Game Breaker/Tabletop Games

Game Breakers in tabletop games include:

Subpages

Board Games

The Aqueduct in Settlers of Catan: Cities & Knights is a potential game breaker. It allows a player to draw any resource they choose if they receive no production on a turn. If a player only has a few numbers to draw from, the Aqueduct is even better, because it allows the player to take advantage of many custom draws, charging for whatever item they wish to build. Combined with a 2:1 port, a player can gun for commodities too, further increasing their advantage. This is taken Up to Eleven when a specific resource in the game is extremely scarce, because the player with the Aqueduct may be one of the only ones who can get it easily.

Card Games

Vampire: The Eternal Struggle (formerly known as Jyhad), a collectible card game originally created by Wizards of the Coast (based on Vampire: The Masquerade by White Wolf Publishing, who now owns V:tES), was remarkably well-balanced until the Ancient Hearts expansion. Along with several minor balance issues, it introduced the action card "Return to Innocence", which allowed one to essentially destroy an opponent in a single action, at the cost of losing an acting high-level vampire card. In itself, overpowered, but not necessarily game-breaking. However, combined with the "Soul Gem of Etrius" card from the Unlimited release, and certain high-level vampires such as "Etrius" vampire from the preceeding Dark Sovereigns expanion, it became far more troublesome. Decks designed to take advantage of this combination were practically unbeatable until the combination was nerfed by a card text errata issued much later.
- Fortunately, the game-breaking nature (and lack of challenge) of this combination resulted in very few people actually using it; and in group play, all other players ganging up on anyone who did. Since V:tES never developed the high-stakes tournament play that other WotC games did (like Magic: the Gathering), as well as being balanced primarily for extended group play, rather than high-speed one-on-one combat, players tended to eschew high-powered combos in favour of more creative story- or theme-oriented decks.
- Monocle of Clarity: Ask a player a yes or no question which he must answer truthfully. If the question regards a future event, the player MUST play in accordance to that answer. Sounds harmless, right? Step one: Ask player "When I use my monocle next round, will your answer be yes?" Step two: Tailor your next question according to the previous answer. "Will you let my bleeds go unblocked for the rest of the game?" if he said yes, and "Will you block any of my bleeds for the rest of the game?" if he said no. Your opponent is screwed.
The Pokémon trading card game has had few cards so broken they were banned (most banned cards are gag cards that were intended simply to be promotional giveaways), but there were two notable examples; Slowking and Sneasel from the Neo Genesis set. Slowking had a Pokémon Power that allowed its user to flip a coin whenever the opponent played a Trainer card, and if that coin was heads, the Trainer card would return to the user's deck without affecting the game. In the Japanese version of the game, this Power could only be used while Slowking was active. When the card was translated to English, however, it was translated incorrectly. The English version of the card not only allowed its owner to use the Power while Slowking was benched, but the power was cumulative, meaning players could flip a coin for each Slowking they had in play every time their opponent played a Trainer card, and if even one were heads, that card would have no effect. While the Japanese version of the card was barely playable (Slowking was not a good attacker, and was easily KO'ed when active), the English version was exceedingly powerful because a player could place one or more Slowking on the bench, prevent the opponent from playing any Trainer cards, and still play a stronger Pokémon as the active Pokémon, which basically shut down the opponent's deck forever. Sneasel was simply banned because it was too powerful offensively; by the second turn of the game, its Beat Up attack allowed the user to flip up to six coins (one for each benched Pokemon and one for Sneasel), netting 20 damage per heads, and + 20 more damage due to the two Darkness energies that were on Sneasel in order to use the attack. Along with broken trainers like Computer Search and Professor Oak, this was easy to accomplish, and from the second turn on it was easy to AVERAGE 80 damage per turn; considering the maximum HP for any Pokemon was 120 at the time (and 120 was a rare trait, the average for a fully evolved Pokemon was about 80-90), it's easy to see why this was banned; you simply didn't win if you didn't play your own Sneasel deck. These bans were effectively lifted once the set was rotated out of the Modified format (since you could only play them in the Unlimited format then), and since then, no card that has been released in a regular set intended for play has been banned.
- Of interesting note is that, while those two cards were not banned in Japan (Slowking wasn't for reasons already stated), the Base Set trainer card Super Energy Removal was banned due to its brokenness. During the time before the first Modified format when it was finally rotated out in the rest of the world, Super Energy Removal was a staple in essentially every single deck and could easily change the flow of an entire game in an instant.
- Birthday Pikachu was also banned, mainly because of the fact that it took too long to confirm that it was the user's birthday.
- Sneasel has actually been reprinted in a recent set, but it seems that this is really a matter of the rest of the game catching up to it. It's virtually identical to its old version (resistance is now Psychic -20 instead and it has a Fighting x2 weakness), and still a great card, but at 60 HP it's a bit fragile, and there are a number of not-especially-rare cards in the game with more than 120 HP. As it stands, the game no longer contains any banned cards in either the Modified or Unlimited formats; use anything you like as long as it has a legit card back.
1000 Blank White Cards is entirely made out of cards created by the players. As such, anyone can make potential game breakers. Finding game-breaking combinations of cards is how the game is usually won. In most games, some cards with ridiculously powerful (or boring) effects are banned:
- Cards that allow an instant win.
  - Conversely, cards that allow an instant loss for someone else. Or everyone else. In which case there really isn't any difference.
- Cards that give massive numbers of points are occasionally banned, but it isn't very common. This may manifest as a built-in rule to ban cards of a value greater than 1000 or smaller than -1000.
  - To be fair, this is more a failure of imagination than anything else. As a wise man once said, "sure, you can make a card that gives you a million points, but how long will it be before someone makes a card that forces you to eat it?
- Cards that target a specific, named player. Let's say that there are three players, Person1, Person2, and Piggy. Any player could make a card that says "the person to your left gets 350 points" but no card could say "Piggy gets 350 points"
- Cards that cause lengthy delays or postpone the game are commonly banned, too.
The Three Dragon Ante supplemental card game for Dungeons and Dragons 3.5 edition had some pretty nasty cards on its own, meant to suck the stakes and your fellow players dry when it comes to gold coinage. The new Emperor's Gambit edition, meant for D&D 4 can be used in conjunction with the original, essentially meant to suck your opponents dry in just a few rounds. Then again, they can do the same to you, but if you are dealt a few unlucky hands...
Agricola has its share of cards popularly seen as broken. Chief offender is the Taster, which you can use to go first in a round any time you feel like it. In a Worker Placement Game, that's essentially an auto-win for a decent player.
- How about the Wet Nurse? It lets the person who plays it get extra workers faster and more easily than everyone else. Every time I've seen someone play it, they've won. Even relatively new players playing with experienced ones.
The ridiculous lack of balance in early sets of Legend of the Five Rings is kind of understandable; the development of card games was in its infancy, and designers on the whole didn't really have a handle on the whole "balance" thing. Free "corrupt" gold that accelerated your production to a ludicrous degree if you were lucky enough to get a bunch of it on early turns, an event (Iris Festival) that destroyed every single Shadowlands card in play when Shadowlands was one of the playable factions, a 0-cost action (Breach of Etiquette) that, when played on a Lion clan player on the first turn, resulted in them being totally unable to buy any personality in their deck... these were all merely symptoms of the times. By the time Lotus Edition rolled around, there was no excuse. Lotus Edition was an entire arc of Game Breaker against Game Breaker: no-risk duel decks that constantly refilled their hands and collected rewards as they sliced your guys down vs. pirate decks that created ludicrous amounts of gold by "raiding" even though they could play any one of their very powerful personalities as a follower for a paltry 3 gold vs. Khol Wall, which became synonymous with "cheese" vs. Ratling decks with exponentially-growing horde armies vs. ninjas with confusing mechanics that never actually worked right, and effects that killed personalities near-unconditionally were cheap and numerous... every game was a test of "Whose ludicrous tech goes off first?" It reached its nadir with the "Test of Enlightenment" set, where many of the personalities included had abilities that might as well have read "Battle: Kill, like, five guys. Don't even bow to do it." The fact that the next block, Samurai Edition, was going to be much weaker than Lotus was considered a major selling point.
The Star Wars Customizable Card Game offered the Rebel Player the "Limited Resources" card. Since there was no limit to the number of cards you could have in your hand, and your life depended on having a good reserve of cards in your stack, a card that allows you to move cards from your hand back to the stack can be crucial to winning.
It's hard to set up, even assuming the cards are available in the first place, but in Dominion there's a King's Court - King's Court - Goons - Masquerade combo which will win a two-player game once it fires, no matter how much of a lead your opponent might have. It does this by emptying your opponent's hand and trashing half of it, every turn. Nothing your opponent can do except watch you gradually throw away their entire deck, including all their victory points.
The Star Trek Collectible Card Game featured in its first edition the "Telepathic Alien Kidnappers" which allow its player to point at a random card in his opponent's hand and guess the type. If the type is guessed correctly, the card is discarded. Because the rules state that all players draw a new card at the END of their turn, the owner of the kidnappers can guess "personnel" at every guess. Since the player rapidly runs out of cards and usually only has ONE card in their hand, this locks out any new personnel cards from being played as they systematically get discarded. Game over.
The Reindeer Booster Pack in Sopio whose effects include discarding the entire deck, adding all discarded cards to your hand immediately and instantly winning the game for you if played when you are the current leader. This is more or less the entire point of the pack.
Subverted in Magi-Nation. A power gem could be bought for 8 animite and sold for 12 animite. However, while animite is the currency of the realm, you never need to buy items, as you can recover health naturally, and you need infused animite anyways to forge rings. Basically, its a game breaker in the most technical sense that you need animite, but you don't need it that badly.

Dice Games

The collectible dice game Dragon Dice has had so many game breakers in its past that a group of fans formed a company called SFR, Inc., bought the license to the game, and spent the next eight years revising the rules to impose something resembling balance. The biggest change was the removal of the "Charge" attack option, which offered the chance to inflict twice as many casualties on the defending army while suffering a similar increase in one's own losses...fairly balanced by itself, but easily broken with defensive spells such as "Open Grave", which automatically resurrected all of the affected army's dead.

Miniatures Games

Another fine example from Wizards of the Coast: in their Star Wars Miniatures game, a Clone Wars version of Obi-Wan called General Obi-Wan Kenobi, or GOWK, was so insanely hard to damage that it was eventually banned due to dominating the tournament scene. The brokenness was compounded in that GOWK came from a starter set, meaning anyone who wanted one could buy the starter (as opposed to ripping through countless random booster packs).
Warhammer Fantasy Battle 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.
- 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.
- Vampire Counts character Mannfred Von Carnstein (Lord edition)can raise ridiculous ammounts of undead if left unchecked. How ridiculous? In a single magic phase he can produce 40 zombies if not dispelled or rolling miscasts.
  - Whats worse is that those 40 Zombies with the Spammfred build is with roughly average to just below average rolls... According to the 7th edition rules.
  - Tomb Kings and Vampire Counts in general can be considered overpowered for their ability to continuously summon more and more and more cannon fodder to overwhelm their enemies with.
    - That was really all Tomb Kings had going for them until the newest armybook.
- 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+...
Warmachine/Hordes is, for the most part, very well-balanced. However, the Hordes army Legion of Everblight is, without a doubt, the most broken army in the game. Just looking at its warcasters and warbeasts provides some reasons why:
- The first reason requires some explanation. In Warmachine/Hordes, there's a trait called Focus or Fury, respectively, that allows you to boost attacks, buy more melee or ranged attacks, or do a number of other things. In Warmachine, such Focus must be allocated in advance by your warcaster (army leader) to his warjacks (big, steampunk mecha that serve as the main war machines for every army), and each warjack can only hold 3 Focus points. Fury, however, can be spontaneously generated by warbeasts (the Hordes equivalent of warjacks, except they're usually animals of some type), with a varying upper limit depending on the beast, meaning that warbeasts can buy however many attacks they need without their warlock's help. However, this is offset by the fact that generating Fury means that there's a chance that they'll frenzy and attack the nearest unit, whether it's friend or foe, next turn, and the more Fury generated, the greater the risk. Nine times out of ten, though, the nearest model is going to be an enemy that the beast is in melee with, so it's not that huge a risk to begin with usually.
  - With the Legion of Everblight, however, every warbeast in the core book has a special rule called "Blood Creation," which specifically says that they will never attack friendly faction warlocks, even in frenzy, which lowers the risk involved in generating frenzy even more.
- In addition, three of their warcasters have ridiculous feats (special abilities that can only be used once per game, but which are usually quite powerful):
  - Thagrosh, Prophet of Everblight, can resurrect any dead warbeast on his side. Like the massive Carnivean (a heavy warbeast that is heavily damaging, well protected, and has a special ability it can use that damages your jack/beast bit by bit every time you hit it). Granted, the beast can't do anything the turn it arrives, but still, spending all that time battering something like that down, only to have it come back - talk about a morale-killer.
  - Absylonia is even worse - her feat heals her completely, then lets her heal all damage on however many warbeasts in her battlegroup she feels like. The cost to her? One damage point per warbeast healed. Not per damage box healed, per MODEL healed. Alright, so the best solution is to make sure any warbeast you attack dies right then and there, right? Well, Absylonia also has a spell with a 4-inch Area of Effect that renders you unable to allocate focus or generate fury, so no boosting attacks or buying extra attacks to go for the sure death. Better hope the dice roll in your favor.
  - Finally, Saeryn has a feat that keeps every warbeast in her battlegroup from being targeted by melee attacks for one round. How bad this is depends on your army: if you're a shooty Cygnar army, you probably won't notice. If you're Khador (who run very melee-heavy), you're PROPER fucked.

Back to Game Breaker