Moment of Awesome (Sugar Wiki)/Tabletop Games

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CCGs

 * This troper considers his near-standstill Yu-Gi-Oh! duel against an Envoy/Yata Lock deck, the ultimate Game Breaker deck in the entire game, with a lame and incomplete feline-themed bounce deck a personal Crowning Moment of Awesome.
 * This troper has a similar story, in which a rookie duelist puts together a large, incoherent deck, is toyed with by an opponent who wants to reduce his life points exactly to zero, and wins by decking said opponent with a Cyber Jar. Somehow, that one duel is what turned him from a hopeless rookie into a player with actual skill and a fondness for the Crab Turtle. (Sadly, his reign came to an end when all his rare cards got stolen, but that's neither here nor there.)
 * About a month or so before the bans were instituted, this troper pulled off his first ever one turn win, against a discard deck. One turn wins were common in the day, but this was special as it involved Exodia...
 * This troper once reached the semi-finals of a 32 player Yu-Gi-Oh! tournament at the age of ten, using a fresh-from-the-box structure deck and no knowledge of the metagame.
 * I have had but 1 CMoA, with my Samurai deck against my brother's Zombies, and it was the very first turn.I had gotten excited when i saw The Six Samurai - Zanji in my hand, then Grandmaster of the Six Samurai.I Smiled as I drew Great Shogun Shien.I Summoned Zanji.Thanks to the effect of my Grandmaster, i got to bring him into the mix.Then that set off my Shogun.It's such a pity my opponent surrendered on my first turn.I could have had some real fun.
 * I haven't played Yu-Gi-Oh! in years, but while at high school it was insanely popular for about two full years, during which time there was one duelist no one could beat. He had the deck, he had the experience, he had everything. In the middle of an unofficial tournament I ended up facing him in an early duel, and my opening hand was 'Lord of D, Flute of Summoning Dragon, and two of my Blue Eyes. I held off from the combo for one turn, during which he set out what was clearly supposed to be his ultimate combo breaker. People actually cheered when I pulled out Lord of D, Flute of Summoning Dragon, Blue Eyes, Blue Eyes, Hyozonru (The card I picked up for my second turn). Life points gone, master duelist out of tournament. Sure, I lost the next duel to someone who had a deck specifically tailored to defeat dragons, but for those short moments I was the acknowledged best duelist in school.
 * This troper recalls being in the first sponsored sealed deck tourney for the street fighter/Soul Caliber TCG at my local store, and due to the vagaries of chance getting the single worst starting character in the game. He then proceeded to use psychology and acting to convince his various opponents that he had all but given up while managing to eke out a victory and eventually take the first prize.
 * Technically not a CCG, but; we're playing Steve Jackson Games' Munchkin. This one depends on the a house rule—we created separate Monster cards for each of our three boys in the house. The youngest one has a 1st level card named after him: Darth Philip. (Losing a fight against Darth Philip and "the other players mock you mercilessly for 15 seconds--you can't beat a five-year-old???") So, anyway, I'm playing with his big brother Paul, who opens a door and pulls the Darth Philip card. I (Dad) throw down the "...and Mom" enhancer card, making him a level 11. Paul then throws down the "Monster is Busy" card, which of course shows a picture of monsters playing a board game. Of course, in the next room, the real Philip was playing a game.
 * With Mom.
 * ATT Mod Looney Toons' wife participated in one of the very first Illuminati: New World Order tournaments, circa 1995 or so; she dressed as a Femme Fatale with a slinky black dress, stiletto heels and sunglasses, and won her first couple rounds in part because the other (entirely male) players she faced were so thoroughly distracted and intimidated by her. While she didn't win the tournament, Steve Jackson himself gave her a special award for meta-gaming.

CCGs Storyline

 * Legend of the Five Rings, being an Asian heroic fantasy setting, with over ten years of a continuous storyline, is of course chock-full of them, with most factions within the game having gotten several. Among the characters that have gotten the most:
 * Hida Kisada, Magnificent Bastard and Sociopathic Hero, has had many of them, starting with the flavor text of his original version: "Your knowledge cannot save you. Your magic cannot save you. Nothing can save you."
 * But the greatest of them was perhaps outside the storyline itself: when Kisada died, he became the subject of an 80-person wake. On top of his achievements within the story, when's the last time you saw a wake for a CCG character?
 * What can you say when the writer creates what was supposed to be his original death (by being skewered by one of the most powerful Imperial artifacts), and had a hard time not writing "Is that all you fucking got?!?"
 * Yoritomo had several of those as well.
 * On the day of the Final Battle between humanity and Darkness, when, after routing the forces of darkness' reinforcements, he threatened to attack the forces of Good unless the leaders of the storyline's seven great clans acknowledged his own (until then) minor clan as an equal. The gambit was successful.
 * When the Dragon of Water, a divine being, approached him to seek his battered clan's twenty strongest samurai to take them into the land of darkness on what was almost certain to be a suicide mission: "I am my twenty strongest samurai." (To which his adopted son, whose loyalties had been questioned until then, added, "And I am twenty-one.")
 * Which was echoed several years later when Yoritomo's daughter found herself facing her Arch Enemy 's six strongest warriors alone. "Fool. Don't you know? Your men are outnumbered, twenty to six."
 * Bayushi Kwanchai, an unkillable badass whose divine gift is luck that rivals the gods, had his crowning moment of awesome when, after dispatching a dozen flesh eating demons, takes his dead uncle and cradles his lifeless body. Not awesome because of the drama, but awesome because the head of the Imperial Families is watching and ignoring Kwanchai basically hugging a dead body, which is a crime punishable by death in Rokugan, because he's afraid for his life if he tells Kwanchai to stop.
 * Kwanchai topped himself recently when he returned to the site of his uncle's death, opened the portal to the realm of the flesh-eating demons, and stepped inside so as to close the portal, condemning himself to an eternity of suffering.
 * And then there was Winter Court, a canon play-by-post RPG set up by AEG, in which two characters discussed throwing paper shurikens at Kwanchai, and not wondering how he would react, but quote 'how many survivors would there be?".
 * Kwanchai's luck was inherited from his master, Bayushi Tangen, who saw his inability to die as a massive failure. This trait also carries over to anyone who studies under their school. They are seen as suicidally insane and entire armies start getting scared when a single Bitter Lies swordsman starts running towards them.
 * While on the topic of Winter Court, one cannot help but note that it was Bayushi Kaukatsu's (Kwanchai's aforementioned uncle) three-months-long Crowning Moment of Awesome, where nobody even breathed without his written say-so. Made all the more awesome when it was revealed he had conned the entire Court into ridiculously overestimating his faction's actual influence.
 * Even then-Dragon Daigotsu has had his Crowning Moment of Awesome, when he launched an attack against the realm of the Dead, then allowed the very incarnation of Death to skewer him with his spear...so that he could get close enough to stick a cursed artifact on the incarnation's face, to force it to release Daigotsu's dark God Fu Leng, from the prison his soul had been trapped in.
 * Moto Chagatai. Just...Moto Chagatai.
 * Also, we recently found out the answer to the question: who could possibly kill Moto Chagatai? The answer turned out to be that the only thing that could kill the Khan...IS the Khan.
 * This troper can't remember the details exactly but there was this one time Moto Chagatai went into death's realm with a friend to rescue his grandfather's soul. On their way back, they were confronted by the ten Gods of Death and their minions. His reaction? "You take the ten thousand on the left, you take the ten thousand on the right. I'll take the gods."
 * Although to be fair this, more than almost anything else, is a serious YMMV. Even more than Hida Kisada, Daigotsu's insane plots that somehow always work out or the entirety of any other plot device used, Moto Chagatai's Karma Houdini there, as well as the lack of real caring displayed by the Empire at large to his roaring rampage that resulted in the death of the entire Toturi family line (in usual AEG hamfisted manner) and the Emperor's wife, is quite ridiculous. Even if you're a Unicorn player!
 * To be fair, L5R is far from the only CCG with awesome characters. However, if all you have to go by are the art and snippets of flavor on the cards themselves (rather than being able to also draw upon extensive secondary sources), then deciding what is or isn't a proper CMOA isn't always easy. That said, I'm reasonably sure that this little guy is having one right there...

Poker

 * In the 2004 World Series of Poker, during a side event, 23-year-old Scott Fischman faced Joe Awada heads up for the championship. Fischman was all-in (if he lost the hand, Awada would win), and only one of the two 7s left in the deck would save him. Sure enough, a 7 came on the river (the last card dealt in the hand), giving Fischman the chip lead. On the very next hand, he's dealt a pair of aces, puts Awada all-in, and wins the hand and the bracelet. One week later, he wins another bracelet, becoming the youngest player ever to win two World Series of Poker events.
 * This troper, playing online against three opponents, had suited Jack and 10. The flop was suited King, Queen, Ace, giving me the Royal Flush. This causes a moment of panic as I wonder how to get the most out of the other players without being obvious about it. Best part? The other players had, respectively, a pair of kings (so three total), another had king-ace (two top pair), and the third had a pair of queens, giving him three of a kind. Turn was another ace, giving one of them a full house, kings over aces, the second aces over kings, and the third queens over aces. River was the last queen, giving four of a kind to the man holding the ladies. With everyone holding ridiculously strong hands, everyone was all in at the end. And then, because of the way we happened to be seated, it was literally showing the K-A full house, beaten by the A-K full house, beaten by the 4 queens, and then showing the royal flush for the win. The comment from one of the players at the end saying "Holy shit" was highly appropriate.
 * You win. The 2008 World Series of Poker Main Event saw one player beaten like this, quad aces beaten by a royal flush. You managed to beat three people with some of the best hands in poker.
 * The most awesome finish to the WSOP Main Event has to be the way it ended in 1998. On the final hand, a full house came out on the board, eights over nines. Scotty Nguyen raised his opponent Kevin McBride all-in, then gave the memorable quote, "You call, gonna be all over, baby!" McBride called, playing the board, and Scotty revealed the nine in his hand, giving him a better full house, nines over eights.
 * Jack Ury, the oldest person to ever play in the main event at age 96, is pretty much a living, breathing CMoA just for having played in the last three Main Events without fail at his age. But it's this hand where he proves that he is, in-fact, the Badass Great-Grandpa of the WSOP.
 * Let's see how long Doyle Brunson lives (and plays), he might still beat him...

Wargaming

 * In The Battle of Brunei, a 1998 MBX using the Harpoon and Tac Ops systems as a ruleset, a player on the US side received from the GM an intercepted weapons purchase order between Iran and Malaysia. He spotted the word "Kockums" and did some internet research. Then he got a blurred pic of a submarine from the GM and figured out it was one of two sub types- much faster than the GM expected. The later US anti-submarine effort that resulted probably saved a couple of US ships.
 * After reading the transcript of that epic campaign, this troper is more inclined to declare the whole game a meta-CMOA for all involved!
 * This troper's Daemon Prince (the model used was a white-painted assemblage of Green Stuff that does a good job of looking like the Killer Rabbit of Caerbannog) once shredded its way through twenty Space Marines, five Terminators, and a Dreadnaught without taking a single wound.
 * In Surge Into The Barents (transcript on the eighth post. The forum is full of spam) a forum-based game of Harpoon, two of the NATO subs this troper's side had to hunt down and destroy launched three Harpoon missiles at the ASW group. Fully expecting the ships to take damage, he was hugely surprised when all three sea-skimmers were shot down by eight SA-N-4s, a ratio of 2 1/3 to 1, well above expected results (the SA-N-3s couldn't do anything). Then, the Ka-25 "Hormone" flying from the "Kresta" successfully located one of the submarines, got a firing solution on it, then dropped its torpedo, followed by the "Kresta" launching a stand-off weapon of its own. Both hit, sinking the submarine.
 * In 1981, a computer scientist from Stanford University named Doug Lenat entered the Traveller Trillion Credit Squadron tournament, in San Mateo, California.
 * In a 25 mm-scale Napoleonic minatures game, one player was noted for having the entire Grand Armee - 600,000 beautifully painted figures. We didn't know just how complete the army was until a counter representing the "Fog of War" was replaced by what appeared to be a regiment of Imperial Guard cavalry...but which, on closer inspection, was revealed to be the Imperial Guard's BAND. And, as 18th and 19th Century regiments vied to make their bands as flashy as possible, the figures were things of utter beauty. It was simultaneously a CMOA and a Crowning Moment of Funny.
 * Along the dame lines, someone was demoing a system for wargaming those plastic army men (called War P.I.G.'s (for Plastic Infantry Guys)). Pretty standard teams - we had more guys, they had a tank. Naturally, our first priority was to shoot the tank. In fact, whenever anyone started saying "Maybe..." the other people would interrupt "Shoot the tank!" As it happened, my squad was a bunch of riflemen, with one kick-ass sniper. The designer/referee/gamemaster ruled that I could shoot AT the tank, but it would take three sixes (the game used three six-sided dice, all rolled at once, to determine results) to take it out (yes, I know the odds were one in a million, not the one in 216 this implied, but hey, I wasn't going to object, and the other side didn't). Naturally, I managed to roll the one-in-216 that would explode the tank on the next roll. (We reached a negotiated settlement that the lucky hit didn't destroy the tank, just did lots of damage to the crew.)