Boring But Practical / Turn-Based Strategy

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• Advance Wars:
  • Basic infantry. Low movement range, weak attack, go down fast. They're also one of only two land units that can cross mountains and rivers (albeit slowly) and capture properties (including the enemy's HQ, an Instant-Win Condition). Also never forget that units can only attack once per turn and can't pass an enemy unit: an infantry might go down easy and do Scratch Damage on the counter-attack, but a tank that has to spend its turn attacking infantry is a tank that can't spend its turn attacking your tank, recon, or squishy artillery. No matter what flashy weaponry you have, you will need these guys and they will be integral to the success of your strategy.
  • Mech units, that is infantry with heavier firepower. They can do everything infantry can do, but can take on vehicles at the cost of movement range. In that they are so cheap to produce, using these guys to take out or at least cripple expensive enemy vehicles is an unflashy, but effective tactic that lets you utilize funds elsewhere. Yes, the Mech Rush tactic also works here too.
  • The basic tank. One might be tempted to forego it for its more expensive bigger brothers like the Medium Tank, but where these other units have higher firepower the basic light tank has the most ammo, the highest mobility, the highest range of vision, and are only topped by neotanks in fuel capacity. They won't One-Hit KO units like the Megatank, but anyone who discounts them as "too weak" will find themselves on the ass end of an ass kicking in very short order.
• Ancient Empires:
  • The basic Soldier, the very first unit in the game. In combat, it's weaker than almost everything else. However, being the cheapest unit (except for Skeletons, which are raised for free but require a grave) they can be produced in large numbers. They are also one of only two units that can capture buildings, essential for healing and gold production. The only other unit that can do so, the King/Commander, is much less expendable (especially in the first game where the king's death results in loss for their side).
  • The Archer counts as well. The second unit, it has the same stats in combat as the Soldier with one crucial exception: a ranged attack. That might not seem like much, but it's one of only two ranged units in the game, and the other (the Catapult) has disadvantages like being slower and much more expensive. Ranged attacks are potent in this game because they can't be countered, not even by another ranged unit. Range also makes them extremely versatile: Archers can be used in raids as they can stay behind stronger units and attack from a position of safety, or used for base defense by placing them on buildings where they can each cover a small area around them. Moreover, they get a damage bonus against Wyverns/Dragons, making them an effective counter to what is otherwise the strongest unit. And as the second-cheapest unit, they can also be produced in large numbers.
• Battle Brothers:
  • Most players swear by the good old "spear and shield" combo. Even if their damage and anti-armour performance is not so great, spears give your inexperienced brothers a whopping +20% bonus to hit and the Spearwall ability which can often net them two or even three attacks for nothing as the enemy tries (and often fails) to get close. Shields not only let brothers become individually more survivable, but their Shieldwall ability confers a minor defence bonus to any adjacent brothers also using the ability. Combine the two for a nearly unbeatable Stone Wall until mid-game archers and pikes come into play. And the best thing about spears is lowly Brigand Thugs and Barbarian Thralls will often be carrying them.
  • As for backup weapons, the two best picks early on are wooden sticks or knives. Wooden sticks have a special ability to stun enemies for a single turn and fair anti-armour performance. Knives have almost no fatigue penalty to carry, and a bunch of brothers surrounding a heavily-armoured enemy and Puncturing them to death is an easy way to net decent chainmail armour early on for nothing. The Dagger Mastery perk also allows a brother to attack three times in a turn.
  • Nets. Often overlooked and picked up for cheap from fishing villages, they allow you to ensnare and isolate powerful enemies like Orcs and Direwolves, enemies that will mess you up if you allow them free reign.
  • On a related note, Fast Hands and Bags & Belts are two early-game perks that don't do anything flashy at first but really begin to come into play once your company acquires a large armoury. Taken together, a battle bro will be able to carry five different weapons or pieces of equipment into battle, and swap one of these items from his inventory into his hands for free once per turn, giving him incredible versatility.
• Battle for Wesnoth: Elvish Shamans aren't too impressive in direct combat thanks to their weak attacks, but their "slow" ability cripples enemy mobility and damage, which combines nicely with their healing to make your army hard to kill. While the Sorceress advancement packs more punch, their entangling attack remains an example - not as flashy or destructive as faerie fire, but highly useful for weakening dangerous enemies.
• The BattleTech turn based tactical game provides several examples of very plain but very useful powers. Notably, all four of the starter skills are dull, but priceless.
  • Multi-Targeting allows the pilot to split their weapons fire between two or more targets. This is great when you have multiple weak targets to eliminate, want to suppress multiple enemies and remove their evasion stacks, or just have a weapons loadout with different optimum ranges and want to use each weapon for best effect.
  • Sure Footing gives a 'Mech an extra evasion stack and, provided it didn't run, jump, or charge in for a melee strike, will also reduce the stability damage it takes. This makes the 'Mech harder to hit in the first place, and still tough to knock down.
  • Bulwark grants a passive +20% boost to damage reduction if in cover or while guarded. This effectively increases your 'Mech's armor value by 40% as long as you are in cover.
  • Sensor Lock allows the pilot to detect enemies as well as jam their sensors, remove evasion stacks, and break an ECM bubble. This allows pilots to deny the enemy's attempts at stealth or electronic warfare.
  • On the business side of things, taking low-risk, low-paying contracts is this. Sure, there's nothing glamorous about shooting down a couple of light 'Mechs, and your pay and scrap won't be anything special, but what you will get is a steady source of income with little risk of having to spend precious time and money afterward fixing up your 'Mechs and waiting for pilots to recover. Even after you get past the beginning, where money is tight, you'll never be in a situation where you won't benefit from taking on a few half-skull/one-skull missions to pad out your bottom line.
• Civilization:
  • Basic melee units tend to be like this. None of them have the special bonuses other unit types possess, but neither do they have any special disadvantages, they are quick to produce or cheap for their eras and usually don't need strategic resources, meaning that most of the units in your armies will be them.
  • Achieving a Science victory tends to be the most boring option in every game. In general your goal is to build an isolated civ with a single-minded focus on research and industry, heavy police surveillance to deter spies and just enough happiness, military might, religion and culture to fend off outside influence and conquest attempts.
  • In Civ IV, India's special unit is a cross between this trope and Heart Is an Awesome Power. The Fast Worker is a Worker unit with an extra movement point. Wowee, so that means India gets shafted, right? Wrong. Fast Workers let you build tile improvements a bit faster than other civs, which means more growth and industry for cities, which means you can pump out units and city buildings faster. They're also much more efficient for maintaining large empires. Oh, and Fast Workers are never made obsolete: you have them from the stone age all the way through to the modern age.
  • Civ VI's 'New Frontier' DLC added Gran Colombia and its leader Simon Bolivar as one of the new leaders. It was quickly singled out as one of the best new civs in the game. Not for the free mini-Great Generals or their powerful unique unit — it was because all their units have one extra movement point. In a turn-based game based on efficiency and the amount you can get done in a single turn this is a huge benefit, especially when it applies to all units for the entire game. Builders bring resources online sooner, Settlers claim land more-easily and set up new cities sooner and Colombia's cavalry-heavy army gets a bonus to the main strength of cavalry — maneuverability.
• Often times, when there's a hard battle in the Disgaea games, it's very easy to just go and grind several levels to bulldoze through it, but you know what can get you through a lot of battles without grinding much? Lifting. Not the most cool looking ability, but knowing how to take full advantage of lifting can easily get you through even the toughest battles. ^note  When an enemy unit is lifted by your unit, your unit will be dealt damage equal to 50% of the enemy you're holding. The enemy cannot, however, break out of the hold, nor can they attack while being held. So using a weak unit you don't intend to save can help you stall the enemy from having a turn at all by lifting them every turn after you attack To combat this, later entries often give bosses various evilities that grant bonus stat increases at the tradeoff of being unable to be lifted.
• The erotic RPG Dragon Knight 4 features several Mutually Exclusive Party Members, the majority of which force the player to choose between a male character and a female one. Due to the nature of the game, the female characters receive quite a few more scenes (erotic and otherwise), so the player is naturally more incentivized to pick them. To balance things out, the male characters all have slightly higher stats across the board, meaning that while you'll lose out on some characterization by choosing them, you'll generally have an easier time in battle.
• Empire: Total War and Napoleon: Total War have many different classes of sailing ships, from tiny brigs to massive heavy 1st rates (over 50 cannons per side). And yet the games' resident Glass Cannon, a bomb ketch (essentially, a tiny brig with a mortar on its bow), can bring down small fleets when deployed en masse thanks to the mortar's long range and fairly good aim. A fleet consisting entirely of bomb ketches and arranged in a concave crescent formation can quickly obliterate up to three heavy first rates (which cost a lot more to build in terms of money and time), especially since the computer tends to come at you in a standard battle line (i.e. one target at a time). In fact, smaller but faster ships may serve the enemy much better as they provide a smaller target and can get in range of their cannons quicker. A single mortar shell exploding in the middle of the deck can wipe out several dozen crewmembers, including, possibly, the admiral, wreck a good number of cannons and shred sails, not to mention the hull damage. And that's not even counting the fact that they also tend to set ships on fire. And even if the enemy first rate manages to get in range of its guns (it still has to turn to present its broadside), at most, you might lose a single bomb ketch to the barrage.
  • There are also rocket ships, considered to be a more advanced version of the bomb ketch. However, rocket ships are even flimsier than bomb ketches, and the rockets have atrocious aim. Their main advantage is killing morale and setting ships on fire (sometimes, themselves). They also cost more than bomb ketches, and the campaign generally limits the number you can have.
  • Also from Empire, Sweden very notably only has one special unit, a kind of Finnish light cavalry that really not much special, and everything else is just your bog standard European army list. However, their standard infantry are pretty decent in quality, perhaps not quite as good as Britain, France or Prussia but far beyond everyone else's. Also, Sweden gets more men in cavalry units as standard - on large settings, a Swedish cavalry unit can contain 60 men as opposed to 45 for everyone else, and this is a big advantage. The same goes for Austria in Napoleon: Total War, though for infantry units instead of cavalry, and at the cost of inferior stats (which the Swedish cavalry do not suffer from).
  • Irrespective of which faction you play, the backbone of your army will be Line Infantry (or Bargir if you're playing as the Indian Maratha). Nothing more than rows of ordinary fighting men with muskets, they'll do everything: screening for your more elite infantry, guarding your artillery, blunting a cavalry charge, you name it.
• In Final Fantasy Tactics, you have the option to equip yourself with impressive summons and fantasic magic spells. But nothing is as damaging as making Ramza a monk and just punching your way to victory.
  • The ninja works well here too, because of its ability to dual wield. Or you could learn the dual wield ability and give it to the monk, at which point they start using their quite painful punch attack twice. The second punch has the added bonus of bypassing the defensive ability of Shirahadori/Blade Grasp.
  • The Knight and the Archer are the first two warrior classes you unlock and have relatively mundane abilities of breaking equipment and charging attacks respectively, which pale to the flashy things that geomancers, and ninjas can do. However, equip an archer with Knight powers and concentration and you have a unit who can reliably strip the enemy of his equipment from a distance.
  • The Chemist is the introductory mage class and can be accessed by anyone at level 1. It focuses around the use of items such as potions, and receives none of the flashy magic that other mage classes obtain. However, the Auto-Potion skill and access to guns make Chemists difficult to kill while allowing them to deal out damage at range. There's a reason that they are considered one of the easiest classes to do the Straight Class Challenge as.
  • Time Mages can hit the enemy with black holes or summon up a giant meteor to smash half the battlefield, but their two most basic and least flashy spells, Haste and Slow, are easily the most useful and the most powerful. The enemy has a really hard time putting up a good fight when your entire team is getting twice as many turns as they are. This also makes fighting enemy Time Mages a titanic pain in the ass if you don't have some way to neutralize or counter these effects.
  • At least in A2, a Time Mage is at top efficiency when it spends most of its turns using Haste, its most basic spell, which enables allied units to get turns more often.
  • And when it comes to movement abilities, there's a plethora of special ones, such as teleport, fly, walk on water, find stuff, heal, and so on, but none of them are as useful as the easy to obtain move+2.
• Fire Emblem:
  • Due to the high cost and limited usage of stronger weapons, the basic iron and steel weapons remain an important part of your arsenal throughout the entire game thanks to their low cost and better durability. Said weapons are also lighter, thus making it more likely for their wielders to get two attacks against their opponents, which, combined, are often more damaging than a single attack from a stronger weapon (although there may be times when you want the stronger weapon to kill your opponent before they can retaliate). In a worst-case scenario, equipping a lighter weapon may enable the wielder to avoid being doubled by the enemy.
  • In many games, characters tend to be seen using the fairly cheap and common hand axes and javelins all the way to the final maps. While they aren't as crazily powerful as the S-rank weapons and their damage is on par with iron weapons, they boast the property of allowing units normally limited to melee to fight and counter at range. This is especially helpful for dealing with squads of enemies, who invariably try to attack at range: against a character with a legendary axe, they simply plink away and require the character to march over and kill them, but against a character with a hand axe, their plinking will be answered by a Precision-Guided Boomerang to the face. A well-leveled character with a javelin or hand axe can clear out entire sections of a map by themselves simply by attracting swarms of enemies and countering them to death.
  • In Awakening and Fates, the characters have a variety of cool abilities they can learn; skills that can halve certain kinds of damage, improve strength when certain weapons are equipped, strike many times in one attack or kill in one strike...but arguably one of the most practical of all the abilities is Awakening's Mercenary's Armsthrift, which simply gives the user a chance to not use up weapon durability based on a percentage from doubling their luck. Since most of the units that can learn Mercenary abilities in the game are able to get their luck into the low forties without too much trouble, an 80-90% chance of not breaking the Too Awesome to Use weapons of the late game becomes quite practical indeed, as well as greatly extending the longevity of utility weapons. If the mercenary in question can get to 50 luck or has the Rightful King ability, their weapon is literally unbreakable while Armsthrift is equipped, letting one use legendary weapons ad infinitum.
  • The cavalier class (and derivatives thereof) as a whole is considered to be the Jack of All Stats of Fire Emblem's classes. Their stats are all well-rounded, with various cavaliers each specializing in one stat to a degree (each game gives you no less than three, with one usually specializing in defense and attack and the other in skill and speed), have superior movement due to being on a mount, can use two to three weapons at once, and their only major weakness is to weapons that specialize in slaying beast/horse units, which are often rare and almost never used by enemies. The mercenary class has similar stats to cavaliers, but they're on foot, start off only using swords, and some mercenary units are favored far more by the RNG than others.
  • Both like and unlike its above-mentioned, knightly example, the Armor Knight class is kind of notorious for this, with a particularly large emphasis on the 'boring' part. They have the worst Move of any class in the game, and usually have low Speed and Resistance to cap it all off, leading to a class that - barring lucky level-ups from the RNG - won't be proving to be much of an offensive powerhouse in most circumstances^note unless they happen to have a high Speed growth or, more rarely, a good Speed base, in which case they become an outright Lightning Bruiser only inhibited by bad Movement. This often leaves them with few real applications relative to raw offense, but relative to defense it's pretty hard to go wrong with them, as they're often able to shrug off the wide majority of enemy units and are bar none the best class when it comes to holding a chokepoint or defensive map. This is further compounded by the fact that Anti-Armor weapons are a distinct rarity among the enemy army, so that pretty much leaves magic as the only thing you need to worry about - which, even then, is slowly becoming null in several games with Armor Knights having high Resistance to boot.
  • Prepromoted characters have a reputation for being Overrated and Underleveled Crutch Characters, but the lack of time or investment needed for them to be powerful often outweighs their somewhat underwhelming stats and growths. They tend to possess high weapon ranks, have stats good enough to handle nearly any non-boss enemy, and are largely immune to the whims of the Random Number God. The early "Jagen" (usually a promoted Cavalier) tends to be particularly valuable on the hardest difficulties, and some (like Seth, Marcus, and Titania) are even regarded as the best characters in their respective games.
  • The hammer weapon, which is super-effective against armored units and some cavalier-type units (again, depending on the game). A spectacular case of this is the fact that in Radiant Dawn, Ike can take out the overpowered Black Knight with one without much trouble.
  • Despite the numerous other staves available in the games, with effects such as healing multiple targets at once, raising defense or resistance, or silencing enemy casters, a simple Heal stave has astonishing utility. It's ridiculously cheap, most promoted magic users can use it, and, given that it heals according to the unit's Magic stat, giving one to a powerful mage effectively turns it into a full heal for most units, negating the need for the more expensive, less durable staves that heal more HP.
  • For characters in themselves, Lana from Genealogy of the Holy War fits in perfectly. For the most part she's a rather efficient White Mage, but the perk is that her mother Edain was already a pretty good healer, so Lana can get what she needs the most to work well from her and, with some more effort, will get her hands on powerful staves... while her older brother Lester, a Horse Archer, is very easy to screw up if he and Lana get the "wrong" father. As a result the players tend to choose a husband for Edain basing themselves almost solely on how Lester will turn out, since they know Lana will "do her job" well no matter what.
  • Fire Emblem: Three Houses:
    • Ashe lacks Bernadetta's Difficult, but Awesome setup and Ignatz's utility skills, forcing him to rely on raw stats to do his job. However, his semi-unique combination of both an axe and bow boon allows him to easily go Brigand at Level 10 to get Death Blow and set his study plan to bow/authority for the entirety of the run. This gets the player a Sniper with Death Blow at minimal cost, and effectively a free tutoring slot for the rest of the game.
    • Linhardt lacks the awesome factor of his fellow healers, as he lacks Mercedes's mass-heal in Fortify and ability to easily use the Magic Bow; or Marianne's access to Silence, various magic-based combat arts, and class flexibility. In fact, Linhardt has no budding talent and only excels in two skills, Reason and Faith. However, Linhardt is the only character in the base game to learn both Physic and Warp, meaning he's rarely dead weight, and due to his low charm, he can simply equip the Seiros Holy Monks and become the Stride caster until the player gets access to the Gautier Knights.
    • Units can equip up to five skills with various passive effects. Some of the best skills in the game are the stat-boosting skills, since unlike the stronger "blow" skills, which are applied when a unit attacks another unit, the stat boosts also apply when enemy units attack the unit with the skill.
    • Windsweep doesn't seem all that impressive as a Combat Art, but it prevents the enemy from retaliating. It's thus highly useful on Maddening, helping players damage enemies without fear of them retaliating. The only knock against it is that only four characters can use it, two of whom are route-exclusive and the third of whom is paid DLC.
• In Heroes of Might and Magic a hero will get a variety of spells, including teleports, fireballs, massive buffs and even resurrections... Yet utility of a simple "Bless" (which makes creatures do maximum damage) never ceases to amaze, especially for ranged units.
  • You could also consider the spell "Town Portal" to be like this. It may not be something that wipes out armies, but it's probably the most useful spell in the game anyways.
  • In Armageddon's Blade, first addition to third installment in the series, we have Sir Mullich. While other heroes boost creatures' statistics, have better spells or enhance abilities, Sir Mullich has... Speed, which gives all of his units +2 to movement speed. There's a reason he's banned on tournaments.
  • Also, heroes whose specialty is to grant you 350 gold per day while they're in your army. They refund themselves after eight days and come up with small army to aid your main hero, not to mention granting you another hero to pick-up resources and flag settlements.
  • On that note, Estates which work exactly the same though not to the same extent. Then again, some of those "350 gold" characters usually start with Estates...
  • Logistics which give you bonus movement speed, Pathfinding which negates penalties for difficult terrain and Navigation which is Logistics on water(although it tends to suffer from Crippling Overspecialization). Boring and comes in handy almost every time.
  • Two of the best spells in all of the games are the simple Haste and Slow spells which make your army faster and the enemy army slower respectively. Especially from the fifth game onwards, since those spells also affect how quickly units get turns.
• Infinite Space allows players to fire all weapons with the "Barrage" command or shoot out a Wave-Motion Gun, depending on the command players use. The most efficient way to play the game? Buy a lot of hangars, invest in Multi-Role fighters, send them to the field and let them take care of the enemies while the command ship is charging up its weapons and firing it at the enemy. Or the enemy ships get destroyed by the fighters themselves.
• Limbus Company: Outis' Seven South Section 6 Director Identity isn't a flashy damage dealer (in fact, many of her attacks are quite weak) but she makes up for it with her skills reducing enemy clash power, making her one of the game's best clashers.
• If you're trying to go for a rush strategy in Lords of the Realm 2, an army of around 50 peasants (50 being the minimum army size) makes for an effective battle of attrition starter, as armies can destroy fields that take several turns to reclaim. If you want something more armed, Macemen are great as they are the second cheapest unit to make and are the second fastest. They can also hold their own pretty well.
• From Medieval II: Total War, longbow units. English longbowmen from the vanilla game might not be much to look at, but with their fast-firing, long range projectiles that are also armour-piercing, the shortbowmen and crossbowmen of other factions stand not a hope in Hell of winning the range game, and longbowmen are completely unrivalled at range until the really high-end gunpowder units come into play. They can also plant wooden stakes in front of them during the deployment phase, which render any frontal assault from cavalry a laughable joke. But wait, there's more. For the Kingdoms: Britannia mini-campaign, Welsh Saethwyr◊ are even less exciting but even more impressive than their English counterparts; even the most generous person couldn't bring themselves to call that a kilt, but with more men in a unit and more ammunition, they are the undisputed kings of pointy stick death, girly skirt or no.
• In Mordheim: City of the Damned, using just a single one-handed weapon confers a 10% bonus to the warrior's Dodge chance, thanks to the free hand giving better balance while the warrior ducks and weaves around. Forgoing armour also confers a 10% Dodge chance. The fighters don't look particularly impressive, but their survivability goes through the roof, especially low-level warriors who will often be killed easily. Their initiative will also be very high; having an impressive-looking warband is pointless if their enemies go first and damage or kill them before they can even get their first turn in.
  • Even better, taking a one-handed weapon with a shield. Not only does the shield improve your parrying chances, but it also increases the likelihood of an enemy missing you with a ranged or melee attack and this improves with better quality shields. Having a single weapon means that your unit does not get the tiring penalty nor the dual-wield reduced damage penalty, for a unit that can do many attacks this could mean they do more damage than with dual-wielding or using a 2-H weapon.
  • Some of the most useful weapons in the game are the simplest. The humble spear and mace are a boon to low-level troops for handing increased chance to bypass dodge and parry and increased hit chance respectively, making sure they get these crucial hits in. Plus they offer bonuses to initiative, increasing the chance troops holding these go first.
• In the Nintendo Wars series, basic Infantry spam backed up by some artillery is extremely viable in most installments. And the light tank is much more cost-effective against other units than its bigger brethren, and is faster than them to boot. There's a reason one of the most widespread tactics is known as the Mech Rush.
  • Scratch that. Even Game Boy Wars 3 isn't exactly immune. Watch as a Mech flood staves off a ridiculous property advantage for a while before indirects come in and start obliterating them.
• Sid Meier's Pirates! players (especially on the classic versions) will usually grab a cutlass. It hasn't got the reach or the speed of the rapier or longsword, but you can defeat enemy captains in a hurry by getting in close, slashing low, and following up with a high thrust.
  • For anyone that takes Swordfighting as their specialty, the rapier quickly becomes overpowered when you pick up the Fencing speed power ups (better swords, fancy shirts) for one reason: the thrust becomes lightning fast. It's really boring to just thrust repeatedly, and your opponent will block some of them, but you'll interrupt just about everything they try to do otherwise, even on Swashbuckler difficulty.
  • Additionally, Sloops can be Boring, but Practical ships: Not as many guns as their bigger counterparts, but are so fast and agile they can dodge enemy attacks. Slipping in between a barrage can help you ram a massive War Galleon with minimal damage to ship and crew.
• In the Original Generation Super Robot Wars games, one of the best weapons to upgrade is the M95 Machine Gun, a basic weapon that a dozen or so of the Real Robot units get. Why? A few reasons: One, it's the cheapest weapon to upgrade in the game, this means it can be fully upgraded at a much lower cost than some of the pricier, flashier attacks. Fully upgraded its base damage is 4950, which while isn't as powerful as many of the super strong attacks, is still a very respectable amount of damage. Plus, fully upgraded weapons have a higher Critical Hit rate, not only that but they have 15 shots in them each, and can be used after moving. Throw these on the Real Robot Mauve Shirt characters and have them clear the way with ease.
  • Similarly, the "Steel Knife" is the blandest, boringest, but most practical of the melee weapons to upgrade. It's the cheapest for what you get, works well in any terrain, AND has some impressive to-hit and crit modifiers.
  • For the mainstream versions, repair/resupply units like Boss Borot and the Skygraspers fit this. Most re/re units tend to be a little on the weak side, but make up for it with larger item slots (nine times out of ten, they have the max of four) and usually bigger SP pools, allowing for an extra range of "spells" to be used to help allies.
• In Sword of the Stars, the simple Assault Shuttle buildable from the very start will remain your primary option of anti-planet attack for a long while. Bio-missiles can be vaccinated against, the really large anti-planet weapons like the Siege Driver are Awesome, but Impractical because they are too far up the tech tree to be available quickly and the majority of ship-to-ship weapons aren't too good for bombardment, leaving the Assault Shuttle as the most reliable option — at least until Argos Naval Yard introduced the Advanced Assault Shuttle.
  • The Armor Piercing Mass Driver is a strong example. A medium-mount weapon that only requires you to research two technologies, and can be a major part of the armament of an endgame dreadnought. It needs a few upgrades to keep up with the flashy energy weapons, but the same exact turret can be the backbone of your arsenal throughout most of the game. It doesn't have any of the specialties of various energy weapons, or the sheer damage and impact of non-piercing drivers, but it's reliable against most targets and easy to get.
  • Medium mounts in general might qualify. Except for missiles, they're generally blander than others. Most medium mounts simply deliver moderate damage at moderate range. Small mounts have a monopoly on point defense and tend to have long-range precision weapons. Heavy mounts range from being like the medium version, but all-around better, to a number of more exotic possibilities. Exotic special mounts are often the entire point of a dedicated ship. Nonetheless, many ships carry enough medium mounts that they comprise a substantial fraction of the ship's damage output.
  • Out of the 6 species, this is a theme for the Tarkas. Their hyperdrive is the simplest FTL method to use (Other species methods can be faster, but require certain conditions to do so), they don't get any unusual bonuses or mechanics other than cheaper cruisers, and their ship designs emphasize the "basic" sections rather than sections associated with special weapons, in addition to general toughness. However it's eventually subverted in that the Tarka are the only ones to have the option to research and build cruiser-sized battle riders, while everyone else is stuck with tiny Attack Drones.
• Game mechanics cause this to be very prevalent in Tactics Ogre. From beginning to end, one of the most effective units in the game is the humble archer, a low level female unit with very high dexterity (ranged attack), the ability to traverse watery terrain, and amazingly high avoidance. Ranged attacks are at a great advantage because any time a melee class attacks an enemy, the enemy will be allowed a counterattack while ranged units never get counterattacked, resulting in far less damage taken by ranged units. Not only that but the game extends bow range according to terrain height so that archers can easily achieve the longest range if they get into a high spot (far longer range than mages, at least until you get the gamebreaking spells at the end of the game), shoot over obstacles, and their avoidance means they will even dodge a great many attacks against them! Even when an army of angels, dragons, hydras, golems, and terror knights are at your disposal end game, many players opt for a full third of their attack party being archers.
  • The 2010 remake takes this even further, ensuring that any non-character-exclusive prestige class that doesn't have copious amounts of AT will be at a severe disadvantage beyond the early stages. You'll be using Rune Knights/Valkyries a lot in chapter one (and again later once summon magic becomes available), and once they're unlocked, Ninjas and Rogues rule the day. Keep a few Archers around (they still kick ass here) and a Cleric or two to heal status effects and banish undead, and you're set for the entire game.
• Total War: Warhammer has several examples:
  • When playing as The Empire, you get lots of nice elite units, most notably the Demigryph Knights. However, it is more likely than not that even in the end-game, your army will mostly consist of bottom-tier State Infantry, i.e. Swordsmen, Spearmen and Halberdiers. Their good cost-effectiveness, ease of replenishment, and the fact that the right research path and Lord build can net these units some very nice bonuses keeps them more than viable throughout the game.
  • For Dwarfs, it's the Dwarf Warriors. In spite of technically being a bottom-tier melee infantry unit, their comparatively heavy armor and high morale will have them holding their own.
  • In the case of the Vampire Counts, it's the Zombies. Zombies are completely useless on paper, being mediocre-to-awful, even by bottom-tier infantry standards, at everything except hitpoints. However, their relatively high hitpoints, cheapness and immunity to morale effects make them indispensable as missile-sponges and tar pits, and can be put to very good use keeping your enemies' elite units bogged down and disrupting their formations. Also you can raise a unit of them behind an engaged enemy battle line and hit them with a double whammy of morale penalties.
• Total War: Warhammer II has some as well:
  • Lothern Seaguard, especially those with shield. Essentially a unit that combines the anti-cavalry staying power of a spear unit with the long-range death of an archer unit. You can easily make entire armies of only this unit.
  • For High Elves, the bulk of any army is probably going to be Spearmen and Archers. Not as flashy or powerful as White Lions of Chrace or Sisters of Avelorn or Swordmasters or Phoenix Guard or the actual dragons, but given the Elves are a Dying Race, you need some militia troops (who are still fairly competent for the roles they are equipped for - living as long as elves do, you get to be very good at fighting) who can pad out the numbers between your small warrior cults.
• The various Ashigaru units in Total War: Shogun 2. They make up for their inferior stats in comparison with their Samurai counterparts through shorter production times, cheapness, and low upkeep. A few units of Yari Ashigaru can hold the middle of a formation with a spear wall while stronger units manoeuver around the enemy, or be placed around the flanks and protect the meat of your army from cavalry, Bow Ashigaru provide a cheap skirmishing element which at higher experience can even contend with their Samurai counterparts, and a few garrisoned Matchlock Ashigaru can turn even the most lopsided of sieges into a meat grinder. If you want to field an army without breaking your bank, expect Ashigaru to be the spine of your forces.
• In Vanguard Bandits, there's the Turbulence attack. It's easy to get stat-wise and time-wise, its attack costs are very reasonable and it has a large range. Used wisely, it can completely incapacitate anyone, even the Final Boss. But it does embarrassingly low amounts of damage even with high attack and is one of the dullest looking moves in the game.
• Valkyria Chronicles has all kinds of special orders you can give, from buffing and healing specific units (or even all units) for a single turn, to calling in mortar strikes and even covering most of the battlefield in a destructive artillery barrage. One order that'll get a ton of usage all the way to the endgame, however, is Retreat, the first order you learn from the Aged Gentleman, which allows you to instantly pull any still-conscious unit from the battlefield. Perfect for when you've got a unit that's in serious trouble as soon as its the enemy's turn to move, or when you want to move a unit across the map to your newly captured enemy camp, but it would take too long for them to get to the nearest camp and withdraw normally.
• Warhammer 40,000: Chaos Gate: The Heavy Bolter does not bring anything flashy to the table; no AOE, big anti-armor bonuses, no status effects, no huge damage per attack. What it does bring is just enough damage output and anti-armor capacity to take down a standard marine or berserker in one or two shots, and put out a truly mindnumbing amount of shots per turn.
• Worms
  • The series is famous for its more outlandish weapons, but the simplicity and utility value of weapons like the Shotgun (fires in a straight line, two shots, a maximum of 25 damage each with a correspondingly small blast radius) frequently outweighs this. Particularly given that big, flashy weapons have a higher chance of backfiring or at least damaging the shooter. The Bazooka and Grenade also demonstrate this, but nothing fits the description of Boring, but Practical quite like the Shotgun.
  • The Shotgun is practical because it actually subverts many conventions of the game, which is the "you can't move after you shoot" and "You can only hit one target per turn". With a Shotgun, and aiming skills, you can either bunge two Worms in one turn, push two onto landmines, blow up two Oil canisters, knock two opposing worms into very bad positions, do any combination of those, or just one and go back into hiding. The tactical flexibility of the Shotgun is what makes it practical.
  • The Fire Punch and the Dragonball. They're melee attacks that inflict a consistent 25 and 30 damage, respectively — keyword being consistent (contrast other weapons, which inflict varying damage), so hitting an opponent that has less health than either weapon will take off is a guaranteed kill. Alternatively, you can use these attacks to knock your opponent into a mine, or better yet, off the screen or into the water.
• X-COM: UFO Defense has several.
  • Rookie Rushing: getting one or a group of unskilled rookies to draw fire or tank shots from aliens. Rookies aren't free, but they are cheap, and if you don't bother to give them armor, you get to recover their other gear if/when they die. And now the aliens have revealed their positions and your experienced soldiers can deal with them.
  • Laser rifles: Stronger and more accurate than ballistic rifles, less powerful and accurate than plasma rifles, but they have the fastest firing rate in the game and unlimited ammunition. Plasma weapons are strictly better, but laser rifles will carry you through a surprisingly good part of the game.
  • Heavy Plasma weapons: the highest non-explosive damage in the game, with a massive 35-round clip and auto-fire. Getting this weapon researched and stockpiling a ton of them will serve you through most of the game^note Except against Sectopods, which are highly resistant to plasma damage. The Blaster Launcher is more fun, but the Heavy Plasma is a mainstay weapon because it's just that good. It's not even all that heavy.
  • For air battles, the Plasma Cannon. It has the third best range in the game (just short of the Avalanche Missiles, and well behind the Blaster Bomb), the second best damage in the game, the second best refire rate in the game after the Craft Cannon, and 100 rounds of free ammunition. You have to manufacture them yourself, and the research requirements will take quite a while^note You need to research Plasma Pistols, Rifles, and Heavy Plasma, along with their associated ammunition, then Plasma Cannon, but an Interceptor equipped with two of these will reliably shoot down even Terror Ships. The only thing that can't be handled with dual Plasma Cannons is Battleships. And the ammunition is free, in a game where every other craft weapon needs expensive and bulky ammunition.
• The sequel XCOM Terror From The Deep has most of the above, but...
  • The Sonic Blasta-Rifle is the new "anything goes" weapon: Gauss weapons are bulky, expensive to manufacture, and lack damage output, while the Sonic Cannon is too heavy and too slow to fire to be useful most of the time. The Blasta-Rifle is exceptionally powerful for its size, and the most accurate weapon in the game. You can get it on the first mission with zero luck, and replace most of your weaponry immediately.
  • Plastic Aqua-Armor. Diving Suits offer no protection, and Ion Armor is extremely expensive in both materials and manufacturing time. Plastic Aqua-Armor, by comparison, is able to withstand Sonic Blasta-Rifle fire and potentially even Sonic Cannons, costs only four units of relatively common Aqua Plastics and has a very reasonable manufacturing time. Unlike the previous game, where Personal Armor was a joke due to the power of plasma weapons and the ubiquity of auto-fire, Plastic Aqua-Armor is cost-effective and strong enough for many different encounters. But it looks really boring compared to Ion Armor.
• In XCOM: Enemy Unknown one of the Sniper's ability choices at Colonel, Double Tap, is this. All it does is allow you to use both your actions to attack enemies. The other choice, In The Zone, is potentially more useful, but demands luck and setup. Double Tap doesn't.
  • The S.C.O.P.E. Takes the item spot that could be used for grenades or Combat Stims. Gives a +10% hit rate, and, if upgraded through the Foundry, a +10% critical hit chance. Useful so that rookies don't miss most of their shots. They are also very cheap.
  • Health-enhancing items just add health to the soldier. It doesn't get much more boring while still practical than this.
    • Nano-fiber vests. The 2 hit points it adds can easily mean the difference between life and death for your soldier that's about to get promoted in the early game, and is an amazing stopgap between cruddy body armor and the more advanced Carapace armor. Dirt cheap, too. Less useful in the late game, but still a solid choice when equipping your soldiers in the first missions.
    • Chitin Plating gimps the rare instances of melee damage, but the extra 4 health comes in handy against ranged attacks and explosives.
  • Medikits. Dirt cheap. Heals 4 HP once per mission. A soldier carrying one is immune to poison. It cure poison affecting the person it's used on. Can receive a Foundry upgrade to heal 6 Hp instead of 4. A Field Medic-specced Sergeant Support can use it three times per mission, a Major support 4 in the Enemy Within expansion, can be used by a Lieutenant support to revive critically wounded soldiers instead of merely stabilizing them, allowing them to keep on fighting, and in the end of a Colonel support, heals 8 HP per use^note 10 with the aforementioned Foundry Upgrade. Nothing fancy, but really useful.
  • While we are on the subject of Supports:
    • They get a smoke grenade that makes friendly soldiers harder to hit and little else. This makes even a Squaddie useful throughout the game.
    • Corporal support can get the Sprinter perk, allowing them to move 3 extra tiles. Good for reaching that perfect full cover over there, or a wounded soldier, or a civilian, or a Meld canister...
    • Instead of reviving soldiers, Lieutenant supports can get the Suppression skill. Penalizes the aim of an alien by 30%, gives a reaction shot if it moves. Great for pinning down an alien for safe capture, or removing Overwatch.
  • In Enemy Within, the Tactical Rigging Foundry upgrade allows for every soldier to carry two items, in case you don't want to be forced to make a choice between two items. If in doubt, just equip the trooper with two grenades, or a health-enhancing item and a grenade, or any combination thereof.
  • The Telekinetic Field Psychic Power. +40 defense in a huge radius, as good as full cover, and stacks with both cover and smoke grenades. The other choice is Mind Control, which needs high Will to work.
  • The Ammo Conservation Foundry project. This upgrade doubles the amount of times a soldier can fire before having to reload. And that's it. Especially useful on a Heavy who can get the ability to fire twice in a turn but can only fire three bursts or fire once then use Suppression before having to reload, or an Assault with both Close & Personal and Rapid Fire, who will normally all but exhaust their shotgun in one turn.
  • While MEC Troopers are an awesome cross between a Mini-Mecha and a Cyborg, a few of their abilities are Boring, but Practical.
    • Collateral Damage, their first ability, deals limited damage to aliens in exchange for always hitting, dealing area-of-effect damage, and destroying cover.
    • Expanded Storage, a Captain ability, gives them one extra use for a few abilities as well as well as an extra shot before having to reload. This stacks with the aforementioned Ammo Conservation, tripling their ammo capacity, a standard MEC's weakness.
    • Then, the MEC suit subsystems: the first tier allows you to choose between a Kinetic Strike Module and a flamethrower. Both are extremely awesome, but the KSM is often chosen just for the extra 3 tiles of mobility it gives. This stacks with a Foundry Upgrade giving an additional 3 extra tiles of movement to MEC Troopers and SHIVs, allowing a MEC Trooper to move 6 extra tiles per turn, or 12 if they make a double move during their turn. Tier 2 MEC suits can have either a Grenade Launcher, or the Restorative Mist, basically an area of effect medikit.
  • The Officer Training School (or OTS) has some good gems, which costs only credits (no rare resources grabbed only by killing enemies, just money), which are:
    • Squad Size 1+2. It does nothing except increasing the Arbitrary Headcount Limit to five and six respectively, which means more actions and more flexibility due to the class system.
    • Wet Work. A straightforward EXP Booster that increases XP from kills by 25%. Anymore needs to be said?
    • Rapid Recovery. Soldiers heal faster from injuries, allowing you to get them back into the battlefield faster.
    • Iron Will. Improves soldier Will gain from level ups. Makes them more resilient to psionic attacks.
    • New Guy. Gives a level to any rookie in your roster who still doesn't have it, and all newly recruited soldiers gain their first level (and since they only get a class assigned when they gain that level, they start with a class). Useful if some of your high level soldiers got killed and you need to replace them quickly.
• XCOM 2 is not lacking in Boring, but Practical things either.
  • Soldier abilities:
    • The Ranger gets an ability that allows them to stay in stealth when the rest of the squad breaks stealth. It also allows them to start in stealth in non-stealth missions. An advance scout that can tell you what you're about to face and what cover there will be is priceless. Rangers also get an ability that can be used once per mission to get back in stealth after they broke stealth.
    • Bladestorm. Automatically attacks any enemy that gets in melee range or fires from melee range with their sword. Since some melee enemies are really dangerous, and they get a Flaming Sword in a game where being on fire disables melee attacks and special abilities... That pack of Chryssalids effectively wasted their turn.
    • The Grenadier gets a Grenade Launcher. All it does is give them an extra grenade only slot and gives their grenades extra range.
    • Said grenadier also gets the Shredder ability, a straight Anti-Armor ability that breaks the armor of their enemies, making them much more vulnerable.
    • Demolition is also a very useful ability. Grenadiers have lousy aim, but Demolition has a fixed 87% chance to damage the cover of their targets. It works better with more powerful weapons. Against a target in high cover, it translates into a 40% accuracy boost and 30% critical chance boost.
    • Hail of Bullets. A high ammunition cost Always Accurate Attack.
    • Specialists needs not feel left out. The Battle Medic tree can save a mission that went pear shaped, and Combat Hackers can disable robotic units for one turn, allowing theml to get rid of their escort and then deal with them.
    • Combat Hackers get Combat Protocol. Deals Scratch Damage, in a game where Scratch Damage breaks overwatch.
    • Combat Hackers also get a one use per mission Enemy-Detecting Radar.
    • Their core ability is Aid Protocol, giving a defense boost to an ally in range.
    • Ever Vigilant, a specialist ability, allows them to overwatch after a double move.
  • Now to get to utility items. One of the most useful ones is the humble Battle Scanner
    • Flashbang Grenades, since they disable enemy special abilities. Especially devastating on enemies that rely on their Psychic Powers.
    • The Medikit, for obvious reasons.
  • The Guerilla Tactics School upgrades, costing only Supplies (money), and permanently improving XCOM's efficiency. We could say all of them count and move on, but where would be the fun in that?
    • Vulture. A permanent Random Drop Booster.
    • Wet Work. A permanent EXP Booster.
    • Squad Size 1+2. Increase the Arbitrary Headcount Limit.
    • Lightning Strike. While in concealment and for the first 2 turns, squad gets extra mobility.
    • Integrated Warfare: improves the efficiency of combat implants.
    • Cool Under Pressure: specialist gain +10% accuracy and their overwatch shots can critically hit, which synergizes to an incredible extent with Ever Vigilant.
  • Gun Accessories and combat implants:
    • Scopes improve accuracy. That's it.
    • Expanded magazines. The Grenadiers's greatest weakness is that their skills are extremely ammo intensive. This solves their issues.
    • Stocks. missed shots deal Scratch Damage. Which, as stated earlier, removes Overwatch.
    • Speed Implants. Improve mobility.
    • Conditioning implants: increase Hit Points.
    • Perception implants: increase accuracy.
  • Engineering XCOM wide upgrades:
    • Gremmlin upgrades: improves the Hollywood Hacking stat of specialists, as well as their special abilities.
    • Psi Amp upgrades: improves the Psychic Powers of Psi troopers.
    • Magnetic weapon upgrades: Sure, magnetic weapons receive extra damage. But the true usefulness of this upgrade is to give them an extra Gun Accessories slot.
    • By the same token, the basic armor upgrade gives not only extra HP to soldiers, but also a second utility item slot.
  • the Expansion War of the Chosen adds more/
    • You wouldn't think a Hero Unit would be Boring, but Practical? Stealth Expert Reapers say Hello! They get abilities such as being almost invisible (drop a lone Reaper on an ADVENT Black Site. Plant the explosives and leave without firing a single shot.) or permanently marking any enemy they see. Any marked enemy is considered in sight of your troops no matter if they use camouflage abilities or any line of sight shenanigans. The Assassin ignores Overwatch and specializes in Hit-and-Run Tactics by attacking and then hiding where she thinks I won't see her? That's cute darling, but a Reaper saw you, and we know where you are and are about to flush you out.
    • Skirmishers are Difficult, but Awesome, in that they have very little single-action damage output, but they have extremely high mobility and, at high levels, many, many abilities that let them take free actions to inflict damage. But their basic, most used function? They can attack twice in one turn. That's it. And it makes them very dangerous.
    • Templars are melee specialists in a game where you don't want to get close to your enemies, but they excel at dealing damage to single units, and get a variety of powers that get more dangerous as they get kills, up to and including wiping out an entire enemy squad with one Psi power. But their most useful ability, unlocked after they gain a single level? Instead of moving after attacking, they can completely nullify the next attack to target them. Any attack, from a simple attack from an ADVENT Trooper, to a Sectopod's Wrath Cannon. This makes them ideal for drawing the most damaging enemies out.
    • Covert Actions. You can deploy soldiers for operations. An Operation lasts 10 days, but you can assignan Engineer to cut that to 6. Covert Operations can delay the Nonstandardgame Over pretty much indefinitely, procure supplies, procure upgrades to your gear, procure unique gear, the list goes on. If a Chosen is active in the area your agents operate in, they risk getting captured... Unless you spend resources to prevent that risk. The only other risks are Injury (your soldiers are unavailable for a few days) and Ambush, which is a mission where your units must reach the evacuation zone alive. Cover Actions gives Non-Combat EXP to the participating troops, and improves the Relationship Values between the soldiers taking part in the Covert Ops, and even often gives the participating solider a permanent stat boost. There's basically no reason to not have a Covert Action active at all times (and Central will let you know if you don't, constantly).
• XCOM: Long War, a mod of XCOM: Enemy Unknown, adds a few examples:
  • The new Infantry class, derived from the Assault class, has no special powers, fancy flanking maneuevres, or flashy explosives. They do, however, get to shoot twice in a turn provided they didn't move. Combined with good Aim and a battle rifle, Infantry can pump out more damage than any other class.
  • Snipers. While a Sniper with Squadsight and a spotter won't be clearing out entire maps by themselves anymore, a soldier who can inflict heavy damage, if not outright one-shot, enemies from beyond the reach of any alien retaliation will be bringing a lot to the table.
  • The new Medic class. They can only equip SMGs and so have mediocre firepower at all ranges except close, but they will save your soldiers' lives.
  • Flashbangs. Take an equipment slot, does no damage, but cripples the stats of affected aliens and very few are immune.

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