History GameBreaker / NintendoWars

** Lord help you should you fight Hachi with anyone but Sensei. He may not have the latter's numbers, but he techs up like no one's business. On day 8 most COs might have a swarm of Infantry, some Recons, maybe even a Tank; Hachi has a Megatank on the front lines and a Black Bomb with your name on it. When most COs are strapped for funds they tech down to Infantry and Mechs; Hachi techs down to a Md Tank swarm. In an absolute worst case scenario, Hachi can summon more Tanks in one turn than most will build in a whole game session. Simply put, you do not fuck with this man.

* Lord help you should you fight Hachi with anyone but Sensei. He may not have the latter's numbers, but he techs up like no one's business. On day 8 most COs might have a swarm of Infantry, some Recons, maybe even a Tank; Hachi has a Megatank on the front lines and a Black Bomb with your name on it. When most COs are strapped for funds they tech down to Infantry and Mechs; Hachi techs down to a Md Tank swarm. In an absolute worst case scenario, Hachi can summon more Tanks in one turn than most will build in a whole game session. Simply put, you do not fuck with this man.

** Hachi spends 10% less and his weakness is.......''none whatsoever''. But that's not the problem. No, the problem is that his CO Powers cut his building costs in half, and his SCOP lets him build any land unit on his Cities. He's basically Sensei lite, and as you see, that's not a good thing.

* ''Dual Strike'' brought things to a new level with obscene Tag Team combos. Eagle/Sami get 3 turns with their Tag Power, and on the third Sami can capture any building instantly (and gets a movement boost for infantry to boot). And the game pretty much suggests this with a 3-star rating for that pairing (which means a 1.5 HP luck damage boost on top of all that). Oh, and they have in-game synergy, so their power gets boosted to 130% (in addition to the infantry offense boost that Sami gets with Victory March.) Meep.

* I CANNOT BELIEVE no one has brought up [[MightyGlacier Megatanks]] yet! Though essentially a Mech with more movement but less gas, they can destroy ANYTHING they set their sights on! In the hands of a decent player (and a CO with high attack), they can wreck [[LightningBruiser Neotanks]] and [[GoddamnedBats foot soldier swarms]] by just LOOKING at them! And if placed at a captured city or base that doubles as a strategic point/virtual stronghold on ground-unit-only maps, NOTHING can get past them!

** Drake + Olaf has the best synergy: Tsunami halves current fuel, and blizzard doubles remaining fuel usage. Most of your enemy's navy and air forces will be troubled by it if you get lucky, although (unlike most other broken tag examples) the tag isn't very powerful day-to-day beyond the hilarious tag break effect.

** One Tag Break that can get particularly obscene is Drake/Olaf/Hawke + Drake/Olaf/Hawke (no doubles for a given player, granted). 2 turns is bad enough, but when you consider that the opposition loses 40% of their terrain bonus, health, and attack power, you can see that the only way the counteracting weakness can be suitable is in a very, very crippling manner -- unfortunately not the case. In a team match, if the opponents both use that combo (and yes, multiple players may use the same [=COs=]), Heaven help you if they get Tag Breaks back-to-back.

* The most absurdly overpowered combination seems fairly straightforward to me. First, use some variation of the Kanbei setup above (maybe throwing in the pathfinder ability to move through forests quickly and crush all opposition that much faster) but partner him with Hachi. See, Kanbei's weakness is that it costs him 20% more to deploy units. Properly set up, Hachi can deploy units for 37% of their normal price during a Tag... directly from any city. So you're doing well in the battle already thanks to Hachi purchasing cheap units that get turned into demigods under Kanbei, and ''then'' you suddenly deploy almost three times as many units as you should be able to, directly to the front lines!
** Almost as bad is pairing Kanbei with Colin. Colin ''constantly'' has a passive CO ability that reduces the cost on everything, but has the downside of weakened forces. Kanbei's only downside is increased cost for each unit. Put the two together and...
** And while Sonja only has regular-priced units, she also gives Kanbei (God specced or not) a +15 luck day-to-day and a 130% tag, making her another natural choice.

* ''God Kanbei''. That is with defense forces and a tag partner with Bodyguard. Kanbei will have a 50% defense boost, which combined with how defense works in ''Dual Strike'' makes Kanbei's defense so absurdly powerful as he can just spam infantry and throw in a few indirects.

* The most absurdly overpowered combination seems fairly straightforward to me. First, use some variation of the Kanbei setup above (maybe throwing in the pathfinder ability to move through forests quickly and crush all opposition that much faster) but partner him with Hachi. See, Kanbei's weakness is that it costs him 20% more to deploy units. Properly set up, Hachi can deploy units for 37% of their normal price during a Tag... directly from any city. So you're doing well in the battle already thanks to Hachi purchasing cheap units that get turned into demigods under Kanbei, and * then* you suddenly deploy almost three times as many units as you should be able to, directly to the front lines!

* ''Dual Strike'' brought things to a new level with obscene Tag Team combos. Eagle/Sami get 3 turns with their Tag Power, and on the third Sami can capture any building instantly (and gets a movement boost for infantry to boot). And the game pretty much suggests this with a 3-star rating for that pairing (which means a 1.5 HP luck damage boost on top of all that).

** One Tag Break that can get particularly obscene is Drake/Olaf/Hawke + Drake/Olaf/Hawke (no doubles for a given player, granted). 2 turns is bad enough, but when you consider that the opposition loses 40% of their terrain bonus, health, and attack power, you can see that the only way the counteracting weakness can be suitable is in a very, very crippling manner--unfortunately not the case. In a team match, if the opponents both use that combo (and yes, multiple players may use the same [=COs=]), Heaven help you if they get Tag Breaks back-to-back.

* Unofficial online version ''[[http://awbw.amarriner.com/ Advance Wars By Web]]'' has a Banned CO feature during game set up, the most common bans being Colin, Hachi, Grit, Sensei and Kanbei, together with any [=COs=] with a clear situation advantage on a map (such as Javier on a map with more than one Comm Tower per side in play).
** Organised WFC games of ''Days of Ruin'' tend to have the frequently broken Isabella/Catleia banned. Caulder/Stolos is banned too, but that ban's built in to the game's random battle feature as he is the game's BigBad and was ''supposed'' to be horribly broken--making it ironic that he's the ''sole'' CO with a weakness (spending money for the repairs to his units in his zone). Tabitha/Larissa is considered broken, and her lack of zone and a crippling glitch may not be enough to prevent her from being truly so.
* Sensei. ''Dear God'' Sensei. He has a 2 Star CO Power that spawns Infantry from all of his own Cities. Watch as he fills the 50 unit quota quickly and end up with self-feeding powers with any decent number of properties. This gets much worse, if that's even possible, in Dual Strike because of Infantry OneHitKills charging the meter by 2/5 of a star each as opposed to a measly 1/9 in Advance Wars 2. Not only does his meter get charged quickly especially with infantry being ''core units'', but the powers ''self-feed beyond belief''. And not to mention all of those infantry you have to wade your way through. You'll be wishing at this point you were playing RondoOfSwords, because since you can't work with its [[FoeTossingCharge Route Maneuver system]], ''AW2 Sturm'' would be helpless against this broken old man.

** Grit has +1 Range for indirects. He has no problem meatshielding them repeatedly, or even ''having them meatshield each other''.

* In ''Days of Ruin'', while CO units are generally overpowered, in general, Tabitha will take the cake, and eat it. Thanks to her, the metagame has shifted to land/air maps--and even on those she's still plenty powerful. The reason is because while she boosts only one unit (later on a limited number of units), that one unit gets ''insane'' boosts. If she gets air units, she can CO a [[FragileSpeedster B-Copter]], which gets any number of OneHitKill scenarios on non-expensive units even on terrain, can use its aerial movement to wait for a chance to pounce, and ''doesn't even die instantly from a non-CO AA unit unless it's one option that is so lopsided it inevitably has a weakness that overcoming requires already beating Tabitha conventionally''. This wouldn't be so bad if she needed cover for more than only 2 kills with her CO unit to threaten to get zone expansion, which, of course, gets her a lot closer to her insane CO power--and God help you if she does get it. The irony is, on maps with land or sea, she can just camp the center with a Light Tank or Battleship respectively because there's no cost effective way dealing with either due to the power boosts.

** Stealths might be able to hit nearly everything and be hit by nearly nothing, but their fuel capacity is horrendously low considering that, when hidden, they go through 8 fuel units without even doing anything. They don't have the damage output of regular Fighters or Bombers either. Plus if you remove one of those three meatshields, the Stealth can be spotted and intercepted - frankly not a difficult job considering their low move range. Granted they can be gamebreaking, but some of the tactical decisions you have to make for them to be effective kinda tip off the enemy to where they are, defeating the whole "stealth" aspect.

** Well considering [[AwesomeButImpractical they cost the same as a BATTLESHIP, have a ammo capacity of three, and the fact that you could build a bomber and artillery, five artillery, a Medium tank and two artillery, NINE mechs, a stealth and a mech, four tanks, all of which could easily bypass the one lone city.]] Alternatively, you could simply leave it alone on the city, surround it with infantry and bombard the #*!# out of it, while it can only shoot a lone infantry a day, losing a 1000 unit to give the enemy 5600 in repairs every day is a very good trade.
*** Put them in the hands of Jess however.....

* The first ''BattalionWars'' has Anti-Air Vets, which for being multi-hit along with causing knockback to any land unit except the [[MightyGlacier Battlestation]] causes high damage with ''each hit''. Want to know how bad this gets? A lone one can ''solo the two Battlestations in the final mission''. That isn't even anything close to within their job description and they manage it anyway, along with cutting down all of the infantry along the way including the [[DeathOfAThousandCuts Acid Gas Vets]]--in fact, Flame/Acid Gas Vets are supposed to do this job. Assault Vets in the first game, as well as Bazooka Vets in the sequel, can't even compare to this.

---->'''Xylvania infantry''': * sits in position ready for enemy attack*

* Battlestations. Oh god, battlestations. These can easily be used to one hit kill anything except Medium tanks and...surprise, other battlestations. However, you can just snipe the bastards that will cause you trouble. If you're good at aiming with a wii remote, you can take out almost anything before it can get close enough to shoot you. Yes, this includes other battlestations. This troper managed to turn unwinnable situations around because of this.

* In ''Days Of Ruin'', a properly-shielded Anti-Tank can become this. The thing has the same range as an artillery, absolutely ''rips ground vehicles apart'', can attack copters, and, unlike any other indirect unit, can counterattack. Its primary weakness is, surprisingly, infantry, but if you have other units poised to take them out before they get too close and have an anti-air or two at the ready to shoot down any bombers or dusters that try to move in, you basically have an unstoppable ground-unit-and-copter killing machine.

** Ignore the fact that if you're not paying attention, she can capture your HQ in [OhCrap one turn]!

** Ignore the fact that if you're not paying attention, she can capture your HQ in [b]one turn[b]!

** Of course, Isabella and Caulder are far worse, but for reasons that make them ''clearly'' more overpowered than other COs. Isabella does the same thing as ''two'' COs, effectively obsoleting ''both'' of them due to how CO units generally work. Caulder provides the same power boosts as ''Tabitha'' to units in his massive zone (same as Brenner's, larger than Tabitha's at ''full'' meter), and also provides daily healing to zone units at ''five'' HPs per unit. But then, he's PurposefullyOverpowered, which makes it ironic that he's the ''only'' CO who even has a weakness ''at all''. (He spends money on his daily healing.)

** Tabitha's not ''that'' bad, since she only buffs herself at first. As powerful as her one unit is, it's only ''one unit''. There's also a glitch (YourMileageMayVary as to whether it's [[GameBreakingGlitch a horrible nerf]] or [[GoodBadBug a godsend]]) that means she doesn't charge during her opponent's turn.

* Eagle and Sonja. Eagle's Tag Break with ''anybody'' grants 2 extra turns on its own (activate it at the end of Eagle's first turn to get the effects of Lightning Drive, then after switching, you get the extra turn), but with Sonja, things get ''[[ItGotWorse really bad]]''. Sonja's CO Meter is only 5 Stars, meaning that she can spend most of the time in the back so that Eagle can do most of the chargeup, and guess what happens at the end of the tag break? That's right: Sonja's units ''will strike first in counterattack''. Can't gather what that means? Well, here's a simple statement: ''effectively 4 turns in a row''. What, you will attack units that will not counterattack? No, I don't think so. I'll just use my actual 3 turns to make sure you're locked out of that option.
*Eagle and Sami. Not only do they get a massive boost in stats from affinity but a highly possible one-hit finish by using Eagle's two turns to destroy base defenses, move T copters with infantry MASSIVE distances and drop troops. Sami can wipe out anything defending the HQ on her turn and swoop in for a guaranteed capture and win.