Advance Wars Role Play

The Advance Wars Roleplay is a forum-based roleplay game based on the Nintendo Wars series but set in an Alternate Universe.

In this universe, the various continents of Wars World divided and each country operates anomously. Each CO has powers which they use to gain an advantage in battle. There is a wide array of characters with various abilities, which often reflect the personalities of the character.

In the Advance Wars Roleplay, there are four main powers set across the continent of Cosmo Land. They are:
 * Orange Star: The American-style faction and perpetual rivals to Green Earth. They are currently led by Dart. Former commanders include Zephyr and Maria.
 * Blue Moon: Based on Russia, Blue Moon are the most isolationist faction. They are currently led by Procella, formely by Boreas and Eva and the Board of Commanders.
 * Green Earth: The European faction, taking on aspects of ancient Scandinavia. They are allied with Yellow Comet but rivals with Orange Star. Their current leader is Sheppard, with Thor and Viola being the former Green Earth leaders thus far.
 * Yellow Comet: The Japanese faction and main allies to Green Earth. They are the only country to have one leader since the start of the game, Emperor Ken.

The game itself can be found here, with an official wiki here. For a more detailed description see here.

This roleplay provides examples of:

 * A Commander Is You - Like Nintendo Wars itself, this is more to do with actual COs than to do with factions. There's still a hint of this with the actual factions, though.
 * Orange Star - Unit specialist faction (naval)
 * Warfield: Technical
 * Madison: Gimmick (she's stronger on water, but isn't a naval unit specialist since air and hovercraft units are also affected)/ranger
 * Suzi: Unit specialist (helicopters)
 * Nate: Brute force
 * Dune: Ranger
 * Horatio: Technical
 * Tyke: Jack of All Stats
 * Blue Moon - Spammer, later guerilla faction.
 * Mira: Ranger
 * Comrade: Technical/unit specialist (infantry)
 * Rustica: Unit specialist (ground)
 * Electroma: Research specialist/unit specialist (units unique to the AWRP)
 * Ubivat: Unit specialist (stealth/submarine)
 * Green Earth - The Mario faction
 * Sheppard: Technical (Sheppard has high defence overall)
 * Blitz: Unit specialist (explosives)
 * Raoul: Unit specialist (units not introduced in the AWRP)
 * Taylor: Jack of All Stats (overall - she can switch between brute force or defensive strength)
 * Yellow Comet - Gimmick (research) faction
 * Ken: Unit specialist (tanks and planes)
 * Hemlock: Unit specialist (naval)
 * Makoto: Inverted unit specialist (air counter)
 * Jammer: Brute force
 * Yuriko: Elitist (balanced by overpriced powers)
 * Black Hole - Gimmick (research, with bits of industry) faction
 * SMART - Gimmick (research) faction Up to Eleven
 * Ace Pilot - Currently Joseph, Kestrel and (for helicopters at least) Suzi, but previously Zephyr as well.
 * Airborne Aircraft Carrier - The Defiant.
 * Alternate Universe - First, the RP itself is set in an alternate universe to the Nintendo Wars canon. Then there's a second parallel world, where Black Hole are from. It's also implied there's countless more parallel worlds. Yay quantum theory?
 * Zeppelins From Another World: Orange Star finally have airships!
 * Elseworld: Former RP Leader PanicAttack is planning a fanfic where much of the cast are placed in a world where their powers resemble more conventional Stock Super Powers. It's essentially the AWRP crossed with X Men.
 * Anti Air - As well as the Anti-Air vehicles, the surface-to-air Missiles, the anti-sub/air Cruiser, some factions have additional counter-air weaponary including:
 * The Orange Star/Yellow Comet Frigate, a ship with a surface-to-air missile launcher
 * The Green Earth Hoverflak, a hovercraft armed with an anti-air vulcan, similar to the one on the Anti-Air tank.
 * The Yellow Comet Masako Troopers, armed with miniguns, which make them one of the most cost-effective ways of dealing with enemy helicopters. They also fair well against Interceptors.
 * Aluminum Christmas Trees - The Russians really did build a Tsar Bomba, similar to the AWRP's Tsarina Bomba
 * Anyone Can Die - Maria, Don, Zephyr (but he got better until he didn't again), Lorin, Omega, Petr, Haynes, D, loads of SMART COs
 * Armor Piercing Attack - Yellow Comet's Bombers, Fuzei and indirect-combat units have this to a limited degree, as Yellow Comet's "Ballistic Precision" technology allows their attacks to ignore enemy terrain defense.
 * Authority Equals Asskicking - All the COs, but especially Dart, Procella, Thor and Ken.
 * Big Bad - Vogel in the SMART event, Nicole in the AB04 storyline. For other events, it's not entirely clear.
 * Bigger Bad - Vogel
 * Brought Down to Normal - The main universe COs during the Black Hole event. It's implied that it wasn't just the Cosmo Land COs, but also the Omega Land ones and possibly even the Macro Land ones.
 * Bunny Ears Lawyer - Quite a few characters:
 * Maria and her penchant for stuffed toys.
 * Dart is a minor case as of late, but has been known for taking his Pirate act quite far.
 * Merlin. Where do we start?
 * Rakshata's furniture fascination qualifies her as one.
 * Thor, like Dart, is a bit of a minor case. Although he doesn't act like a viking berzerker as much as he did, he's known to lapse into such moments occasionally.
 * Hanako certainly acts as would be expected from a military commander and scientist, but dresses pretty lightly in all-natural materials when possible and always goes barefoot.
 * Ryouta, a former Visual Kei singer who still dresses the part. All the time.
 * The Chessmaster - Nicole thinks she is one, Ada really is one.
 * Conversational Troping / Discussed Trope / Lampshade Hanging: Hanako has talked about tropes including Personality Blood Types, Theme Naming (particularly Flower Motifs) and Zeppelins From Another World. Procella also recognised a potential Enemy Mine situation in regards to Green Earth.
 * Cool Boat - Everyone has at least one.
 * Orange Star has the Tactical Submarine (also known as "Tacky Sub"), which can submerge itself to sneak into a powerful position, rise and then wreak havoc on opposing ground and naval forces.
 * Blue Moon has the Veles Stealth Cruiser.
 * Green Earth has the Peccatore Battleship (sometimes called the "Pecca"), a stronger version of the Battleship which can also target air units.
 * Yellow Comet has the Dreadnaught (or "Dreadie" or variations thereof), which packs even more power than the Peccatore, but can't fire on air units. It can absolutely ruin enemy Submarines, however.
 * SMART also got in on this, with their Frigate, a design that was stolen by Orange Star and passed onto Yellow Comet. See Anti Air.
 * AB04 is certainly this for whoever owns it. It's a giant submarine used for developing bioweapons which is overseen by some unknown entity with a robot voice.
 * Disc One Final Boss - Reagan. Everyone was led to believe she was behind the SMART invasion, when she was actually a subordinate to an even higher ranking man: Vogel. She was something of the actual final boss of SMART, tagging with Vogel in their final stand.
 * Doppelganger - Black Hole World:
 * Eastwood for Farkas
 * Ironside for Lorin
 * Odin for Zephyr
 * Stonewall for Greg
 * Molotov for Plamya
 * Eris for Maria
 * Empress for Emi
 * Viola and Rosa for... Viola and Rosa
 * Viola and Rosabella for each other while we're at it, seeing as they're identical twins.
 * Alternate versions of Procella, Petr, Ken and Thor have also been mentioned but not seen.
 * Dual Mode Unit - Yellow Comet's Siege Tank can switch between being a moderately powerful tank and an incredibly long ranged artillery piece.
 * Enemy Mine - Deconstructed by Suzi and Yellow Comet.
 * Expy - Some of the COs in the AWRP fill similar roles to those of those from the actual Advance Wars games, either in terms of ability or in terms of story role. For example:
 * Dart has strong naval units and a damaging Super CO Power, similar to Drake.
 * Madison and Dart's romance was somewhat similar to Eagle and Sami's in AW1 while Madison was in Green Earth, albeit gender swapped.
 * Chase is a narcisstic speed freak, similar to Adder.
 * Procella works best in good terrain cover, similar to Lash
 * Joseph has strong air units and a weak navy, similar to Eagle. His movement boosts for air units are also like those of Zadia/Tasha.
 * Ken serves as the overall leader of Yellow Comet, similar to Kanbei.
 * Hanako serves as a foil to Ken, like Sonja to Kanbei. Like Sonja and Lash she is also a prodigy and has terrain-related abilities. Ken and Hanako aren't blood related, however.
 * Caligari's abilities are like Andy's, but slightly better. His CO Power is practically identical to O'Brian/Brenner's. He's also an Expy of The Fifth Doctor.
 * Sae can empty enemy CO Power meters and doesn't get any firepower or defensive boosts under normal circumstances, similar to Sasha.
 * Ironside is wheelchair bound and heavily crippled, much like Von Bolt.
 * Suzi is nothing like Haruhi, despite her Punny Name.
 * Mira is essentially a cross between Penny/Lily and Olaf.
 * Five Man Band:
 * Black Hole, First Wave
 * The Hero or The Big Bad - Eastwood
 * The Lancer or The Dragon - Odin
 * The Smart Guy or The Evil Genius - Ironside
 * The Big Guy or The Brute - Molotov
 * The Chick or The Dark Chick - Eris
 * The Sixth Ranger - Stonewall
 * Five Bad Band - Black Hole, as listed above. SMART also had this in each wave of their attacks.
 * First wave:
 * The Big Bad - Reagan
 * The Dragon - Abigail
 * The Evil Genius - Alyosha
 * The Brute - Aaron
 * The Dark Chick - Akemi
 * The Sixth Ranger - Herr Kalt
 * Second Wave:
 * The Big Bad - Vogel
 * The Dragon - Reagan
 * The Evil Genius - Silicon
 * The Brute - Maurice
 * The Dark Chick - Akane
 * The Sixth Ranger - Plamya
 * Black Hole second wave:
 * The Big Bad - Hawke
 * The Dragon & The Evil Genius - Lash
 * The Brute - Flak
 * The Dark Chick - Adder
 * Game Breaking Injury - The virus that prevents the usage of CO Powers could be seen as a form of this, especially since the Black Hole COs are unaffected and some have borderline Game Breaker abilities.
 * Gatling Good - The Yellow Comet Masako Troopers use miniguns, as do the Vulcaneers from the alternate Yellow Comet.
 * Geo Effects - Like in AW proper, terrain affects the movement and defensive strength of ground, sea and also hovercraft units. Different COs and technologies affect them further:
 * Procella gets strong attacks in high-star terrain and weak attacks on low-star terrain.
 * Hanako gets strong attacks on plains, forests and reefs and weak attacks on roads.
 * Madison gets strong attacks at sea, weak attacks on land and neutral attacks on rivers, beaches and ports.
 * Blue Moon's pillboxes grant 5 terrain stars to any occupant.
 * Green Earth's Enhanced Topography ability grants +1 terrain star on natural terrain which already has 2 or more stars (forests, wasteland, reef, rough sea, mountains).
 * Yellow Comet's Ballistic Precision makes indirect attacks and dropped bombs nullify the effect of terrain stars.
 * GMPC - Currently Tremor and Sigrid. Used to include Viola, Hanako, Zephyr, Dart, Joseph, Ken, Raoul, Procella and Madison.
 * Handicapped Badass - Lorin. Her Alternate Universe counterpart Ironside takes this Up to Eleven.
 * Hanlons Razor - Hanako invokes this when trying to figure out what happened between Raoul and the Orange Star COs on the night of the bomb, as well as Grey's Law.
 * Hot Scientist - Hanako is one, Ironside used to be one, Rakshata might also be one. For the women, there's also Silicon and Caligari.
 * Hover Tank - The Yellow Comet Hovertank. There are also hover artillery, hover anti-air and hover transports. May not count as they are actual hovercraft as opposed to Applied Phlebotinum applied to actual units.
 * Incredibly Lame Pun - Maria Onette who's powers were - sure enough - based around using her opponent's units like puppets.
 * Stanley "Knife" Orwell
 * Suzi Mia Harrison
 * Japanese Honorifics - Yellow Comet (Hanako in particular) gives these a bit of work. Could be considered Gratuitous Japanese.
 * Hanako refers to most other people as [name]-han.
 * She refers to Caligari as Caligari-hakase
 * She also used to refer to Emi as Emi-gozen.
 * She tends to tack -sama onto the end of the names of the leaders of other countries. She also referred to Procella as "Procella-ojousama".
 * Kill It With Fire
 * Playing With Fire - Plamya's powers
 * Fire Breathing Weapon - Green Earth's Flamethrower Infantry.
 * Large and In Charge - Dart and Thor
 * MacGuffin - Nuclear weapons, or more broadly weapons of mass destruction - have never been used as weapons, but frequently as plot.
 * The Man Behind The Man and sometimes also women - Vogel. It was implied that Reagan was in charge of the organisation but she was merely in charge of their army while Vogel was in charge of the whole organisation. There was also Dieter Kalt (the first man behind Viola), Conway Black (the second man behind Viola and man behind Thor) and William Richmond (the man behind Dart).
 * Meaningful Name
 * Maria Onette a CO with the ability to control enemy units.
 * Hanako Mori, whose given name means "flower child" and surname means "forest", is a trained botanist who works best around plants and coral and can even make them overgrow temporarily.
 * Alexandr "Plamya" Molotov had fire-related powers, "plamya" being Russian for flame.
 * Aya Tsukino's given name means either colour or design. She's an artist.
 * Mega Corp - Many. In order of prominence, SMART, the main reality's Black Hole Industries and Aries Armcorp are just three.
 * Mildly Military - Every nation to some degree, but Yellow Comet slightly more so.
 * My Friends and Zoidberg - Thor invokes this by sending a message to the other Green Earth COs opening with "To the Dukes and Duchesses of Green Earth. Kiku as well."
 * Nanomachines - Hanako and Ken both use nanomachines. They are used to make their CO Powers even stronger.
 * No Indoor Voice - SIGRID "ELECTROMA" HENNELZEN IS THE VERY EMBODIMENT OF THIS TROPE!!!
 * Paintball Episode - The war game in Yellow Comet.
 * Personality Blood Types - Played with: Hanako's a type A, which suits her. Kiku's a type O, which doesn't.
 * Please Select New City And Island Names - When SMART lost some of their islands to the various nations of Cosmo Land, the islands were renamed. Instead of Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto, the islands are now known as Liberty Island, Kristallichy Island, L'isola Vesuvio and Minamimoto. The cities were also renamed.
 * The Power of Friendship and/or Love - Tag affinities are determined this way. Tag powers gain a 5% boost if both COs are in the same faction, for instance, unless decided otherwise. This goes both ways, as COs who don't get along have a weak tag power.
 * Power Trio - Not so much the factions, but some of the subfactions are like this:
 * Task Force Bad Wolf:
 * Caligari (Superego)
 * Hanako (Ego)
 * Sae (Id)
 * Vakyrie Unit:
 * Camilla (Id)
 * Kiku (Ego)
 * Naomi (Superego)
 * Macro Land Blue Moon:
 * Dudulya (Id)
 * Svarog (Ego)
 * Malyshev (Superego)
 * Purposefully Overpowered - Vogel and some of the Black Hole COs, the Stratodestroyer.
 * Secret Relationship - Dart and Maddie think they have one. They really don't.
 * As in, it's not secret.
 * Sequel Escalation - When not fighting each other, the nations of Cosmo Land have faced:
 * Red Valley, a small splinter faction from Orange Star.
 * SMART, a Mega Corp who took over Grey Meteor and launched invasions on the rest of Cosmo Land in order to have control over the continent's economies.
 * Their counterparts from Macro Land in an intercontinental war.
 * Their literal counterparts (or at least, counterparts of former characters) from another world, led by the counterpart of the otherwise-benign Black Hole Industries.
 * Serial Killer - Zephyr was going around killing Blue Moon COs, until he was shot attempting to kill Procella.
 * Seven Deadly Sins - There's a character for each one:
 * Greed: Vogel
 * Envy: Rosabella
 * Gluttony: Kiku
 * Lust: Hanako
 * Pride: Thor, Procella, Joseph
 * Sloth: Chase
 * Wrath: Viola
 * Shout Out - Hundreds, listing them all would take all day. Notable shoutouts include Caligari, Dart, the Defiant, Eastwood, Grey Fox, Rakshata and Vogel.
 * Stage Names - Again, a lot. Amongst the current cast we have:
 * Dan "Dart" Gallagher
 * James "Grey Fox" Riley
 * Katerina Joanna "Procella" Goryanova
 * Georgy "Anton" Alekseev
 * Alexei "Comrade" Svyatopolk
 * Amelia "Aurica" Rockford
 * Shino "Ryouta" Akiyama
 * Kiku Kurosawa used a fake given name and a fake surname. Her real name was Natsuki Saito.
 * One could argue for Suzanna Mia "Suzi" Harrison and Victor "Vic" O'Brian (no relation to the main series character), who use shortened forms of their given names.
 * Tank Goodness - As well as the standard, Medium and War Tanks from Days of Ruin, the AWRP features the part-artillery Siege Tank, the subterranean Yormungand Tank and the Hovertank. Subverted as the Yormungand and Hovertank aren't much more powerful than a Medium Tank.
 * Tech Tree - In the early stages of the game, each faction was limited to a handful of units from the games and had to research the remaining ones. Even now, new units, defensive installations and effects can be researched, although this is more freeform.
 * Theme Naming - PanicAttack's characters (Viola and Rosabella Abandonato, Hanako Mori, Kiku Kurosawa and Suzanna Mia Harrison) all have flower-themed names. Other characters also have plant-related names including Ken Kobayashi, Emi Hayashi and Sae Sakurazaki. Hanako was the one who noticed the flower theme first.
 * Shanghai Alice's character, Momoko, also has a plant-related name. Her name means "peach child". She also has the powers "Sour Rot" (after a disease that affects peaches) and "The Peaches of Wrath".
 * Twin Switch - Viola and Rosa were almost constantly tagging each other before it came out Viola had a twin.
 * Urban Warfare - Yellow Comet have had two battles in their cities now. It's almost a tradition.
 * Video Game Flamethrowers Suck - Or at the very least, Awesome but Impractical. Although they are tied with Masako miniguns as the strongest antipersonnel weapon weilded by an infantry class, that's all they're good for. Once the game shifts to have more emphasis on infantry, however, they might start to be used more often.
 * Vitriolic Best Buds - Orange Star in general are like this. Dart and Madison get along and that's about all the obvious mutual liking there is between any two COs in the country.
 * War Has Never Been So Much Fun - Subverted. Even though the game is set on the same continent as Advance Wars 1, the COs never treat war as a game. The closest so far has been the war game in Yellow Comet, which takes the subversion further - Hanako outright states that rather than live ammo, bullets are replaced with paintball guns and shells with flour bombs.
 * Outright averted by the alternate reality. Their most recent war, with Black Hole, left their world devastated, and understandably nobody's too happy when they have to talk about it.
 * What Could Possibly Go Wrong - Rakshata demonstrated her Earthshattering Kaboom device, proudly boasting the only key to similar devices was her laptop. Rakshata is pretty scatterbrained.
 * Outright averted by the alternate reality. Their most recent war, with Black Hole, left their world devastated, and understandably nobody's too happy when they have to talk about it.
 * What Could Possibly Go Wrong - Rakshata demonstrated her Earthshattering Kaboom device, proudly boasting the only key to similar devices was her laptop. Rakshata is pretty scatterbrained.