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Zerg Rush

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  • Axis & Allies: The Soviet Union's primary strategy is to build half a dozen infantry or more each turn. However they are only good for defense, Germany has enough industrial capacity to do this with tanks.
  • BattleTech:
    • This was part of the in universe purpose of the Protomech, which was smaller and cheaper than standard Battlemechs while faster and more heavily armed than Battle Armor, allowing them to be built and fielded in large numbers. In gameplay, it's sometimes invoked by flooding the map with dozens of super-cheap infantry or light vehicles, though this is typically considered to be extremely bad sportsmanship due to the Game-Breaker nature of the tactic.
    • An in-universe example of the tactic failing badly is one Mercer Ravannion's attempts to employ "horde tactics" by overrunning enemy forces with swarms of 20-ton 'Mechs like Stingers and Wasps (pretty much the bottom of the weight range) around the late 3010s/early 3020s...which canonically never seem to have actually succeeded at much beyond driving up his own side's casualty count against heavier opposition.
  • Chess: Beginners get it hammered in that one shouldn't zergrush. On the Master level, Aljechin's Defense can be even called an inversion: lure the opponent to overzerg his centre and invade through the holes the pawns left. That much said, there is the one or other legendary game which falls under this trope, most notably Kujoth-Fashingbauer, Milwaukee 1950, with eleven consecutive pawn moves that win a piece. (Knights generally hate to be on the receiving end.) And finally, there is a chess variant "Horde" where White only plays with a lot of pawns.
  • Doomtown: Lots of cheap dudes + We Got Ya Surrounded = big shootout bonus (and they're easier to heal in case the bonus still isn't enough). The original Blackjacks home is good for this; the more Blackjacks dudes (or Deputized drifters) you have, the more you can boot to rob ghost rock and buy more dudes.
  • Dungeons & Dragons:
    • This is the last resort of kobolds. As Races of the Dragon and other sourcebooks explain, kobolds know they're individually pretty weak, and are therefore Combat Pragmatists who prefer to wear down attackers through traps and ambushes. If they have no other option, or their traps have failed and their homes are threatened, the kobolds' collectivist mentality leads the men to throw themselves against the enemy by the hundreds, in order to buy time for their women and children to escape with the eggs and ensure the survival of the community.
    • Given that the Blood War is fought between Fiends, there's a lot of this behavior, and while devils prefer actual battle tactics (unless trying to strategically get rid of a rival) since commanding Dreg Legions doesn't give much opportunity for promotion, for demons this actually demonstrates exceptional tactical acumen, since very few demons have the sense to direct their mindless charge at the enemy. The only reason the demons haven't lost badly is that there's an unlimited number of them.
    • It's also the only resort for Modrons when they form into armies (which is rare) but it makes sense if you consider their Hive Mind mentality and how they reproduce note  Losing 90% of their numbers is a minor setback at best for modrons, unless Primus himself is slain, and even that they can recover from. (Not easily, but they can.)
    • Needletooth dinosaurs are individually only the size of cats, but hunt in large packs. Their favorite hunting tactic is to mob targets en masse and pull them to the ground by weight of numbers, a tactic that can overwhelm sizable prey in a living tide of hungry, snapping mouths.
    • Individual magerippers aren't especially formidable on their own, and the wizards they prey on can typically take out lone specimens or small groups with minimal trouble, but they move in swarms of up to three hundred and overwhelm their prey through raw numbers and attritition.
    • In case of weak creatures and high-level PC party, encounter's CL can be increased to sufficient value by using massive number of said weak creatures (especially if "using more capable creatures" is not possible).
  • Exalted: This was a major component of how the Dragon-Blooded (the most numerous but weakest of the Exalted) defeated and contained the Solar Exalted (the mightiest of the Exalted) during the Usurpation, and remained a mainstay of the tactics of the Wyld Hunt in the Second Age. During the mop-up actions of the Usurpation, Dragon-Blooded would gather mortal forces by the tens of thousands, and back them with a few hundred Dragon-Blooded champions. The mortals would press in and force the lone Solar to expend their power facing the sheer numbers of mundane soldiers, and then when their resources were depleted, the fresh Dragon-Blooded would move in for the final press against a weakened opponent. Even so, against some of the Dawn Caste Solars (the warrior-kings among the Solars noted for each being able to take on an army on their own), such tactics were often only marginally successful.
  • Kingdom Hearts: The CCG is a huge example of this, if a Light Deck has a bunch of low level friends (0's and 1's, for instance), or any Dark Deck, which can basically get up to level 8 friends in a few turns if they can, it doesn't help that the only Level 9 Dark Card (Dragon Maleficent) allows you to discard cards from your hand to lower her level and play her sooner, meaning, if you decide to play her with a full hand of six cards, you can discard the other five cards and make her a level 4 Dark Card. Then you can start bringing out big ones that block your opponent from playing friends, (Captain Hook prevents Peter Pan and Tinkerbell from being played, Oogie Boogie prevents Jack Skellington, Maleficent prevents Beast, and so on). Or if you really want to be a douche, play Darkside, which removes all Level 1 and 0 friend cards in play from every player's (up to four) playfield.
  • Magic: The Gathering: This is basically what the "weenie horde" deck archetype is all about. The inherent problems with it are the relative frailty of small cheap creatures and the one-draw-per-turn bottleneck that ultimately limits the size of the horde one can muster; good weenie deck designs generally include cards that deal with both. Screaming "elf deck!" can scare MtG players not prepared for weenies nearly as well as screaming "zerglings!" can RTS players not adept at dealing with rushes.
    • Saprolings are the prime example of a weenie horde, although usually a slower one. There is a deck that involves a combination of cards allowing the player to generate a literally infinite amount of saprolings creatures which run over any opponent in short order.
    • Ravager Affinity is a particularly scary example of a Zerg Rush deck, with rapidfire Arcbound creatures and Frogmites and Myr Enforcers materialising at rapid speed, the offensive bolstered by the synergy between vast hordes of Artifact Creatures, Artifact Lands, Atogs, Arcbound Ravager, Shrapnel Blast, Skullclamp, Aether Vial, and Disciple of the Vault. Turn 1 Frogmite, turn 2 twin Myr Enforcers, and turn 3 "leave you hanging at 3 life" scenarios crop up far too often.
      • This differs from classic Zerg rushing in that Myr Enforcers, the deck's namesake Arcbound Ravager, and other creatures common in Affinity aren't weak at all, and aren't "really" cheap—they're just easy to make inexpensive. Also, Ravager Affinity is a smart use of Conservation of Ninjutsu, with the basic early rush tactic compounded by saccing all the artifacts to power the Ravager when it comes on board. The main trick of Ravager Affinity is to force at least one attacker through unblocked by the Zerg Rushing, then feed the Ravager and cannibalize it to transfer the + 1/+ 1 counters to the unblocked attacker. Several cards that made the deck work were quickly banned, most infamously Skullclamp.
    • Another classic example of a rushing archetype is Sligh. Variants of this deck play small red creatures - generally among the worst in the game compared to other colors - and smack them into the opponent as quickly as possible, then finish the opponent with fire. Despite the relative poor quality of small red creatures, mono-red Sligh and other similar decks using different balances of creatures to fire spells appear in every tournament, and their speed is the standard against which all other decks are measured in Magic: The Gathering's Meta Game. Sligh is historically interesting, however, because at the time nobody saw it coming; The thinking of the day was that the most powerful cards were what won games, cards like Serra Angel, Sengir Vampire and Shivan Dragon, which were expensive and typically didn't see play until turn five or six. Sligh was designed with the thinking that you wouldn't have to worry about a turn six dragon if your opponent was dead by turn five.
      • The Onslaught Block enhanced the Goblin tribe until the strongest Goblin decks superseded classic Sligh.
    • Somewhat closer thematically to the Tyranid example below are the slivers, in both the actual game and the world the game takes place on.
    • When it comes to modern M:tG decks, most "Zerg Rush" tactics - if they can really be called that outside of the weenie deck archetype — basically boil down to perpetual motion systems, since the developers try to avoid letting you win without thinking. Example: the above mentioned Ashnod's Altar gives you 2 mana when you sacrifice a creature to it. Myr Retrievers cost 2 mana to summon, but they pull any artifact out of the graveyard the moment they die, and since they count as artifacts, they can resurrect each other. A Cloud Key can and/or an Etherium Sculptor always does reduce the cost of artifact spells. With an extra Myr Retriever in the mix of this combination, one literally has an endless supply of mana (sac Myr to Altar = 2 mana; Myr is dead, get other Myr; summon Myr for 1 mana; 1 mana left over). Add this to an artifact or creature that spawns 1/1 counter creatures and you instantly have an endless Zerg Rush powered by infinite resources, and Kerrigan would be proud. This combo also works with "plink cards" that cause a single point of direct damage for the cost of one mana, making this a painful way to die.
    • Woe to those who allow the use of Unhinged cards in their match and get slapped with Ashnod's Coupon, only to come back and see about six Cheatyfaces on the field.
    • Selesnya and Boros both dabble in this in Return To Ravnica. Selesnya has a heavy focus on creature tokens, with their Guild Ability, Populate, effectively giving you a free token of an existing one on top of whatever was the effect of the card you were casting. They also have tokens ranging from small songbirds, to gigantic militarized wurms, to giant sentient temples. Boros on the other hand focuses on small, efficient creatures. Any tokens they generate instead are simply weak footsoldiers, and not really on the scale Selesnya can produce. Boros, however, have their Guild Ability (Battalion) be dependent on massive amounts of attackers to get disproportionally better effects; ranging from dealing direct damage, making your troops invulnerable, bestowing any number of special effects on all existing troops, or just make a singular troop really, really strong.
      • A notable Boros example is Assemble the Legion. The first upkeep after it comes out it spits out a single 1/1 token creature with haste. Then the next turn it spits out two, then three, then four...
    • The Cabaretti crime family in New Capenna are a bunch of hedonistic party animals whose signature mechanic, Alliance, encourages this trope by activating abilities every time a creature enters the battlefield. With the right setup and enough token generators, it's possible to get Devilish Valet's power into the billions. Their leader, Jetmir, also encourages having a bunch of creatures, powering everyone up at set thresholds; at his strongest, he gives everyone +3/+0, Vigilance, Trample and Double Strike.
    • Rabbits in Bloomburrow have lots of ways to spam out 1/1 Rabbit tokens, in order to either buff them or benefit from tokens being summoned or being in play and then proceed to overcome the opponent through numbers. Because they're rabbits.
  • Naruto: The CCG has the card "Power of the Youth", which lets you send out as many teams as you want as long as all your in-play Ninjas have an entrance cost of 3 or less. Combine this with cards like Idate, [SUPERHUMAN SPEED] effect Haku, and [PARTNER] effect Akamaru, and you can quickly build up your own little army and swarm the opponent before the gamebreaker ninjas start showing up. Did I mention this card lets you Zerg rush for 2 turns straight?
  • Risk: A common beginners' strategy is to gather up as many soldiers as possible in one country and go on a warpath of Curb Stomp Battles. It is possible to overcome, but it's not easy.
  • Sentinels of the Multiverse: While almost every Villain has minions to some degree, a few of them use them and Zerg Rush to their advantage.
    • Omnitron, as he cannot damage the heroes without his toys, relies on getting as many Components and Drones out. His "Self-Aware Robotiscs Factory" side lets him recover a Component or Drone from his trash each turn, while "Rampaging Robot" lets him play a second card each turn. It's pretty hit or miss, as he could just get a Compnent or a One-shot, but if the heroes are lagging behind and going for him instead of the Drones, he can swarm them.
    • Cosmic Omnitron on the other hand is much better at Zerg Rushing: His "Sentient Dropship" side lets him play the top card of his deck every time he plays a Drone. If he gets lucky, he can swarm them with Drones.
    • Grand Warlord Voss is a better Zerg Rusher than Omnitron. His entire deck is filled with targets, and his whole strategy relies on overwhelming the heroes with them. Ever better, his Forced Deployment card lets him revive every Minion the heroes kill, so it the heroes get a bunch at ones, they are looking at a very painful round.
    • The best Zerg Rusher in Sentinels is probably The Matriarch. Every time a foul enters play from her deck, she plays the top card of her deck. Every time. One foul could easily turn into seven. Her individual birds do not hit very hard, but when there's 15 of them on the field at once, on her second turn, it doesn't matter. Made even worse when you remember that taking out any of them causes damage to your own team anyway.
    • The Dreamer can also turn into a Zerg Rush once she flipped to "Roused From Slumber" side. On this side, she gets extra card plays based on how many heroes she's fighting.
    • The Organization does something similar. Give them a moment's rest and they can put out a small legion of minions, all of whom are buffed by bosses.
  • Smash Up: This is the Robot faction's hat. Having only 2 Action cards but 18 minionsnote , they focus on drawing masses of weak minions to capture bases. They have minions that summon more minions, minions that can destroy stronger foes if the player has many minions on a base, minions that power up others, and one that is powered up by having minions in play. Needless to say, Robots are great at dropping off multiple units on a base in one turn and potentially strengthening them.
    • The Zombie faction. They have abilities that that put large numbers of cards from the deck/hand into their discard pile, and abilities that draw cards from their discard pile, allowing them to easily respawn large numbers of minions that have been killed off (by opponents or the player themself).
    • Since Smash-Up requires the player to combine two factions together, a combination of Zombies with Robots gives a massive Zerg Rush of minions that just won't stay down.
    • In the Cthulhu Mythos-themed expansion, the Innsmouth faction uses a variant of this strategy - it's very easy for a player to draw a slew of weak minions, but playing them isn't as easy.
  • Strike Legion: This is the Imperium's tried and true tactic. With three million systems under their control, a fleet of fifty million warships, and countless trillions of bodies to throw at the target, they've been wearing down the vastly smaller but vastly more-advanced and better-trained Star Republic through raw numbers. One quote from the Empress herself casually has her order an additional million ships to the front line. At the same time, the Empress has recognized that relying purely on sheer numbers is still inefficient, and has ramped up production of more advanced ships, frames, and Super Soldiers to match the Republic in quality as well as quantity.
  • Traveller: Doug Lenat won every round of the 1981 Trillion Credit Squadron tournament with PT boats, even though most of them were destroyed each game. The next year the rules were modified to emphasize mobility, which PT boats lose when damaged — so he scuttled every boat as soon as it took damage and won again. Made curious by the fact that Lenat was not a wargamer, but a computer programmer using an AI on the rulebook.
  • Warhammer:
    • Warhammer 40,000:
      • The Tyranids' basic infantry, Termagaunts wielding symbiotic guns and bounding, clawed Hormagaunts, are pretty vulnerable to anti-personnel fire, but are dirt-cheap, come in big swarms, and when near a Synapse Creature will continue to surge forward regardless of casualties. With certain rules they can even get the Without Number upgrade, allowing the player to "recycle" dead units, or you can bring along a Tervigon to replenish losses. Either this tide of chitin will overwhelm their opponent, or it will distract them until the Carnifexes, Trygons and other living siege engines smash into the enemy line. This is taken further in the background material, where the Tyranid Hive Mind employs this tactic so often that some Tyranids are born without digestive systems, as they're only intended to fight a single battle and force the enemy to expend ammunition before the real attack.
      • This is a perennially-popular Ork tactic as well. The close combat skill of a basic Ork Boy coupled with their low cost and large unit size means that so long as there's a good number of Orks in that mob, it probably won't break or fall back, especially if led by a Nob. With enough Boyz on the table, the enemy won't be able to stop at least some of them from getting into assault range, and it's all downhill from there. This is also shown to be what keeps the Orks going canonically; they lack intelligence, strategy, and suitable technology compared to their foes, but an Ork Waaagh can cover a planet in an ocean of Greenskins. Additionally, any time an Ork dies, which is often, they let off spores which seep into the ground and later grow even more Orks.
      • Though the Astra Militarum is famed for its tanks, its lackluster infantry is numerous and cheap (particularly fifty-man Conscript Platoons), so mass bayonet charges are a viable strategy. The catch is that unlike some other armies in the game, Guardsmen aren't driven forward by a hive mind or mob mentality, and have poor Leadership in general - enter the Commissar, who is ready to instil discipline through summary executions. Indeed, in the background material, many Imperial commanders have built their careers on throwing Guardsmen at a problem until it went away. Colonel Chenkov once filled gaps in a hastily-constructed wall by executing entire squads of his soldiers, and took a fortress without siege support in a battle that cost him ten million men but won him a medal. Prior to his removal as a playable character, Chenkov had the "Send In the Next Wave!" special rule that let him bring in a fresh Conscript Platoon each turn.
      • More generally, prior to the 8th Edition rules, models with the Swarm special rule operate on this principle and were represented with bases containing multiple small figures. They were particularly vulnerable to flamethrowers, explosives and the like, but each "model" typically has three times as many Wounds as other units and tended to be Fearless, allowing them to at the very least tie up an enemy squad in close combat for a couple of turns. Some of them approached Lethal Joke Character status, like Necron Scarab Swarms that were able to dismantle enemy vehicles, or Nurglings that gained deadly poisoned attacks when special character Epidemus is around.
    • Although very small scale compared to nearly all other Games Workshop games, it was still possible to do this with Scavvy gangs during the 1st and 2nd Editions of Necromunda as they could field a large number of weak plague zombies. Such tactics could potentially become Game Breakers due to plague zombies being incredibly cheap, moved with ridiculous speed (2D6" per turn meaning that they had a good chance of moving faster than the 8" normal humans could run) and if they took someone down in combat there was a pretty good chance they'd turn into a zombie too, in stark contrast to how hard it is to lose a ganger normally.
    • Warhammer: Age of Sigmar:
    • Commonly used by horde factions and a legitimate tabletop strategy. As control of objectives is basically determined by who has the most models near it, more models typically means more attacks to be made, and getting stuck in combat severely limits your manoeuvrability, sending ungodly amounts of cheap chaff units at the enemy can legitimately win you games and slaughter even the strongest enemy forces under sheer weight of dice. Of course, it's also possible for your opponent to simply quit when they see how many models you've brought and realize how long every single movement phase and combat phase of yours is going to take.
    • One of the best at this strategy are the Flesh-eater Courts, as basic crypt ghouls are some of the cheapest per-model units in the game, get two attacks each, and can gain access to a variety of buffs. Special mention goes to them in 2nd edition, where you could stack attack buffs until a block of 40 ghouls could make over 300 attacks, enough to take out any unit in the game, regardless of how good their saves were. As of 4th edition, they can't reach those heights anymore, but with the right buffs can still make over 100 attacks with Crit auto-wound and rend 1 on all of their attacks.
    • Warhammer Fantasy Battle:
      • The 8th Edition of the game rewrote its rules to accommodate this strategy. Previously only the first rank of a block of infantry could fight at full capacity, with the second or third ranks pitching in if they had spears or pikes, but in 8th Edition the game introduced the Horde rule, allowing units to make ranks of 10 with the first three fighting, and the first two at full capacity — or in other words three times as many models could fight as before.
      • Orcs and Goblins (and the White Dwarf (1977) Gnoblar and Snotling army lists) tend to be Zerg Rushing factions for the same reasons as their Warhammer 40,000 counterparts, namely large mobs of cheap but effective infantry.
      • The Skaven stand out for not only having the cheapest infantry in the game, but for uniquely being able to fire upon their own men while they're locked in close combat thanks to the Life is Cheap rule.
      • Vampire Counts can abuse this mechanic. On top of having the second most powerful combat characters in the game (second only to Chaos Lords and Greater Daemons) they can also raise more undead troops to assist them. Unlike other instances of this ability, the Vampire Counts can raise a unit beyond it's starting limits. With The End Times supplement that brought in Nagash, this took on ridiculous levels as he can create entire regiment's worth of walking corpses on the cheap, while still having enough to buff existing troops or heal them.
  • The World of Darkness:
    • Even with all the powers of Caine on their side, the vampires know if The Masquerade were ever broken and all of humanity learned of their existence, their sheer numbers meant that vampires could very much be wiped out entirely.
    • This is also a tactic of the vampire faction the Sabbat: gather a bunch of unlucky mortals, whack them over the head and bury them (hence "shovelhead"), wait to see who will be able to dig their way out, and send the resulting wave of frenzying fledgings at their enemies. One such fledgling would be no problem, but small armies of them force the target to burn their strength containing the problem and overwhelm their weaker fighters, after which the Sabbat brass can move in for the kill.
  • X-Wing Miniatures: A fairly common Imperial archetype is to simply buy as many TIE Fighters as you can fit in the points value of the game. TIEs are much less powerful than X-wings and other Rebellion vehicles, but they're also considerably cheaper, to the point where the starter kit can provide two TIEs and one X-Wing and produce a fair fight. CIS droid-fighters are even cheaper than TIEs - and can be sent in even bigger hordes.
  • Yu-Gi-Oh! has an Archtype that plays to this tactic, technically speaking. The Blackwings (Black Feathers in Japan) specialize in swarming the field with monsters that have effects that play off each other can can One Turn Kill pretty quickly. Not really a "Zerg Rush" due to the 5 monster limit the game has, but it's pretty close. It's worth noting, however, that decks which spam monsters do so not to attack the opponent with them (since the game doesn't allow you to use multiple small monsters to overwhelm bigger monsters through weight of numbers), but to use them as resources to summon a specific powerful monster or combination of strong monsters that can prevent the opponent from fighting back or to clear away their defenses and go for the throat (usually from your Extra Deck). By contrast, a lot of counterplay involves stopping your opponent from executing their full combo and curbing the amount of swarming they can do.
    • A better example would be the main strategy of an Infernity Deck. Though it's more of an example of the scale from this into a Boss Rush, which is a Zerg Rush consisting of the biggest monsters you could ever summon in one turn. To point, Infernity Beetle (a level 2 monster) and Infernity Daemon/Archfiend (a Level 4 monster) together in the right combination can result in 5 and more synchro monsters, especially Trishula. This was such a devastating strategy that the succeeding banlist had to target the already expensive cards, making the key monsters R1.
    • By far the best current example of this in Yu-Gi-Oh! is the Igknight Archetype. They have no effects and below average stats but can search themselves by destroying two of their own members, which seems like a terrible deal until you realize that they are mostly Pendulum Monsters and can revived easily with the right set-up, and with all the searching that they can do, it's easy to get the right set-up on the first turn. This means that if an Igknight deck isn't spamming at least two monsters every single turn, they are doing something really wrong.
    • There's an actual card called Human-Wave Tactics
    • There are strategies with certain archetypes which the strategies are known as "Swarming". There are lots of spell and trap cards that can allow extra summons, while certain archetypes can play off of other cards to allow summons quickly. The essential strategy for swarming is to load the field and kill the opponents ability to counter before they have a chance to draw anything helpful. The problem with and the benefit of the card game in congruence with this is that should an opponent draw a card that disables this early on and prevents it, it can completely ruin an entire deck strategy and make it entirely moot. In contrast, if the player cannot load the field or their hand with anything as a counter, and given the game has a 7 card hand limit with 5 zones for spell and trap and 5 for monsters, this means they may play the entire match not getting anything and be eliminated fairly quickly granted that one only needs to do 8,000 damage to the opponent, and even most of the weakest monsters in the game average 1,000.
      • The drawback to strategies like this is that swarm monsters tend to be exceedingly weak in regards to everything but storming the field quickly. Often such swarm cards have limitations, or do not exceed 1,500 ATK or DEF, making them relatively weak and entirely useless against most 5 star or higher monsters since they can't even inflict damage without killing themselves or damaging the player controlling them. In contrast, swarming can make a strategy move far quicker in benefit of the controller. Summoning 1 monster per turn can result in non-normal summoning being costly and dangerous without proper backup, as mid to late game summoning is extremely risky (albeit often required) as long as your opponent has set cards or may have even played some form of card that can devastate summoning. Thus pushing out a powerful monster very quickly can entirely swing the battle (For example, Obelisk the Tormentor who will typically require 4 turns to summon, 3 to set monsters, and 1 to summon him, can have it dropped to 3 or even 2 turns if played properly), and in Yu-Gi-Oh!, speed can be everything, with luck of the draw being the other.