Gideon Ploy

"When I blow the trumpet, I and all who are with me, then blow the trumpets also on every side of all the camp and shout, 'For the LORD and for Gideon.'"

—Judges 7:18

Strength in numbers can be good. Having a vast force at your disposal can be very intimidating to the opposition. It can make you seem like you have great control over the situation and plenty of backup if things get ugly.

But what do you do when you don't have a whole bunch of mooks on your employee roster? If it's just you and some friends or even a solo act?

Well that is where the Gideon Ploy comes in! Through clever acting, disguises, misdirection, decoys, and other such feats, you make the opposition think you have more in your ranks than you actually do.

Compare To Win Without Fighting.

Examples of Gideon Ploy include:

Literature

Silver Shadows (a Forgotten Realms novel by Elaine Cunningham) had a moment when Arilyn used shrieker essence to amplify footfalls of centaurs, so that but a handful running at each flank would sound like a big cavalry charge and demoralize a bunch of mercenaries her side fought and make them waste time, while most attackers advanced from a different direction and on foot.

Live-Action TV

The main characters of Burn Notice sometimes employ this tactic, especially when they need to fool someone into thinking that Team Westen is actually a large and far-reaching secret agency.

Mythology and Religion

Our Trope Namer, of course comes from the Boom of Judges in The Bible, where Gideon leads an army of only 300 ~~Spartan~~ Israelite warriors against the Midianites, who are described as having wall-to-wall camels. Gideon's night-time ambush and making his army seem far bigger than it was, aided by some holy PSYOP support from God, resulted in the Midianites slaughtering each other.

Real Life

The battalions of inflatable decoys in World War II served this purpose.