Warhammer
- Discussions of Warhammer should mention when a given element was a game breaker. Warhammer is a Long Runner and what is or is not a game breaker changes from edition to edition.
- Daemons of Chaos feature the Great Unclean One. For 600 points, it is possible to field a Lord-level mage who has T6, 10 wounds, 4+ armour, 5+ ward, and regeneration. In larger games, you can field several.
- Prior to 8th edition, which was designed to Nerf them, daemons were arguably the most broken army ever released in the game's history. EVERYTHING in the army had at least 5+ ward save and caused fear (Lord units causing terror). This basically meant the enemy was, unless it was Tomb Kings or Vampire Counts who all have immune to psychology, going to spend most of the game running scared. The rare case your enemy doesn't run, he's dead anyways, since the magic the army can throw around will wreck, the worst case being an utterly broken spell that a Lord of Change has access to called Glean Magic that causes you force a target enemy wizard to use ALL their spells on targets you chose, and they can't be dispelled, and the icing on the cake being that Glean Magic was incredibly cheap, especially for what it does. And that's not even getting to how all the units in the army were incredibly strong and the only things that wouldn't being running away due to fear or terror will get torn to pieces in melee. There's a reason the 8th edition nerfed this army and why it was so hated for how overpowered it was.
- Slann Mage-Priests can be built to nerf the opposing wizard's effect on the game, some of their magic items make miscasts an accepted fact of life, removing the ability to cast with Irresistable Force, forcing stupidity tests every turn. Saurus Old-Bloods can easily be kitted out to crush spammed infantry thanks to the Carnosaur mount.
- Lizardmen in general have been bumped one step closer to gamebreaker thanks to 8th edition's broken magic system making Slann one of the few wizards to bypass all the negatives of the new magic system and the added emphasis on large infantry bricks make Saurus Spear Warrior units into one of the nastiest basic troopers in the game. But with the two together you face waves of tough infantry guarding non-squishy wizards that are blasting all of your army into Hell/pieces/ashes. Then they got nerfed pretty heavily in the 8th edition army book; they're still very scary, but you can no longer buy Slann that get free dice for everything, the miscast-guaranteeing effects are gone, and the resistance to miscasting is reduced to an option allowing you to add or remove one point from the roll. Of course, they still have some of the scariest wizards and basic infantry in the game, but that just makes them "tough", rather than "the annihilating fury of vengeful, presumably dead gods" as they were previously.
- Vampire Counts character Mannfred Von Carnstein (Lord edition) can raise ridiculous amounts of undead if left unchecked. How ridiculous? In a single magic phase he can produce 40 zombies if not dispelled or rolling miscasts.
- Dark Elf assassins can cause victims to roll a toughness test on 3D6 or die. Considering that except for Daemons most characters have a Toughness of 4, that means trying to roll below 4 on 3 six-sided dice.
- And they are Weapon Skill 9 characters for ninety points each.
- Dark Elves also have the War Hydra. 175 points for a S5, T5, W5, 7 ATTACKS. Oh and as a monster it also has D6 S5 auto-hits at the end of every combat. And it has a Breath Weapon that's strength is equal to it's number of remaining wounds (which equals a one use only 2d6 auto-hits, which will usually be S5). And it has 2 beastmasters which have 3 S3 armor piercing attacks. And it has a 4+ armor save and regeneration. A single one of these can wreck entire units. And you can take 2 in a 2K game with enough rare points left over to drop a Bolt Thrower.
- Most armies in general have a few gamebreakers at any one time, the exceptions being Ogre Kingdoms or Orcs & Goblins.
- Ogre Kingdoms now have the Thundertusk. 250 points for an absolutely huge monster (4 attacks, 6 wounds, S6, T6, riders with 3 S4 attacks each), it has Thunderstomp, which means D6 S6 auto-hits per round of combat. It also has a S3(6) stone thrower AND all enemies within 6 inches of it Always Strike Last. One of these at the center of your line means your charging line means your enemy better have the gods of luck on their side, or their entire line is going to collapse.
- The current Lore of Life is disproportionately powerful. Let's put it this way: under the 8th edition magic rules, throwing large handfuls of dice at spells is possible but discouraged, because an irresistible force (or, any two dice coming up 6) automatically produces a wild-magic miscast effect, which is likely to lead to something unpleasant happening to the wizard. "Throne of Vines" allows you to discount this on a 2+, or five times in six. And spells are resolved before you roll on the miscast table, so if you get irresistible force on Throne of Vines...yeah. If you think that's nasty, combine it with "The Dwellers Below" from the same lore, which can cripple entire units by killing large numbers of them with no saves allowed. The main balancing factor? The large handfuls of dice needed to cast it are likely to lead to an irresistible force, the resultant miscast and your mage's head exploding. Unless he's able to ignore miscasts on, for example, a 2+...
- The successor game, Warhammer: Age of Sigmar, tries to avoid this by not caring about game balance to begin with, to the point where units don't even have points values, but some of this still crept in as early as the changeover PDF's. High Elf Repeater Bolt Throwers, for example, are ambiguously written so it's not hard to read them as firing 72 shots per turn. Also, with no restriction on the units you can bring at all, fielding 36 Dark Elf War Hydras or an entire wheelbarrowful of Nagashes is mechanically fine; the expectation is that it'll be balanced by you being thrown out of the gaming group, which is kind of an awkward basis.
- So far averted with Match Play, the point system of Age of Sigmar.
Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay
- The first edition of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay contained several somewhat ill-considered spells, the most infamous of all being the innocuous-sounding Glowing Light. Glowing Light is a very basic Petty Magic spell used to turn any handy useless object into a disposable torch. At least, that's what it was supposed to be used for. Exact Words plays into it, along with missing some words that would've helped. The spell description actually just said "The object glows brightly for one hour, and then vanishes." And then vanishes. Most novice wizards considered that a one hour time-delay was a fair price to pay for the power to vaporise anything they could lay their hands on.
