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{{trope}}
{{quote|'''Martian Officer''': Sir, the Arcturans have destroyed the remainder of the fleet. I've sent a [[Distress Call|distress signal]] to all ships across the galaxy, but, we're heading straight into their sun and our engines are about to explode!
'''Enforcer Drone''': {{smallcaps|I have not yet begun to fight.}}
'''Martian Officer''': Now would be a ''great'' time to start!|''[[Spaced Invaders]]''}}
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* ''[[Myth]]'' starts out with only a single major city of ''The Light'' still standing through forty years of war. After discovering a powerful magic artifact which allows several victories to be scored, pushing back the torrential hordes of darkness with great difficulty, the magical coup that allowed them turns on you and causes a civil war amongst The Light's already dwindling ranks. Upon regrouping, a desperate plan is concocted in which almost all of your remaining allies are implied to have purposely sacrificed themselves to provide a distraction, allowing you to capture the [[Big Bad]]. When you finally destroy him, the ending [[Cutscene]] indicates that you and your entire squad were wiped out in the resulting explosion.
** ''Myth 2'' retcons it: one guy lived. It wasn't you (or rather the narrator, since you aren't actually a character). He did a decent job rebuilding, too.
* ''[[
* Averted in ''[[Rise of Legends]]'', in which Miana is simply one of several dozen Vinci city-states and your fight is primarily a war of conquest.
** Played straight in the Alin campaign, however, where the Alin Kingdom has been pushed back to the city of Azar Harif by the Dark Alin by the time [[The Hero|Giacimo]] gets there.
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* The [[Roguelike]] [[Freeware Game]] ''Chess Rogue'' is a most extreme example - the player is the White King, the only surviving white piece, who must overcome an entire army of black pieces.
=== [[Role
* In ''[[Final Fantasy VI]]'', The Returners have a stronghold of sorts in the mountains east of Figaro—however, it's about the time that you start the game that the Empire starts occupying cities to build their own power, but also to try and stamp out the Returners. This is a slight aversion of the trope, as your objective as the player is not to win back control of the cities, but, eventually, to solve the issue diplomatically. {{spoiler|Just a shame that Kefka has to stab everone in the back to become the Ultimate World Overlord}}
** It sort of happens ''again'' in the second half of the game. It becomes Up To You to {{spoiler|reassemble your broken, scattered, and largely disillusioned team, inspire hope in the world, and defeat Kefka, after he's been a god for a full year}}
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* In the same vein as above, ''[[Airforce Delta]] Strike'' starts out with one of these missions.
* In ''Stellar 7'', Earth is being invaded by aliens so they send you, one lone pilot, to fight through them all the way to the alien general and stop the invasion.
* [[Double Subversion]] in ''Starsiege'', which involves a civil war between humanity interrupted by the return of the [[
* Also averted somewhat in ''[[Starlancer]]''. The player's faction starts at the brink, and seems to be winning back a little bit as it goes along, but the enemy is vastly superior. Ultimately, it turns into an attempt to load up a series of colony ships and abandon the Solar system. All of it, in fact, is the background details described in the intro to ''[[Freelancer]]''.
* Every game in the ''[[Naval Ops]]'' series opens with the player's faction on the ropes. And yet they never have to really worry about fuel and ammunition supplies.
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** World War II from 1939-1941 is a subversion of the trope; the German blitzkrieg strategy ensured that any enemy army that started losing would be divided and cut off from communications and supplies, meaning that most countries simply surrendered rather then carry out a valiant (and possibly successful) counterattack.
*** This was lampshaded in a sketch on ''[[That Mitchell and Webb Look]]'', where an SS commander [[Heel Realisation|came to the realisation he was on the evil side]] because there are very few movies where the good guys start out doing really well but then almost lose after the baddies counter-attack, but quite a lot of movies where the opposite is true.
* Another [[Truth in Television]] example: [[World War
* More [[Truth in Television]]: The early days of the Korean War. Vastly enlarged and lavishly supplied and backed by Soviet equipment and advisers, the North Korean military pushed South of the DMZ and readily routed every Western Allied force that tried to halt or at least delay it, to the point where all that the Western Allies were pushed back to their final stronghold at Pusan and the surrounding towns, which the North Koreans rapidly besieged using superior numbers and equipment, with the Western Allied commanders there living hand-to-mouth on reinforcements from Japan, and even THEN the North Koreans came close several times to crushing the main line of defense and taking Pusan. And THEN Inchon happened, which saw the North Korean military be encircled, decimated, and forced to retreat North while much of its strength was trapped in the South and destroyed.
** This war swung both ways, too. When the Chinese intervened, it was explicitly because the UN had reached from the DMZ all the way to the Yalu River. The very same Yalu River that serves as the Korean northern border, in fact - last stop, final destination, end of the line. The Chinese proceeded to demonstrate every guerilla and mass warfare tactic they learned in their Civil War to retake all of North Korea and reach shelling range of Seoul before their offensive was finally stopped, with the final result being...[[Shaggy Dog Story|the border ending up right back where it started]] (plus or minus a few kilometres).
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