History Main / HighlySpecificCounterplay

* ''VideoGame/DisneyHeroesBattleMode'' seems to have the design philosophy of "add ''wildly'' OP character to rule the meta with an iron fist for a while, then add character who specifically counters them later". For a few examples, when [[WesternAnimation/MonstersInc Randall]] completely up-ended the game's meta with his ability to turn invisible (and thus unable to be attacked) constantly, [[WesternAnimation/LiloAndStitch Jumba]] and [[WesternAnimation/AliceInWonderland the Cheshire Cat]] were added with skills tailor-made to counter him, while [[WesternAnimation/{{Onward}} Ian]] and [[WesternAnimation/InsideOut Fear]] debuted with a new status effect that reflected damage back onto the user that seemed specifically made to counter equally notorious HighTierScrappy WesternAnimation/{{Mulan}}, whose moveset dealt [[LightningBruiser absolutely exponential levels of damage]] even compared to other characters on the roster at that time.

* Decipher's ''TabletopGame/StarWarsCustomizableCardGame'' and its ''Franchise/StarTrek'' counterpart made extremely extensive use of "magic bullet" cards that regularly targeted and negated or punished the use of specific individual cards. In fact, the games rather depended on printing them in order to curtail PowerCreep from previously-released GameBreaker cards.

** Dedicated anti-ship vessels can also fall into this pit, having decent to overwhelming attack power against enemy ships, but being unable to attack anything ''except'' other ships. Examples include Soviet anti-ship series of submarines, Soviet Giant Squids, the Imperial Naginata Cruisers, and Allied attack Dolphins.

** Dedicated anti-ship vessels can also fall into this pit, having decent to overwhelming attack power against enemy ships, but being unable to attack anything ''except'' other ships. Examples include Soviet anti-ship series of submarines, Soviet Giant Squids, the Imperial Naginata Cruisers, and Allied Attack Dolphins.

** Commando units are usually equipped with weapons that let them OneHitKill kill infantry units rapidly, but this weapon is all but useless against vehicles. Some games allow certain commandos to plant explosives on vehicles or structures at melee range, but anti-infantry vehicles or snipers will shut this tactic down. Some commandos have the perk of being able to [[SnipingTheCockpit Snipe drivers]] or call in airstrikes from siege range to make them stand out.
** The German Tank Destroyer in ''VideoGame/CommandAndConquerRedAlert2'' is perhaps one of the biggest examples of CripplingOverspecialization. The unit is specifically designed to quickly shred tank-grade vehicles but is less efficient against other vehicles and all but useless against infantry and structures. In practice, the fixed turretless cannon makes the unit vulnerable to flanking so the Tank Destroyer is widely considered ineffective in its role.
** Snipers are designed to decisively counter infantry but their rifles will only scratch the paint on vehicles and structures. However, they may have secondary abilities like painting targets for artillery. Anti-infantry special forces like Allied Navy SEALS or Nod Shadow Teams have similar weaknesses but have secondary abilities as well.

** While the Smash community's views of character matchups can be extremely fluid, a recent tournament showed that Lucas, a mid-tier, has some useful tools for dealing with top-tier Steve, as [[https://youtu.be/Iq6s_FPQGUs this video]] explains in more detail.

*** In Gen III, Mud Sport acted similar to the aforementioned Water Sport, except that it weakens Electric-type moves rather than Water-type. This made it even less useful, as the majority of the Pokeémon who could even learn Mud Sport were already Ground-type, giving them an innate 100% immunity to Electric-type attacks. Giving it some niche usage in doubles as, unlike with Water Sport, there are no alternate ways to debuff electric damage.

*** Water Sport is a move which reduces the power of Fire-Type attacks by 50% but which can only be learned by Water-Type Pokemon, nearly all of whom are already resistant to fire. When this move was introduced in Gen III, the effect ended as soon as they switched out. This gave it little practical use except for players who planned to counter a sun-boosted mono Fire-type team with a defensive Water-type with no weather of its own. Water Sport would see some buffs with Gen V increasing the amount to 67% and Gen VI changing Water Sport to persist for 5 turns, granting it the better, but still niche, ability to be used in conjunction with rain.
*** In Gen III, Mud Sport acted similar to the aforementioned Water Sport, except that it weakens Electric-type moves rather than Water-type. This made it even less useful, as the majority of the Pokemon who could even learn Mud Sport were already Ground-type, giving them an innate 100% immunity to Electric-type attacks. Giving it some niche usage in doubles as, unlike with Water Sport, there are no alternate ways to debuff electric damage.

*** Infiltrator allows the user to bypass the effects of four moves; Light Screen, Reflect, Safeguard, and Mist. The ability did see buff in Gen VI by enabling the user to bypass Substitute, which nearly every Pokemon are able to learn, as well as Aurora Veil in Gen VII.

*** Stalwart and Propeller Tail allow the user to ignore redirection from Rage Powder, Follow Me, and Ally Switch, as well as the abilities Storm Drain and Lightning Rod redirecting their respective types (Water- and Electric-type moves). Redirection effects only work in Double Battles, and only a handful of Pokemon can learn Rage Powder and Follow Me.

*** Stalwart and Propeller Tail allow the user to ignore redirection from Rage Powder, Follow Me, and Ally Switch, as well as Storm Drain and Lightning Rod. These abilities only work in Double Battles and only a handful of Pokemon can learn Rage Powder and Follow Me.

** En Passant exists to prevent a pawn on its starting rank from using its initial two square move (itself another example of a time saving rule change) to avoid being attacked by pawn that could have captured it had it only moved one space. It's the only capture in the game that involves moving the capturing piece to a square other than the one the captured piece is on.

* ''Muffin Time'' has a few of these, such as "Shoot It Down", a card that counters "Magical Pony" and nothing else.

*** Water Sport is a move which reduces the damage from Fire-Type attacks by 50% but which can only be learned by Water-Type Pokemon, nearly all of whom are already resistant to fire. Better yet, when this move was introduced in Gen III, it only affected the user, meaning it couldn't help you partner in double battles and the effect ended as soon as they switched out. This gave it little practical use except for players who planned to counter a sun-boosted mono Fire-type team with a defensive Water-type wall with no weather of its own. As of Gen V, Water Sport has been buffed to affect the whole field and now persists for 5 turns, granting it the better, but still niche, ability to be used in conjunction with rain to "double protect" one of the 10 Pokemon who have 4x weaknesses to fire attacks.
*** In Gen III, Mud Sport acted similar to the aforementioned Water Sport, except that it weakens Electric-type moves rather than Water-type. This made it even less useful, as the majority of the Pokemon who could even learn Mud Sport were already Ground-type, giving them an innate 100% immunity to Electric-type attacks. Also like Water Sport, it was buffed to affect the whole field in Gen V, giving it some niche usage in doubles as, unlike with Water Sport, there are no alternate ways to debuff electric damage.

*** The concussive damage type is specifically made to be only very efficient against lightly-armored targets and is only used by the Terran faction. Light is a relatively rare classification, including basic infantry units, some spell casters, and all workers. However for the inexpensive FragileSpeedster Vulture bike, this perfectly fine as it lets them be excellent raiders against workers without unbalancing the game. Firebats also have anti-infantry flamethrowers which are specifically useful against Zergling swarms but not much else.
*** Lockdown is another niche spell that rarely sees play due to the difficulty in micromanaging and unlocking Ghosts and their spell(s), and it being totally useless against Zerg units. Against Carriers and Battlecruisers this spell can be devastating, as they'll be stunned in place and more vulnerable to AntiAir. Against, any other mechanical target, it's normally more micromanagement than many players care to invest plus Science Vessels tend to take priority at this tier for their stealth detection and variety of helpful support spells. Lockdown also overlaps in some areas with the Science Vessel's EMP Shockwave as the EMP works on both biological and mechanical mana users by resetting their mana to zero, effectively locking them down in using their abilities.
*** Terran Valkyries are this in practice as well. While their Halo Rockets deal splash damage and are only weak against tough capital fliers, Valkyries are only seldom used against Zerg players to counter Mutalisk swarms primarily when using vehicles instead of infantry against the Zerg. The main reason is because each Valkyrie is 250 Mineral and 125 Gas units, requires [[TechTree an Armory present to build]], yet has very niche uses. Compare with the general-use Wraith which is 150/100 in cost, and can be built immediately out of the Starport. This is one reason the ground-based Thor took over this role in ''Starcraft II'' and does even more.

* ''VideoGame/EmpireEarth'': The expansion for the first game introduced the Anti-Missile Battery, a truck whose only purpose was to shoot down nuclear missiles (nuclear bombs require shooting the plane down) which were only available to the Novaya Russia civilization, unless playing with custom civs.

** [[https://gatherer.wizards.com/pages/card/details.aspx?name=Goatnapper Goatnapper]] lets you control target Goat until the end of the turn. There were only two Goat creature cards at the time of its release. The block also introduced changeling, which makes a creature count as every creature type — including Goat. This made the card a bit more versatile, but it's still not much. Goat creatures and creatures with changeling are very rare.

** Downplayed by [[https://hearthstone.fandom.com/wiki/Flare Flare]], a hunter spell that causes all minions to lose stealth, all enemy secrets to be destroyed, and the caster to draw a card. Only 3-4 of the game's 10 classes normally have access to secrets (Hunter, Mage, Paladin and, depending on the expansions available, Rogue), you can't guarantee an opponent will use secrets even if they play one of those classes, and stealth is one of the rarer minion keywords, so it's possible only the card draw effect will come into play. That said, the card is never ''horrible'' thanks to the card draw effect, and there have been multiple metas where a secret deck was dominant.

** [[https://hearthstone.fandom.com/wiki/Platebreaker Platebreaker]] has a seemingly powerful effect of removing all the enemy's Armor, but only two classes even utilize Armor effectively, so most of the time it ends up being an understatted vanilla minion. It just happens so that a few expansions ago, there was this cheesy Wild Druid combo deck that uses [[https://hearthstone.fandom.com/wiki/Linecracker Linecracker]], [[https://hearthstone.fandom.com/wiki/BEEEES!!! BEEEES!!!]], and [[https://hearthstone.fandom.com/wiki/Earthen_Scales Earthen Scales]] to gain ''thousands'' of Armor in one turn and wins by [[StoneWall wearing out the opponent's patience until they concede]]. [[ThisLooksLikeAJobForAquaman It also works well in]] single-player missions against bosses with tons of starting Armor, since Blizzard never bothered to make an ObviousRulePatch against it.
** Subverted with [[https://hearthstone.fandom.com/wiki/Skulking_Geist Skulking Geist]]. As its flavor text suggests, it was pretty much made to counter [[https://hearthstone.fandom.com/wiki/Jade_Idol Jade Idol]], an infamous Druid card known for GatheringSteam while never allowing the user to Fatigue. No other method of countering such a card existed so Jade Druid was extremely oppressive against every other control deck. However, it also became a viable counter to Secret Paladin decks (which relies on a lot of 1-Mana spells in the deck to function) and to a number of useful 1-mana spells like Shield Slam and Naturalize. Even decks that run 1-mana spells used it to remove low-power cards from their deck later in the game.

Needless to say, Highly Specific Counterplay is susceptible to CripplingOverspecialization. If it's in the form of a spell, it'll often be a UselessUsefulSpell. With that said, specific counterplay options can be very useful if they counter something that is used a lot in the {{Metagame}} — especially if the opportunity cost of using them is low. In that case, you may have an AntiMetagameCharacter. The counterplay may even be a NecessaryDrawback to prevent this element from breaking the game.

May overlap with SituationalDamageAttack if the required situation is very rare. Compare ObviousRulePatch, where the rules are changed to prevent a specific situation. Also compare AntidoteEffect, where you keep an item that's only useful in certain specific situations (even though its effect itself does not have to be narrow) because those situations are so annoying. Highly Specific Counterplay may even turn into UselessItem if the only thing it could counter is banned or removed from the game. See also NotCompletelyUseless for non-PVP examples, and ThisLooksLikeAJobForAquaman for non-game examples.

*** Oblivious. When it was introduced in Gen III, it only protected the Pokémon from infatuation, a status effect that has very specific triggers (opposite gender to the target) and is inflicted by only one move. As of Gen VIII, it has been buffed to protect from a grand total of four specific things (infatuation, Captivate, Taunt, and Intimidate, though at least the latter two are reasonably common in [=PvP=]).