Zerg Rush/Video Games: Difference between revisions

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** The classic Zerg rush refers to using the zerg's advantage in the early game of being able to quickly churn out weak units (e.g zerglings) to sack the enemy's base before they can set up their slower-to-build but more powerful units. Of course, the numbers will be few, thus rendering the trope null and void in this case, but it is where the term originated.

*** In [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jen46qkZVNI this infamous video], the tactic is applied in reverse: the Terran player performs a Zerg Rush [[Death by Irony|on the Zerg]]! With [[Worker Unit|SCVs]]!

** In Starcraft parlance, a "rush" involves getting a particular unit as quickly as possible and attacking with it before the enemy could hope to have a counter. This applies even if the unit in question is a late-game unit. For example, a Terran player can do a Banshee rush (essentially helicopter gunships that have a researchable cloaking upgrade), and the Protoss can Void Ray Rush (airships that can [[Beam Spam]]). Both were possible tactics against Protoss and especially Zerg players, who often don't have enough early-game anti-air to stop such an attack unless they see it coming and prepare specifically for that (leaving them open to a more conventional ground attack).

** In a rather hilarious bit of irony, the Zerg in SC2 are most effective when employing the opposite of the [[Zerg Rush]] in the early game. Instead of churning out a lot of zerglings early on, they instead constantly build [[Worker Unit]] drones far faster than the other races can, build a huge economic advantage, ''then'' [[Zerg Rush]] (Except at that point, it's usually just called a push or an attack). In fact, in pro-level play, it is up to the other races to hamper the Zerg early on to prevent them from "droning" and running away with an economic lead.

* For most ''[[Fire Emblem]]'' games, this is a favored tactic of the AI opponents; they'll typically field armies that are anywhere between twice to four times the size of your party and, unless they're on the defensive, will send units to attack you in large numbers. This is offset somewhat by the player units having better stats, better equipment and the benefit of support relationships, so a properly-leveled party will take little/no damage from the resulting Rush. [[Nintendo Hard|Hard/Maniac Modes, however...]]

* The Russians in ''[[Age of Empires III]]''. Their light infantry is weak and has low HP, but they're built by tens and are the cheapest units in the game.

*** The Yamato cavalry rush was another staple of the original game.

*** Plus the late-game Shang villager horde, involving villager-only upgrades that turned them into passable fighting units. When you consider that the Shang had the cheapest villagers in the game...

** Another faction that likes to [[Zerg Rush]] is [[Church Militant|the Believers]]. They have a bonus to Support under their preferred political system which allows them to field larger armies, combined with a bonus to attack and [[Belief Makes You Stupid|lack of research]] that causes them to have lower-tech units then normal (albeit not exactly weaker so long as they strike first). They can't build as quickly as the Hive or the Drones, but they can maintain a larger army and their bonus to attack is incentive to strike first.

* The Brotherhood of Nod in ''[[Command & Conquer]]'' makes use of this at lower tech levels, able to produce huge numbers of cheap, expendable militia troops, as well as light, fast attack bikes, buggies, and tanks. However, while most soldiers fighting for Nod are poorly-trained, poorly-armed rabble, the other end of the spectrum is comprised of a much smaller group of super elites using technology that's often superior in many ways to that of GDI. If Nod has a single overarching approach to warfare it's not just zerging the enemy, it could probably best be described as sending favored sons to stab him in the back with a billion-dollar dagger made from alien technology while he's busy fending off the ragged but very fanatical mob in front of him.

** In ''[[Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2]]'', the Soviet Conscripts are pretty much designed for this tactic; Very weak, very cheap, easily spammable.

** Any faction can zerg rush an opponent with rifleman in the earlier games. Infantry have now been nerfed to the point that even the lowliest of vehicles is still marginally better than the best trooper (sans the Commando units, but you can't readily rush with them due to the one-per-army limit).

* In the FPSMMO ''[[PlanetSide]]'' a Zerg rush was usually necessary to effectively wedge the enemy out of a tower. Taking a base was no real pain, requiring a multi angled approach until the enemy could be booted out. Attacking one of the outlying towers however... wave after wave after wave of soldiers holding doors open, having rockets spammed inside before a sizeable group of power-armored infantry could rush the basement where the spawn room was... God I love that game!

* Some players of [[wikipedia:Steel Panthers|Steel Panthers]] are prone to do this: buying hordes of infantry (as opposed to a good infantry/armor mix), mortars (as opposed to howitzers) and cheap recoiless rifle jeeps (instead of tanks), even in open maps! The newest versions of this game have made spotting harder, which can make this trope more effective.

** He doesn't even have to be on the screen to combo you: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_qLvGwG0lo examples]. Lots of curse combos last a long time on normal competitive matches.

* ''[[Muv-Luv]]'''s BETA use that as their main tactics against the humans, and it usually proves to be very effective, since they outnumber the human forces on Earth at least 20 to 1, the average human pilot does not survive longer than 8 minutes into their first battle, and the BETA have control of the Moon and Mars. Plus it helps that there are {{spoiler|10^37 to 10^37+10^37x9^10 (It depends on how you interpret what The Superior says)}} BETA in the universe. As one player wrote in a stream of consciousness journal while they played the game for the first time, "[http://pastebin.com/18gQ2Ruk BETA are zerg. Discuss.]"