Defensive Feint Trap

"If your attack is going well, you have walked into an ambush."

— Murphy's Laws of Combat

An opponent lures their enemy into a trap by feigning either retreat or weakness. Once the attacker has moved into position, or spent most of their energy/ammo attacking, the defender turns the tables by going all out, using Geo Effects, or calling their allies in ambush.

This can be done by either heroes or villains, though heroes tend to consider such tactics "dishonorable". When done to a hero, the trap's fatality depends on the hero's level of Plot Armor, but will usually give them at least a good run for their money.

Expect at least one ally to say "This is too easy", and later yell, "No, stop! It's A Trap!" and get either ignored by the hero or heard too late. This can also take the form of an enemy enticing their attacker into "winning" a Pyrrhic Victory before they realize what just happened.

This tactic, although it sounds splendid, is hard to pull off in Real Life because your own men don't know it is a trap; they only know that there are a lot of men with sharp metal objects and/or firearms pointed at their backs. An army has to be well disciplined, and perhaps practiced in this tactic beforehand, or a feigned retreat will turn into a real one.

If the strategy includes tricking a foe into chasing you, it may involve a Wronski Feint or Give Chase with Angry Natives.

One of The Oldest Tricks in the Book. Specifically, it's strategy #28 of The Thirty-Six Stratagems.

Compare Wounded Gazelle Gambit.

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Example subpages:

• Anime & Manga
• Literature
• Video Games
• Real Life

Other examples:

Card Games

• Magic: The Gathering:
  • This is practically the entire reason for the "instant" card type which, unlike other types, can be played at any time. Other card types with the ability "flash" can be played at any time as well. In addition, creatures, artifacts, and enchantments often have "activated abilities", played like instants, which one might discount. All of this can be played twice during combat, or can be played in response to something else, the responses following the LIFO rule. And as of Zendikar, there's a new subtype of instants called traps, which are a lot cheaper if your opponent did something during that turn. Yeah, Magic has a lot of room for these.
  • The prevalence of such cards and strategies which can turn an apparent lead or advantage around in an instant usually cause experienced players to pretty much expect that the other player may pull this, to the point where any lead or impending victory usually means little until the game is actually won.
• As above many trap cards in Yu-Gi-Oh! work like this, in particular, the ones that can only be activated in response to an attack.

Comic Books

• Wonder Woman Vol 1: At one point, Etta Candy leads her Holliday Girls into an outnumbered fight with some Nazis then has her girls flee past a waiting ambush led by Steve Trevor and turn and rejoin the fight once the USAAF has the Nazis cut off from escape.

Comic Strips

• In one series of Peanuts comics, Peppermint Patty and Marcie are caddying for two lady golfers who keep arguing about the score. Eventually, the argument turns violent:
  Peppermint Patty: Look! Mrs. Nelson is climbing the tree! She's climbing the tree to get away from Mrs. Bartley. (Beat Panel with Oh, Crap! expression from both her and Marcie) Oh, I was wrong. She climbed the tree so she can jump on her.

Fan Works

• In Amazing Fantasy, Bakugou runs into Jirou alone during combat training. Eager to get the small fry out of the way before going after Izuku, he charges after her, becoming particularly determined after she manages to uppercut him hard enough to make him bite his tongue and bleed. During his pursuit, she leads him to a stairwell and he's about to pounce on her when Izuku reveals that he'd been hiding underneath the stairs and promptly webs Bakugou to a wall. They repeat the stunt later with an even more pissed off Bakugou, only with Jirou willing to let herself get captured so Izuku can finally knock out Bakugou with a Venom Strike.
• Black Crayons series: In one of the installments, titled A Child's Innocence, Megatron feigns not being in top condition to lull his everyone around him to make them underestimate him should the time come for him to really fight. Annabelle inadvertently convinces him that this backfired when she assumes that Sentinel and Dylan are behind the events in Chicago leading the Decepticon leader to believe he is no longer seen as a credible threat. This leads to Megatron turning on Sentinel.
• In CD-I Super Guns Fight, the evil team uses this against the good team following their crushing defeat in their first major battle. Iron Knuckle gets the Good Team's attention and tricks them into following him into a canyon. Ganon then activates the mines and most of the good team are blown bits, including their leader Fari. The evil team then reveal themselves and shoot the three survivors.
• In Equestria: A History Revealed, during the Equestrian Civil War, Luna attempts this twice with her Nightmare forces. The first time was meant to completely wipe out Celestia's forces in the Battle of Canterlot, allowing them to take an easy victory at first, then bringing in forces three times their size in an attempt to wipe the city off the map. After that attempt's failure and the war's turning point, she attempts this again in a Last Stand, in which she gathered as many forces as she could in the Battle of the Everfree Plains, and attempts to encircle and ambush the enemy forces by relying on Geo Effects and an alliance with the monsters. She would have succeeded this time, if it wasn't for the last minute arrival of The Cavalry.
• In Hybrid Theory, Rip Van Winkle discards all of her soul-bonded bullets except for one she leaves levitating in the center mass of the phased out Lotus Infinite, primed to explode the assassin if she solidifies in order to take advantage of the vampire's apparent moment of weakness.
• The Night Unfurls: Attempted during the battle at the Black Fortress, where the dark elf spear line parted as if to make way for the Black Dogs to enter, only for a giant fireball to wipe out a sizeable portion of the Black Dog army. The tactic would've worked splendidly had the Hunter not sensed the danger miles away and bellowed the men behind him to move away. The Hunter, on the other hand, quickly dove under it, and rushed towards the mage responsible, killing her. From this point, any advantage the forces of the Dark Queen had due to said tactic is lost in an instant.

Films — Live-Action

• Played straight twice in a row in Master and Commander. First, Aubrey tries to lure in the French ship in by having his naval sloop repainted and rebranded, and posing as a damaged whaling ship. The French naturally take the bait and try to haul them in as a prize, and the British raise their colors and obliterate the French privateer's main mast once they're right next to them, rake the deck from behind after the French ship is crippled, then board them. However, they find most of the French crew lying dead and dying on the upper deck and prepare to call it a day... But then the French jump at them. In the end the second instance wasn't enough; Aburey and his crew ultimately are victorious since they were still prepared for a vicious boarding fight.
• The Patriot (2000) has the American Revolutionary army using its reputation of being composed of untrained farmers and such to its advantage. In one battle, they do a volley, and then retreat, luring the contemptuous British forces into a pursuit... which gets the army, which has fled behind a hill only to set up again, a few free volleys. (This is based on Washington using a similar tactic in a real battle.)
• Star Wars:
  • Although it probably was a coincidence, done to Han Solo in A New Hope, when chasing a Stormtrooper down a hallway and running into a whole legion of them... hilariously prompting a hasty retreat of his own.
  • Return of the Jedi:
    • The attack on the second Death Star. The Rebels attacked because they believed the Emperor's Defensive Feint Trap — that the station was incomplete and vulnerable. Instead, not only was the station fully operational, but the arriving Rebels were ambushed by the Imperial fleet behind Endor.
    • It's also done to a stormtrooper by the rebels on Endor; Han walks up to the guard, taps him on the shoulder, and runs around the corner. The guard follows, into a pack of rebels.
    • After that, C-3PO lures a squad of stormtroopers who went in to capture them, then the Ewoks ambushed them from behind.
    • Lastly, the Rebels trick the bunker into opening its doors with a false transmission claiming that they were retreating. Immediately after the bunker sends reinforcements to pursue, said reinforcements are surrounded by Ewoks and a smirking, shrugging Han.
• In Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, Kirk attempts to pull this off. After the Enterprise is fired upon, he has it back away as if it had sensed the Bird of Prey. This buys Kirk some time, as the Big Bad suspects that the Enterprise has a way of tracking his thought-to-be-untrackable ship.
• In The Avengers, Loki pulls this off by letting himself be captured, thereby leading his forces to the good guys' base because of the homing beacon in his staff.
• Under Siege. After Ryback kills several of his men, Stranix gives the order "Do not pursue hostile parties into unsecured areas.". Later in the movie as Ryback is retreating Strannix orders "Do not pursue that man!". His men disobey him and are blown up by a grenade Booby Trap Ryback left behind.
• In Waterloo as in real life, Wellington faked a retreat behind a hill. Behind the hill, his army simply changed formation and waited for the ill-fated French charge.
• In Sin City John Hartigan acts as if he is too weak to stand, falling to his knees so that the Big Bad will hover over him, giving him an opportunity to get stabbed.
• In Braveheart English troops chase 5 lone Scotsmen into an apparent dead end before noticing the much larger Scottish force waiting on the cliff tops.
• Galaxy Quest: In the opening scene, Commander Taggart suspects something fishy when the enemy forces retreat too easily. He turns out to be right.
• In Nothing but Trouble, when Sheriff Dennis Valkenheiser pulls over a car full of drugged-out yuppies, one of them pulls a revolver on him. Dennis begins simpering and begging for his life, before swatting the revolver out of the yuppie's hand with a much larger submachine gun.
• Seven Samurai: Kambei plans the village's defence around this trope by using walls and ditches to block all the entrances to the village from horses, except for the forest road which he leaves open. This means the bandits have to attack through that road to attack the village on horseback at all. He then posts two groups of armed villagers in ambush on both sides of the road, letting a few bandits enter the village before blocking off the entrance and trapping the vanguard inside the village, where they are mobbed down and killed by other villagers. This trick carries the defence through the first two days (the bandits attempt to attack elsewhere for a night raid on the first night but are quickly repulsed), but on the third the bandits (who by now are wise to the trick and have been winnowed down to a sufficiently small number) simply charge into the village in one big block and turns the final confrontation into a running battle in the town square.
• In Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows, the climactic tumble into the Reichenbach Falls starts off right after Holmes details how he fleeced Moriarty of all his ill-begotten war fortunes while trouncing him in Blitz Chess with a Surprise Checkmate. Holmes had previously been savagely tortured by Moriarty by means of a meat hook through the shoulder. Holmes baits the now furious Moriarty (who just threatened to kill Watson and his newlywed wife) with a Sherlock Scan battle, where the inevitable conclusion (given Holmes's hobbling injury) results in Moriarty victorious and Holmes tossed over the ledge. Except it was a defensive feint trap, and Holmes's plan ultimately was a Heroic Sacrifice taking them both over the edge into the Reichenbach Falls as per the Sherlock Holmes mythos.
• Top Gun: The overly aggressive Maverick fixates on scoring a kill on Viper, the lead instructor at Top Gun. He goes in hard, chasing after Viper. Viper, artfully baits Maverick and evades him - until fellow instructor Jester sneaks up on Maverick’s six and “Bingo! Maverick’s dead! You’re outta here, kid!” Good thing, this was a training mission, not actual combat.

Live-Action TV

• In Dark Angel, Max and a small band of transgenics turn an escape plan into this in order to prevent police capture. (Naturally, they allow the police to retreat from the ambush afterwards.)
• John Sheridan of Babylon 5 loved to do this:
  • He used a variation during the Earth/Minbari war gaining him fame/infamy as being the only commander to destroy a Minbari ship in the war. His ship was in fact crippled, and the distress call was very real. The Minbari were known to leave no survivors and if a ship broadcasted a distress call for medical and technological assistance, they would come back to kill the survivors. He just seeded the area with nuclear mines before sending it, so the effect wound up being the same.
  • The first shadow-ship he killed, he lured near a jump gate near a derelict planet, then touched off his own White Star's jump engines inside the existing hyperspace window, making this Weaponized Exhaust as well when the two overlapping hyperspace windows explosively interfered with each other.
• Star Trek: Deep Space Nine - "Favor the Bold": The Defiant emits a fake distress call and feigns being disabled to lure Dominion vessels so that a cloaked Klingon vessel can destroy them. Since the Defiant is also fitted with a (Romulan-loaned) cloaking device, sometimes the two ships switch roles.
• In Community episode Modern Warfare the Chess Club ambushes people by having one member step into a room then immediately run out, where three more wait outside the door. Right before they fall into the trap, Jeff realizes that "He's a pawn..."
• Firefly: Mal wins the duel in "Shindig", while on his back and genuinely injured. What he feigns is giving up the fight... and when his opponent swaggers up to gloat, presenting an easy target, Mal strikes.
• In Power Rangers Wild Force, Jindrax and his brother Juggelo, having endured a decisive attack from the Blue and Yellow Rangers, seemingly run away. Blue and Yellow follow, only to be led to the place where their young friend Kite is being held prisoner by a squad of Putrids.
• Leverage: In "The Radio Job," Elliott sells the idea that he's a city cop trapped in the federal patent office with terrorists by luring the mooks chasing him onto a skybridge, and letting them beat him up in full view of the swarm of law enforcement surrounding the building. He then staggers back into a windowless hallway, stands up straight, smiles, and beckons for the mooks to follow. Once the real cops can't see them, he beats the mooks senseless for the second time in the episode.
• In Mortal Kombat: Conquest, Shao Khan lets Raiden beat the shit out him in order to trick him into entering Outworld and losing his advantage.
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer
  • This is how Kendra dies in "Becoming Part 1" - Drusilla feigns being stunned by a kick in order to draw Kendra close enough to grab her, allowing Dru to mesmerise her and slit her throat.
  • Later used by Buffy herself in "Showtime". She, Willow and Xander allow the Ubervamp to breach the defenses of the Summers home and 'chase them away' in order to lure it to a construction site, where Buffy decapitates it with barbed wire. Note that, in this case, the trap isn't about making the kill easier (the barbed wire is an Improvised Weapon), but about setting up an arena suitable for the real plan - killing the Ubervamp spectacularly enough to inspire and motivate the Potentials.
  • Buffy also uses this as a standard tactic against ordinary vampires and demons; letting them chase her into an area with no witnesses, faking a Twisted Ankle, then killing them. She lampshades this in "Earshot", only to be ambushed by a second demon, implying they were trying the same trick on her.
• Napoléon: Napoléon Bonaparte wins the Battle of Austerlitz by ordering a retreat in order to lure in the enemy forces. His Marshals object that it is too obvious a strategy, which Napoleon states will be the reason it will work: they won't expect it.

Music

• The Sabaton song The Art of War describes this tactic:
  I will run, they will hunt me in vain
  I will hide, they'll be searching
  I'll regroup, feign retreat they'll pursue
  Coup de grace I will win but never fight

Myths & Religion

• The Book of Joshua in The Bible describes how the Israelites used this tactic to capture the city of Ai. Joshua divided his army into two groups, sending one of them under the cover of night to lay an ambush west of the city, while the main force approached from the east. When the army of Ai rushed out to attack them, the Israelites retreated, luring the enemy soldiers out of the city so that the troops lying in wait could rush in and set fire to the city — whereupon the retreating soldiers turned to the offense, trapping the enemy in a pincer movement. (This was made more convincing by the fact that the Israelites' previous attack on Ai had been a real retreat.)
• Used extensively by the Nephites in The Book of Mormon, sending small warbands to lure much larger armies of Blood Knight enemies into abandoning fortified positions and giving chase. Even when their enemies started to wise up to the trick, the Nephites kept it going by varying their approach, such as using their main army as the lure and then circling around their pursuers at night to seize the city walls, or besieging armies that wouldn't take the bait.
• The Aeneid: The Greeks could not breach the walls of Troy through conventional attacks, so Odysseus created a plan based on trickery. The Greek fleet would sail away, and "gifting" the Trojans with a wooden horse as a sign of their respect. King Priam ordered the horse taken into Troy, and once the partying turned into drunken sleeping, a team of Greeks hidden inside the horse slipped out and opened the gate. This is the origin behind the saying "beware Greeks bearing gifts" and the name for Trojan Viruses.
• Arthurian Legend: This is how King Arthur won the Battle of Bedegraine; Arthur's French allies Ban of Benwick and Bors of Gaul concealed their armies in the forest to catch Lot and the other rebel kings by surprise, while Arthur's own forces faced them head on.

Pro Wrestling

• One of Ric Flair's signature attacks is to get on his knees and beg for the opponent not to approach him, also while feigning back pain. As soon as the opponent walks up to him, he gets up and jabs them in the eye (alternatively he gives them a Groin Attack).

Tabletop Games

• Chess: This is a valid tactic to use against overly aggressive players, as pieces that become isolated from support are vulnerable.
• In Warhammer 40,000, this tactic was used against the Tau Commander Farsight by Orks of all people, during the War of Dakka. Such tactics are generally anathema to the Orks, and it's mentioned that the plan would never have worked (or even been attempted) if the Warboss hadn't had a large number of Blood Axes (known for being "sneaky gitz") in his forces. Part of the reason this is so surprising is that one of the Tau's most famous strategies is in itself this, kauyon, the 'patient hunter'. Derived from an ancient Tau hunting technique, it essentially relies on a lure to draw the enemy into a prepared killing zone.
• The Terrans did this to the Vilani fleet at the climax of the Intersteller Wars in Traveller.
• This is the key weakness of frenzied troops in Warhammer - the general procedure goes: berserkers attack weak troops -> weak troops run away -> berserkers follow into the middle of a large number of heavily armed troops -> meat grinder.
• This is how the Inner Sphere achieved its few early victories against The Clans during the Clan Invasion era of BattleTech. Since the Clans uniformly believed War Is Glorious and were all about Honor Before Reason, they disdained tactical maneuvers in favor of direct firefights. Once the Inner Sphere militaries reaslized this, they turned the tables on the Clans a few times, such as the Battle of Luthien, where a group of Smoke Jaguars chased fleeing 'Mechs into what they thought was a battalion of inferior Inner Sphere 'Mechs and began shooting everything they could at point blank range. The only problem with this was the fact that the 'Mechs they were shooting at were really multi-ton bombs made to look like 'Mechs...and that the space around the booby trapped 'Mechs had been liberally seeded with anti-Battlemech land mines. Kaboom.
  • Also occurs during the Battle of Tukkayid. The full details would be too much for one entry, but the basic idea is that the Clans followed their standard tactics - overwhelming firepower and technology delivered lightning fast - and the Inner Sphere responded by denying the Clans the decisive engagements they wanted. IS forces would strike and fall back, constantly looking like they were breaking from the might of the Clans attack, goading the Clans into pursuing directly into another battle line. Attrition wore down the Clans until they couldn't actually proceed at all due to losses, both material and personnel. Only one Clan actually achieved their objectives in the battle, and it was the one Clan that stopped to consider what IS forces were doing and outmaneuvered them.
• In one Time of Judgment scenario from Werewolf: The Apocalypse, the Black Spiral Dancers lure the Get of Fenris deep into subterranean tunnels by retreating from combat. Instead of recognizing the obvious trap, the Get pursue their prey deep into the earth, where they fall to the Wyrm.

Visual Novels

• Fate/stay night: Archer favours these kinds of stratagems, employing them against Caster (using a slow-working attack and letting Caster think she has the upper hand before revealing that it's incoming) and Lancer (leaves intentional holes in his guard to turn dying from Death of a Thousand Cuts into an all-or-nothing defence, allowing him to stall for time until his strategic objectives are met). Rin also employs this against Caster (Letting Caster think she's won a magic duel before revealing she knows Kung Fu).

Webcomics

• The dwagon-donut trick in Erfworld is a "defensive formation" example. Attack the enemy marching line with hit and run dwagons, hide the wounded in a hex surrounded by strong dwagons. Enemy raiders expend all their move breaking through the far-side of the donut, only to discover the center hex is empty. The wounded dwagons are in a completely different hex and the raiders are now out of move and surrounded.
• In Fans!, Rikk leads the crew in the "Python Strike" maneuver — running away. As it turns out, running away is the only "Python" part of it; the other part is laying the smack down on the pursuers.
• In Second Empire, the immense First Empire task force invading Ziragalen gets the worst part of a Curb-Stomp Battle when their Glory Hound, General Failure commander fails to notice he's been led into a narrow gorge (filled with remote mines and snipers above) in his idiotic attempt to destroy the enemy leader personally.
• Wilde Life This is Eliza's preferred method of fighting as she will pretend to be weak to not only lull her enemies into a false sense of security, but also so she can destroy them quickly when she brings out her main power to play.

Western Animation

• From the superhero parody The Ripping Friends: A time traveler attempts to kill our heroes with their greatest weakness: Riptonite. Unfortunately for him, the Ripping Friends made this weakness up for the sole purpose of fooling overeager villains.
• In one Super Friends episode, the Villain of the Week is an Evil Overlord from some ice-covered planet who uses a giant freeze ray to plunge the Earth into an ice age. The heroes seem completely unable to stop him, and eventually, they decide to flee the Earth itself — or so the villain thinks for a few minutes. They then get a message from Superman and Wonder Woman, telling him they're simply hiding out on the moon until they can launch a counter-attack. Now what would be stupider than an enemy who purposely gives his position away? Someone who doesn't realize it's a trap. As the good guys expected, the villain turn his freeze ray on the moon, and Superman (having the strength of the pre-Crisis version) is able to chip a large piece off, reflecting the sunlight in such a way to raise the temperature of the planet to an early Indian Summer and cripple the villain's headquarters by melting it down. He's defeated easily.
• In the Bugs Bunny cartoon "Rabbit Punch", Bugs deals with a boxer by "feint(ing) him out of position." He pretends to faint (that is, pass out unconscious) before the Champ gets to strike, and as he leans over Bugs lets him have it with both fists.

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