent before the [[GameBreaker gamebreaker]] ninjas start showing up. Did I mention this card lets you Zerg rush for '''2''' turns straight?
* In ''TabletopGame/SmashUp'', this is the [[MechaMooks Robot]] faction's [[PlanetOfHats hat]]. Having only 2 Action cards but 18 minions[[note]]Most other factions have 10 of each[[/note]], they focus on drawing masses of weak minions to capture bases. They have minions that summon more minions, minions that can destroy stronger foes if the player has many minions on a base, minions that power up others, and one that is powered up by having minions in play. Needless to say, Robots are great at dropping off multiple units on a base in ''one turn'' and potentially strengthening them.
** The [[TheUndead Zombie]] faction. They have abilities that that put large numbers of cards from the deck/hand into their discard pile, and abilities that [[DeathIsCheap draw cards from their discard pile]], allowing them to easily respawn large numbers of minions that have been killed off (by opponents or the player themself).
** Since Smash-Up requires the player to combine two factions together, a combination of Zombies with Robots gives a massive ZergRush of minions that ''just won't stay down''.
** In the Franchise/CthulhuMythos-themed expansion, the Innsmouth faction uses a variant of this strategy - it's very easy for a player to draw a slew of weak minions, but playing them isn't as easy.

* This is basically what the "weenie horde" deck archetype in ''MagicTheGathering'' is all about. The inherent problems with it are the relative frailty of small cheap creatures and the one-draw-per-turn bottleneck that ultimately limits the ''size'' of the horde one can muster; ''good'' weenie deck designs generally include cards that deal with both. Screaming "elf deck!" can scare [=MtG=] players not prepared for weenies nearly as well as screaming "zerglings!" can RTS players not adept at dealing with rushes.

** Another classic example of a rushing archetype is Sligh. Variants of this deck play small red creatures - generally among the worst in the game compared to other colors - and smack them into the opponent as quickly as possible, then finish the opponent [[KillItWithFire 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 against which all other decks are measured in MagicTheGathering's MetaGame. Sligh is historically interesting, however, because at the time nobody saw it coming; The thinking of the day was that the most powerful cards were what won games, cards like Serra Angel, Sengir Vampire and Shivan Dragon, which were expensive and [[AwesomeButImpractical typically didn't see play until turn five or six]]. Sligh was designed with the thinking that you wouldn't have to worry about a turn six dragon if your opponent was dead by turn five.

** Selesnya and Boros both dabble in this in Return To Ravnica. Selesnya has a heavy focus on creature tokens, with their Guild Ability, Populate, effectively giving you a free token of an existing one on top of whatever was the effect of the card you were casting. They also have tokens ranging from small songbirds, to gigantic militarized wurms, to giant sentient temples. Boros on the other hand focuses on small, efficient creatures. Any tokens they generate instead are simply weak footsoldiers, and not really on the scale Selesnya can produce. Boros, however, have their Guild Ability (Battalion) dependant on massive amounts of attackers to get disproportionally better effects; ranging from dealing direct damage, making your troops invulnerable, bestowing any number of special effects on all existing troops, or just make a singular troop really, really strong.

* The short lived ''VideoGame/KingdomHearts'' CCG is a huge example of this, if a Light Deck has a bunch of low level friends (0's and 1's, for instance), or any Dark Deck, which can basically get up to level 8 friends in a few turns if they can, it doesn't help that the only Level 9 Dark Card (Dragon Maleficent) allows you to discard cards from your hand to lower her level and play her sooner, meaning, if you decide to play her with a full hand of six cards, you can discard the other five cards and make her a level 4 Dark Card. Then you can start bringing out big ones that block your opponent from playing friends, (Captain Hook prevents Peter Pan and Tinkerbell from being played, Oogie Boogie prevents Jack Skellington, Maleficent prevents Beast, and so on). Or if you really want to be a douche, play Darkside, which removes all Level 1 and 0 friend cards in play from every player's (up to four) playfield.