Instant Win Condition: Difference between revisions

*** Fortunately, Pellaeon realized it was a rout and called the retreat.

* In ''[[The Butterfly Effect]]'' the protagonist repeatedly engages in near-suicidal acts then rushes back to read his journal transporting him further back in time, thereby hitting a reset button to his life while the angry fellow prisoners / men in white shirts beat down the doors. We next see him at the same point in his life, [[Be Careful What You Wish For|everything is restored back to normal]].

* In ''[[The Avengers]]'' film, the Chitauri armies keep coming and would eventually wear the team and earth's defenses down, except for {{spoiler|Black Widow shutting down the tesseract and closing the portal, stopping the invasion cold}}. A secondary Instant Win Condition is invoked by {{spoiler|Iron Man when he pulls a nuke into the portal and destroys the Chitauri mothership, breaking the control over the Chitauri army on earth and shutting them all down.}}

 

** Also works by going into a Pay 'N Spray, even when the damn Army is chasing you (unless you have a vehicle they won't touch, or there is an APB on the mission vehicle). You'd almost think [[The Simpsons (animation)|Chief Wiggum]] was leading the police in those games.

*** * car leaving Pay N' Spray* "Let him pass boys, we're looking for a blue car"

* Has been known to happen in Double Conquest maps in ''[[Battlefield (series)|Battlefield 2142]].'' One team will have the other down to only a few tickets until defeat while still having over a hundred left themselves, when a sudden strike from behind sweeps across the field capturing all their spawn points and wiping them out. Without anywhere to spawn, all those tickets are worth NOTHING. (Of course, this is very rare as a team which ends up that far behind on tickets most likely lacks the coordination to mount this kind of counterattack.)

* In the ''[[Command & Conquer]]'' series (and many similar games), many missions just involve getting to a particular [[MacGuffin]]. Once you're actually at it, even if half the enemy army is about to converge at your position in what will surely be a one sided victory for them, the mission ends and you miraculously escape off-camera.

** Then there are the "Defend the Throne/NPC" missions, off course when the designated amount of turns over a handful of [[Red Shirt|Redshirts]] appear and scare the enemy off.

*** In many of these missions, should the player manage to defeat the Boss(es) of the map and/or rout the entire field, the player automatically wins and the mission ends, even if this particular condition wasn't mentioned. It's still smarter to let the turns run out and milk the mooks for EXP, gold, and items though.

* The ''[[Advance Wars]]'' series ''loves'' this one. Aside from the HQ Capture method of victory (particularly important in AW1's "Advanced Campaign", where the enemy have overwhelming numbers and you're basically using all your units as sacrifices and bodyguards for one Infantry-loaded APC), many, many campaign missions from ''Black Hole Rising'' onwards have you winning by destroying the enemy's superweapon ''du jour'' (unit-spawning factories, big cannons, thing that heals a lot of units at once, sometimes all three), causing them to retreat and giving you victory ''even when their conventional forces overwhelm you''.

** ''[[Battalion Wars]]'' was pretty fond of it too. Certain levels basically end in the player trying to buy enough time to raise a flag.

** The reverse is now possible in ''Dawn of War 2.'' While most games are based on holding points, it is possible to destroy the enemy base before the points all tick away, allowing an outmaneuvered player a (very difficult) alternate win condition. Note that it's mostly difficult because of the toughness of the bases; even with a few heavy tanks and the personification of the god of murder beating down on one, it takes nearly two minutes to destroy an undefended base, which is an eternity in a game whose rounds typically last 10 minutes or less.

** Perhaps the most outrageous example is the siege of the [[Space Marine]] stronghold by the Tau in the Dark Crusade. The objective is to destroy their main Town Hall. Since the Tau Commander, if properly upgraded, is an invisible, jet-packed one-man-tank, he can cut the "sieging" and "storming" parts, sneak to the enemy base and raze the building single-handedly from a vantage point. That's it. One building. And despite that the whole SM army is still intact they will let out a mighty BAWWWWWWWWWW, admit defeat, and barrage their own positions with orbital bombing so that they don't fall in your hands. Suckers.

* ''[[Valkyria Chronicles]]'' uses this. Most missions are won if you seize the enemy's main base. A fun strategy is just running a scout into the base, grenading any troops there, and winning, regardless of the (likely rather poor) tactical situation the rest of your army is in.

* In the ''[[Heroes of Might and Magic]]'' series, many missions can be won even after all the player's cities have been captured (which results in the player being given 7 days to capture one or face game over). The quickest strategy of completing Mandate of Heaven in ''Heroes of Might and Magic III'' is to take Castle Darkmoor, build it up as a Necropolis town, leave after getting a sufficiently large army and before the other factions take an interest in capturing it, then head to capture the Hive before the 7-day deadline results in game over.

* In ''Lethal Enforcers 3'', once you or your opponent reach the goal, the area ends, even if there are enemies still standing.

* In [[Battle Stations]] Clan war, no matter how many members of the opposing team are able and willing to fight or how many defenders you've overrun, the battle is won when one side's fort is sunk.

* The Cavern of Transcendence trial in ''[[City of Heroes]]'' becomes incredibly easier if you have a teleporter who also has stealth. You have 90 minutes to complete the mission, much of it taken up fighting your way through tunnels to the door of the cavern, then a huge roomful of monsters between the door and the eight obelisks that have to be clicked at the same time. A stealth porter can get quickly through the tunnels to the door and then teleport the team. Once inside the chamber, the porter can then run to each obelisk and teleport a team member to it. Once they are clicked simultaneously, trial over, go team! It's entirely possible to complete the entire thing without having to engage in any combat, and often then only if a spawn of monsters is too close to the cavern door when you enter to allow the team to wait for the porter to do his thing.

** This is even ''easier'' in City of Villains, as Stalkers have access to Hide at level one. In most non [[Escort Missions]], you only have to clear out the last room, and even then that's only for newspaper missions. It's balanced out a bit by the fact that ambushes can see through Hide... while escorts can't.

** ''[[Sonic Adventure 2]]'': When fighting The Egg Golem as Eggman, it's possible to kill the Golem while falling to your death in quicksand.

* Possible in ''[[Rock Band]]''; all you have to do to pass a song is finish it, but if somebody fails out, the band has to save them within a reasonable window of time or everyone fails. This can happen twice, and the third time is an inevitable band failure... unless it happens close enough to the end for the song to complete (''including'' the second or two it takes to transition from the song's end to the score screen) before that.

* ''[[Jumpman]]''. The goal is to collect all bombs in a stage. Even a [[One-Hit-Point Wonder|small fall]] will cause you to plummet to the bottom of the screen and die on impact, except if this plummet happens to pass through the last bomb; this counts as a stage victory.

* In ''The Bugs Bunny Crazy Castle,'' in both the NES and Game Boy versions, if an enemy kills Bugs, he can still beat the level with no penalty if his death animation collides with the final carrot of the level.

** Same in [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r2XCxnKKjXY Starcraft II].

*** There are also three missions where, after satisfying the instant win condition, you get to bypass the mostly intact Protoss base between your forces and the artifact fragment. On two of these, this is the most likely way to finish the mission.

== Tabletop Games ==

 

** Although this is more of just a win condition, not an Instant Win Condition. Completely tabling your opponent means that you win, regardless of whether the game was supposed to be about capturing objectives.

*** However this can lead to the quite possible situation where the last two remaining models on the board simultaneously kill each other, resulting in both players instantly winning.

*** Then there's the flip side, cards that instantly cause someone to ''lose'' the game. Doorway to Nothingness is an example, in that it will (if you're able to satisfy its ''very'' high mana cost) instantly cause someone to lose the game. Phage the Untouchable is another example, in that if she deals combat damage to a player, they lose. There are also the creatures that give players poison counters, and a player has 10 poison counters they lose.

** Many infinite combo decks win by sacrificing large amounts of life, cards in deck, cards in hand, or cards on the board in order to set up a winning game state. The first famous (as in, dominating a full season of tournaments) combo deck, Pros-Bloom, went so far as to go down to a '''negative life total''' before fatally draining the opponent. This was only possible with the rules at the time.

*** Of course, if the other guy has a Force of Will (a counterspell which can be cast without mana), you're pretty much hosed.

** A more recent combo involved spells that you had to pay for next turn; if you didn't, you'd lose the game. The deck would play more of these than they could hope to pay for, then use the benefits of those spells to win before the next turn ever started.

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[[Category:Acceptable Breaks From Reality]]