Highly Specific Counterplay

And given that the card it counters was banned for several years, it was even less useful than it looked.

In a Player Versus Player setting, some options for counterplay are versatile. Highly Specific Counterplay is the opposite — something designed to counter one specific thing or a small number of specific things. These options may be very powerful in the situations they're made for, but they tend to be mediocre, weak, or completely useless at any other time. For instance, that Sword of Dragon Slaying may be a godsend if your opponent is using one of the two dragons in the game, and mediocre at best if they're using one of the 98 non-dragons.

The high specificity may be explicit ("this can only negate attack X") or implicit ("this negates fire-based attacks" in a game with very few fire-based attacks). It may also change depending on the environment: "this negates fire-based attacks" is no longer Highly Specific in an alternative game mode where fire-based attacks have more representation.

Highly Specific Counterplay may be introduced to curb Complacent Gaming Syndrome without nerfing or outright banning the offending character or strategy. When this happens, the resulting counterplay option is sometimes referred to as a "magic bullet". Highly Specific Counterplay may also be added for Gameplay and Story Integration purposes, e.g. to reflect a character's Achilles' Heel. Other times, the high specificity is accidental. Maybe the developers were planning to add more fire-based attacks, or maybe the counter was introduced back when fire-based attacks were actually common.

Needless to say, Highly Specific Counterplay is susceptible to Crippling Overspecialization — its utility depends on how hard it is to disrupt the original strategy without it, and how often that strategy shows up. 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 Anti-Metagame Character. The counterplay may even be a Necessary Drawback to prevent this element from breaking the game.

In CCGs this trope was traditionally managed by such specific counter cards being kept in a "sideboard" of cards kept separate from the main deck, which could be swapped into the deck in place of other less-essential cards in between games in a multi-game match, so you didn't have to run the risk of playing with potentially useless cards until you knew you'd need them.

May overlap with Situational Damage Attack if the required situation is very rare. Compare Obvious Rule Patch, where the rules are changed to prevent a specific situation. If it's in the form of a spell, it'll often be a Useless Useful Spell. Also compare Antidote Effect, 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 Useless Item if the only thing it could counter is banned or removed from the game. See also Not Completely Useless for non-PVP examples, and This Looks Like a Job for Aquaman for non-game examples.

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Straight examples:

Card Games

• Disney Lorcana: The starter set has Moana, Chosen by the Ocean, whose ability "This Is Not Who You Are" specifically banishes Te Kā cards. There are only two Te Kā cards in the set, and no, you can't gain advantage from banishing your own Te Kā either.
• Magic: The Gathering has several pretty narrow counter cards. However, note that some of these are/were less narrow in specific environments. For instance, Melira's anti-Infect abilities were not Highly Specific in the card's home block Scars of Mirrodin, where Infect and poison counters were major mechanics.
  • City in a Bottle prevents all players from casting cards from the Arabian Nights expansion. Now that there are more than 200 non-Arabian Nights sets, this is Highly Specific. Similarly, Golgothian Sylex gets rid of all Antiquities cards (including itself), and Apocalypse Chime destroys all Homelands cards.
  • Legends brought us the cycle of basic landwalk hosers. Each of these enchantments turns off one type of basic landwalk and does nothing else. All of them are Highly Specific, as even the most common type only appears on 40 creatures, and only a handful of cards can grant landwalk. Landwalk as a whole has been obsoleted, so the basic landwalk hosers will only get more specific with time. However, even within this cycle, Great Wall stands out. It's the one that lets you block creatures with plainswalk, of which there are only four, only one of which was around when Great Wall was released (and it was weak).
  • Shelkin Brownie has the ability to remove "bands with other" abilities from creatures. At the time it was printed, there were literally zero creatures with printed "bands with other" abilities — only a creature that can create tokens with a "bands with other" ability, and a cycle of lands that can grant your Legendary creatures "bands with other legends". The only creature that was ever printed with the ability was a Joke Character card from the set Unhinged, and those Self-Parody cards aren't usable in any but the most casual formats.
  • Melira, Sylvok Outcast protects you from Infect and poison counters, which are mentioned by about 70 (out of over 20,000) cards.
  • Root Cage prevents all Mercenaries from untapping during the untap step, which is a creature type that only appears on around 40 cards. It's not even a good counter, since Root Cage doesn't do anything until the Mercenary has already used its effect or attacked.
  • Ertai's Trickery can only counter spells that were kicked. Less than 200 spells can be kicked, and even then, the opponent has to choose to kick them.
  • Hisoka's Defiance can only counter Spirit or Arcane spells. There are 93 Arcane spells and a few hundred Spirit spells — not as rare as some of the other examples, but still pretty specific.
  • Deicide is designed to counter Gods who are enchantment creatures, of which there are 22. At least it can also exile regular enchantments, even though it does less if you use it for that.
  • 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 still very rare.
  • Creatures with horsemanship can only be blocked by other creatures with horsemanship, and creatures with shadow can only block and be blocked by other creatures with shadow. There are only 36 creatures with horsemanship and 35 creatures with shadow, which effectively makes them both Highly Specific Counters to themselves.
    • Taoist Mystic also stands out as incredibly niche, since all it does it prevent creatures with Horsemanship from blocking it.
  • Teferi's Response can counter a spell or ability, draw two cards and even destroy a permanent, all for only two mana - the catch is that it only works when an opponent is trying to mess with one of your lands. It was printed as a hoser for (the incredibly annoying and quite powerful) Rishadan Port.
• Milles Bornes has Hazard cards that are played to impede an opponent's progress, each of which requires a specific Remedy card or Safety card to countermand. For example, the Out Of Gas Hazard card normally stalls a player's turn; playing the Gas Station Remedy card or the Spare Tank Safety card negates this hazard, and the player may continue accruing miles.
• Muffin Time has a few of these, such as "Shoot It Down", a card that counters "Magical Pony" and nothing else.
• The Pokémon card game tends to introduce counters to dominant cards instead of banning them:
  • The Heatmor from the Dark Explorers expansion has an attack that does 60 damage if the opposing Pokémon is Durant, and 10 damage otherwise. It was introduced to counter Durant Mill decks, but it does have the justification that Heatmor is a predator of Durant.
  • No Removal Gym from the Gym Heroes expansion makes it so that a player must discard 2 cards from their hand to play Energy Removal or Super Energy Removal. It was introduced because these cards were considered overpowered.
• Yu-Gi-Oh!:
  • Exhausting Spell removes all Spell Counters. Of course, this means it's only useful against cards that use Spell Counters. There's also the card Counter Cleaner, which removes all types of counters, and even that's too niche to be played.
  • Return Zombie has an implicit form of this, in that it can only use its effect if you have no cards in your hand right after your Draw Phase. This pretty much limits it to the very small handful of cards that can block your Draw Phase or discard the card you activated during it, most famously Yata-Garasu.
  • Counter Counter can only negate another Counter Trap card. There are plenty of cards that can do that and also negate other things if needed.
  • Legacy of Yata-Garasu is by default okay, since it lets you draw a card. Its second effect, drawing 2 cards if your opponent controls a Spirit monster, is a lot more difficult to pull off. Like the name implies, this card was also meant to counter Yata-Garasu.
  • "Token Collector" can Special Summon itself from your hand or Graveyard if a Token is Special Summoned to the field, destroys all Tokens if it's Special Summoned, and prevents Tokens from being Summoned while it's on the field. Although released in 2018 when cards that summon Tokens weren't very prevalent or useful besides "Mecha Phantom Beast" plays, it became an increasingly popular Side Deck or Main Deck tech in 2021 and 2022 to deal with incredibly strong Token-based engines such as "Adventurer Token" and the "Swordsoul" archetype.
  • There are a number of cards that can only counter one specific card, usually because said card is considered overpowered. It's also worth noting that all of the cards targeted, except Swords of Revealing Light, have been Forbidden at some point in the game's history (and Pot of Greed still is at the time of writing), making their specific counter cards completely useless outside of Traditional Format at those points in time.
    • Anti Raigeki can only counter Raigeki, destroying the opponent's monsters in response.
    • Gryphon Wing only counters Harpie's Feather Duster, and destroys the opponent's spell/traps if you do.
    • Jar Robber negates the effect of Pot of Greed and lets you draw a card when you do so.
    • All White Hole does is protect your monsters if your opponent uses Dark Hole.
    • Call of the Grave can only negate Monster Reborn. The similar Call of Darkness sends all monsters restored with Monster Reborn to the Graveyard and keeps both players from using Monster Reborn as long as the card remains on the field.
    • Weather Report destroys your opponent's Swords of Revealing Light with its Flip effect and lets you conduct two Battle Phases if you did, but is otherwise a horribly-statted monster.
• Due to their philosophy that cards should never be errata'd or banned, Decipher's Star Wars Customizable Card Game and its Star Trek counterpart made extremely extensive use of this trope. Many, many "magic bullet" cards were printed that read something like "Do <X> OR counter <specific Game-Breaker card> OR counter <different specific Game-Breaker card>". It never really worked to curtail Power Creep, because including them did nothing but clog your deck if your opponent wasn't using that specific strategy; it was more efficient to run something busted of your own and dare your opponent to have packed exactly the right silver bullet or lose the game.

Video Games

• Age of the Ring usually does this for the sake of having characters match the source a bit better. For instance, Merry and Pippin's Barrow Blade ability deals increased damage to Nazgul, but only three major factions use Nazgul and only one of them can normally use more than one, and Bolg's increased damage against dwarves is useful against Erebor and nothing else. Taking it a step further is Eowyn's Begone, Foul Dwimmerlaik, which is a spear-throw that deals triple damage against exactly one other unit, the Witch-King of Angmar. That said, this rarely makes these characters bad outside of those specific matchups, as these buffs are usually riders on top of already useful abilities rather than the sole focus of their kit—Eowyn's spear-throw is already pretty good, and the damage buff is just to ensure that she can win what would otherwise be a tricky matchup for her.
• Arcanum: The Vendigroth Device is a weapon that was built with a singular purpose in mind - particularly powerful mages have the ability to seal themselves in a regenerative cocoon at the moment of death to extend their lifespans, and the device exploits the fragile balance between magic and technology to invert the cocoon and make it rip the mage's body apart instead. It was built in the Age of Legends, when magic and powerful mages were ubiquitous, but magic has waned so much since then that there's only a single mage in the game capable of the technique - the Big Bad, Kerghan - for the player character to use it against.
• Baldur's Gate:
  • The Wizard Slayer kit is totally proficient in slaying wizards, and not so proficient against everything else.
  • Several spells are explicitly intended to counter certain types of damage or enemies, e.g. Fire Resistance, Charm Animal, Immunity to Poison, or Control Undead. They are situationally useful, although to efficiently build your spellcaster the Vancian Magic system of the game requires you to swap memorized spells between different area which results in a bit of micromanaging.
  • Downplayed with several weapons that have magical properties intended to fight specific types of enemies (e.g. a bastard sword that counters shapeshifting creatures, a long sword that counters dragons, a long sword that counters the undead, a two-handed swords that counters mind flayers, a shield that is overpowered against beholders), but can still be proficiently used against everything else, although lacking the powerful bonuses of other items (you can use Peridan the Dragonslayer sword against the undead too, but why should you when the Daystar is much more effective against them, and the versatile Flail of Ages is one of the best all-around weapons?)
• Bonfire has the enemies introduced in the version 0.9.35 update, Bloatscorches and Resonant Golems. These enemies were explicitly stated as designed to counter Zhu, who had grown to dominate the meta due to gaining a significant power boost from the previous update. Bloatscorches penalize her style of wearing down the enemy party with weak Area of Effect attacks by blowing up if left at low health, and the Resonance effect penalizes Area of Effect attacks even more directly by damaging the party every time the enemy is hit — unavoidable with Area of Effect attacks. Heroes with strong focus fire capabilities can deal with them without too much trouble, but they throw a serious wrench into Zhu's playstyle specifically.
• Command & Conquer has these throughout the series, as a key part of the Tactical Rock–Paper–Scissors gameplay in fact.
  • Commando units are usually equipped with firearms that let them One-Hit Kill kill infantry units rapidly, but this weapon is all but useless against vehicles and structures. 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 Snipe drivers or call in airstrikes from siege range to make them stand out, but it is still advised for Commandos to steer clear of Anti-Infantry.
  • The German Tank Destroyer in Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2 is perhaps one of the biggest examples of Crippling Overspecialization. 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 Forward-Facing Weapon makes the unit vulnerable to flanking so the Tank Destroyer is widely considered ineffective in its role.
  • Like commandos, 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 strikes. Anti-infantry special forces like Allied Navy SEALS or Nod Shadow Teams have similar weaknesses but have secondary abilities as well. However, they are also hard-countered Anti-Infantry.
  • 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 the Soviet anti-ship series of submarines, Soviet Giant Squids, the Imperial Naginata Cruisers, and Allied attack Dolphins.
• Cursed Treasure 2: The Terror spell normally sends enemies fleeing in, well, terror, but can also be used on towers to counteract the Charm debuff that prevents them from attacking (which only appears in one realm).
• Disney Heroes: Battle Mode 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 Randall completely up-ended the game's meta with his ability to turn invisible (and thus unable to be attacked) constantly, Jumba and the Cheshire Cat were added with skills tailor-made to counter him, while Ian and Fear debuted with a new status effect that reflected damage back onto the user that seemed specifically made to counter equally notorious High-Tier Scrappy Mulan, whose moveset dealt absolutely exponential levels of damage even compared to other characters on the roster at that time.
• Empire Earth: 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 via standard Anti-Air) which were only available to the Novaya Russia civilization, unless playing with custom civs.
• Fire Emblem Heroes: In 2021, the meta was being overrun by units with very high movement, most infamous being Legendary Sigurd, who can grant an extra movement to all of his allies. As a result, IS introduced the new status of 'Stall', which if inflicted will invert any extra movement buffs by reducing the unit's movement to 1 space. What's unusual is that Stall is strictly worse than Gravity, which just reduces movement to 1 without any other necessary trigger. The status was first introduced in an inheritable skill on Pirate Naesala, a premium seasonal unit who didn't otherwise have much to offer. Even despite Sigurd being a High-Tier Scrappy, most agreed that Stall Ploy, which inflicted Stall in cardinal directions, was just too niche and hard to get to be worth it. The status saw much more use when it reappeared in the weapon of free unit Riev, who inflicts Stall on the team's slowest user (often Legendary Sigurd) and any units within two spaces of them. By then, Summoner Duels were making extra movement incredibly powerful, so the status finally had its place.
• Hearthstone:
  • Downplayed by 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 4 of the game's 11 classes normally have access to secrets, 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. It's just the anti-stealth effect that's incredibly specific.
  • Light's Champion has the effect of silencing a demon. Silence is a valuable ability that removes all effects and enchantments from a minion, and the card has a decent stat-to-cost ratio. However, demons are only widely available in two classes, one of which didn't exist yet when this card was printed, meaning it was only effective against Warlocks specifically. Even then, demons tend to have negative effects in exchange for high stats (and even then most of those are one-time effects when they're first played, meaning they can't be silenced), making almost all possible targets pointless to use this on.
  • 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. This card was designed to counter a cheesy Wild Druid combo deck that uses Linecracker, BEEEES!!!, and Earthen Scales to gain thousands of Armor in one turn, but that deck is really bad in most matchups so it's not that common to come across. At least it also works well in single-player missions against bosses with tons of starting Armor, since Blizzard never bothered to make an Obvious Rule Patch against it.
  • Skulking Geist is an interesting case of a card designed as a specific counter that actually found broad success for a little while. It has the effect to destroy all 1-mana spells in both players' hands and decks. It was specifically made to counter Jade Idol, an infamous Druid card known for Gathering Steam while never allowing the user to Fatigue. However, it also became a viable counter to Secret Paladin decks and could incidentally hit a number of useful 1-mana spells like Shield Slam and Potion of Madness. That said, there are faster and harsher ways to disrupt opponents nowadays, so Skulking Geist typically only shows up whenever Jade Idol is a problem again.
  • In the "Unite against Mechazod!" tavern brawl event, Mechazod has an attack called "Kill Lorewalker Cho" which it will only use in response to someone playing the Lorewalker Cho card.
• Mega Man Battle Network: The are a group of damaging chips known as "Anti" chips that act like traps that trigger when opponents use particular chip types. While Anti Damage activates whenever you take a hit from regardless of source, the other Anti chips have far more specific triggers, such as Anti Sword reacting to the use of any Sword chip and Anti Navi stealing the opponent's Navi Chip.
• Overwatch: Torbjorn was reworked in 2018 with a new version of his Ultimate "Molten Core" that dealt more damage to any characters with armor. The catch was, while some characters do have natural armor, there had previously only been two characters with the ability to give out armor to teammates: Torbjorn himself, and his daughter Brigitte. Following Torbjorn's rework, he lost that ability and so Brigitte became the only character that Molten Core could get such high value from (again, aside from the minority of characters with natural armor).
• In Paladins, Moji's Ultimate turns an enemy into a cookie, which she can eat for a One-Hit Kill. This alone isn't an example, but what pushes it into this trope is that it has the additional effect of preventing the eaten enemy from being revived by abilities, which can only be done by one Champion, Terminus, with his Ultimate. So the only situation where that effect is useful is when Moji is on your team, Terminus is on the other team, and both of you have your Ultimates up.
• Pokémon:
  • Moves:
    • Imprison prevents opponents from using any moves that the user also knows. Any set with Imprison effectively becomes a Highly Specific Counter that only shuts down the user's four moves (including Imprison itself).
    • Brick Break removes the effect of three things: Light Screen, Reflect, and Aurora Veil. It also has a decent base power at 75, so it's somewhat useful even if you're not facing a screen user. Psychic Fangs is similar, but is a different type (Psychic rather than Fighting) and is slightly stronger (85 power) but has less PP (10 rather than 15). Since dual-screening (a battling style involving massive use of Light Screen and Reflect) is common in competitive battling for defensive mons, those moves avert the Awesome, but Impractical trope (although Brick Break still seldom sees use because of its weak base power compared to options like Close Combat, Superpower, and High Jump Kick).
    • In Gen I, Counter would only work in response to the opponent using a damaging normal or fighting-type move on the same turn. From Gen II onwards, it was buffed to work with any physical damaging attack, regardless of type.
    • Water Sport is a move which reduces the power of Fire-Type attacks by 50% but which can only be learned by Water-Type Pokémon, 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 Pokémon 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.
    • In Gen IV, Feint is a weak attack which cannot be blocked by Detect or Protect... but if the opponent doesn't try to block, then it has no effect at all. From Gen V onwards, the latter restriction is removed, turning it into a straightforward Unblockable Attack at the cost of making it even weaker. In doubles it's much more useful since it breaks the opponent's Protection move rather than merely piercing it, so it can be used to guarantee that your partner's move hits whether they Protect or not.
    • In Gen VI, the move Powder (learned only by Vivillon) coats an opponent in explosive dust for one turn, causing any of their Fire-type attacks to misfire and damage them for 25% of their total HP. While Vivillon makes a tempting target due to its weakness to Fire, it's also frail enough to be KO'd by moves of other types (especially Rock), and its access to Sleep Powder means that opponents might try to fight it with Pokémon immune to powder-based moves anyway.
  • In Generation I, Normal-types and (due to a bug) Psychic-types are immune to damaging Ghost-type attacks. This ended up only making them immune to a single move, Lick, which is weak to boot. The only other damaging Ghost-type move, Night Shade, ignored type immunities in Gen I. This was fixed in later generations: more damaging Ghost-type moves were added, and Night Shade was changed so that it no longer ignores immunities. (Also, the Psychic-type's Ghost immunity was fixed, replaced with the weakness to Ghost it was meant to have.)
  • Some types make Pokémon immune to specific moves or Abilities:
    • Since Generation VII, Dark-types are immune to opposing moves that gain priority due to Prankster.
    • Since Generation VI, Ghost-types are immune to the three trapping Abilities and 13 trapping moves^note they can still take damage from the non-Normal-type damage-dealing trapping moves, like Fire Spin and Whirlpool, and can even take residual damage from them, but they won't be prevented from switching out.
    • Grass-types are immune to the specific move Leech Seed. From Generation VI, they're also immune to the eight moves based on powders and spores, as well as Effect Spore (which doesn't count as a spore attack).
    • A grounded Poison-type will remove Toxic Spikes from its side when it switches in.
  • Several Abilities that fall under this:
    • Damp, which prevents all Pokémon from using the moves Self-Destruct, Explosion, and Mind Blown. It also prevents the effect of the Ability Aftermath.
    • 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 as of this writing can only be inflicted by three methods^note the move Attract, Gen VIII-only G-Max Cuddle, and making physical contact with a Pokémon with Cute Charm ability. 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).
    • Own Tempo protects Pokémon from confusion, which is more common than infatuation but still relatively scarce. It is later buffed to be able to ignore Intimidate as well.
    • Sturdy in Gens III and IV. All it did was making the Pokémon immune to the four one-hit KO moves. It broke out of this trope in Gen V, where it gained the ability to let the user live on 1 HP if an attack would have brought it from full health to 0 HP.
    • Keen Eye protects the user against accuracy-reducing moves. There aren't a lot of them, and they are rarely seen outside the early game. In Gen VI onward, it also allows the Pokémon to ignore evasion boosts on its target (which generally get banned in competitive play due to making the match devolve into a Luck-Based Mission).
    • Big Pecks protects the user from having their defense stat lowered. Like Keen Eye, these moves are rarely seen outside of the early game, and the few common moves that lower defense only do so via a rare (usually 10%) secondary effect.
    • 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 Pokémon are able to learn, as well as Aurora Veil in Gen VII.
    • Screen Cleaner cancels the effect of a whopping three moves: Aurora Veil, Light Screen, and Reflect.
    • In Gen VI, Zygarde's ability Aura Break affects exactly two other Pokémon, inverting the effects of Xerneas's "Fairy Aura" (+1/3 power with Fairy moves) and Yveltal's "Dark Aura" (+1/3 power with Dark moves). However, its own stats are rather mediocre for an Olympus Mon, meaning that it rarely gets a chance to make use of this. Aura Break largely fell by the wayside after Gen VII gave it the alternate ability Power Construct, which allows it to transform into a Super Mode.
    • 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 Pokémon can learn Rage Powder and Follow Me.
  • In the Uber Metagame, two Pokémon stand out for this reason. Primeape is immune to Sleep due to Vital Spirit, does Super-Effective damage against Dark-types, and outspeeds Darkrai with a Choice Scarf, making it good against Darkrai (and technically Dialga and Crowned Zamazenta, which can easily stand up to it anyways) and terrible at anything else (especially dealing with the several Psychic-type, Flying-type, and Fairy-type Pokémon in the tier ^note such as Mewtwo, Lugia, Ho-Oh, Rayquaza, Xerneas, Solgaleo, and Lunala). Shedinja faints in one hit from anything it's weak to, but is immune to all other direct attacks (but not indirect damage like Stealth Rock or Sandstorm). It just happens that some of the biggest Uber threats, such as Kyogre, have no practical moves that Shedinja is weak to (and Kyogre will remove the aforementioned Sandstorm just by switching in)... (In fact, Shedinja sees more use in Ubers than in other environments for this reason.)
  • In general, when this happens in competitive play, it's a sign that a ban is incoming. An infamous example is Gen VI Klefki, which was the first Pokémon with the combination of Prankster^note causes all non-damaging moves to go first, Thunder Wave^note paralyzes the opponent, giving them a 25% chance of failing to move that turn, Swagger^note doubles the opponent's Attack, but gives them a 50% chance of dealing damage to themselves instead of moving, and Foul Play^note an attacking move that damages the opponent based on their Attack rather than the user's. With Prankster, Klefki was basically guaranteed to get off a free Swagger, could follow up with a Thunder Wave to further reduce the opponent's chances of fighting back, and would then finish them off with a Foul Play boosted by Swagger—not only was this strong, but it was hated for turning fights into a Luck-Based Mission where victory came down to how many times confusion and paralysis decided to trigger. What was the best counter? Numel—an unevolved Pokémon with a lower stat total than most first-stage starters. This was because Numel was the sole Pokémon to possess both immunity to Thunder Wave and the Own Tempo ability giving immunity to confusion, a combo so rare that it actually loses it on evolving, and as a Fire/Ground-type, it even has type advantage over Klefki. The fact that people were genuinely considering running Numel just to deal with Klefki was one of the larger points used to argue for Swagger's ban.
• Shin Megami Tensei:
  • Tetraja, which blocks the Hama and Mudo One-Hit Kill spells and nothing else. True to this trope, it can completely cripple bosses that rely on these skills (especially in games with the Press Turn system) and is completely useless against everything else. Hama and Mudo are considered elements as well, meaning several party members have natural immunity to them without needing a skill.
  • Tetra Break and Makara Break remove Tetrakarn and Makarakarn respectively. Both moves break after reflecting one attack anyway, so in most cases it's better to deliberately repel a weak or nullified attack onto yourself than to waste a moveslot on breaking reflectors.
• South Park: Phone Destroyer:
  • One of Professor Chaos' powers is his immunity to the mind control status effect. This makes him a good counter against Cyborg Kenny and Mecha Timmy, the only two units that use mind control. His second power is to stun and damage enemies when he spawns, which makes up for this niche.
  • Toolshed's charge ability either removes an enemy trap or spawn a Chomper. However, there's few trap cards and units that spawn traps available, so he does the latter in many matchups.
• StarCraft has a couple of these mechanics.
  • StarCraft I
    • 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 Fragile Speedster 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 Anti-Air. 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. However, when the computer uses, they can pull off quick Lockdowns on any of your mechanical units without skipping a beat, making the spell a huge nuisance when they're casting it.
    • 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 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.
    • Protoss Dark Archons' Maelstrom seems to have been introduced for counterplay against Zerg as it only affects biological units. Terran and Protoss players typically won't field enough biological troops to make this Area of Effect stun worthwhile, with Terrans typically not even bothering with infantry due to it faring poorly against the Protoss army.
  • StarCraft II has this but it's much less pronounced to avoid situations like spells that do little to nothing against a specific faction.
    • The Thor was given two different Anti-Air modes during the Heart of the Swarm expansion. Their original default payload for countering light aircraft, and a new High-Impact Payload that is optimal for dueling "massive" ships and massive Zerg fliers, a rare classification for air units. This simply gives the Thor better damage scaling against endgame heavy air, as their original payload is very weak for this use. Thors also have incredible Anti-Air range to match or out-range such units. This trope is thus downplayed here, as the High-Impact Payload has good base damage and most non-massive craft have much less health. High-Impact was added as Thors originally only had Javelin Missiles which were primarily for countering Mutalisk swarms, making Javelins almost definitely this trope as its very rare for any other light air units to be stacked like Mutalisks are, and the High-Impact cannons always have superior single-target damage per second.
    • The Terran Hellion/Hellbat 2-in-1 unit replaces the aforementioned Vulture and Firebat respectively for flexibility, thus reducing this trope. Again, they're best suited to countering light melee units or workers and the later mode is also classified as biological to allow them be healed and thus pair with infantry squads nicely. Hellion mode specifically is made for kiting light infantry or worker raids but is very inefficient for anything without the light attribute. Hellbat form gives Hellions a second life as spearheads in your army against melee charges and can absorb some of the damage other units may take otherwise.
• Super Smash Bros.:
  • In Super Smash Bros. Melee, Marth excels at killing early with the more powerful hitbox at his sword's tip, and has a great combo game on most of the cast. However, if Marth doesn't kill at relatively early percents, he sometimes struggles to kill because his kill confirms no longer work on opponents with higher damage. Meanwhile, Yoshi's a heavy character who can survive for a while, and his unique double-jump armor makes him difficult to combo. While Marth vs Yoshi isn't a super-lopsided matchup per se, Yoshi's strengths sorta just cancel out Marth's strengths. Marth is good at comboing and killing early, while Yoshi is good at escaping combos and living forever.
  • In Super Smash Bros. Brawl, the Pokémon Trainer's Pokémon are affected by type effectiveness. However, Ivysaur's water resistance and Charizard's grass resistance are almost always useless outside of a Pokémon Trainer Mirror Match: The only other character who comes with a water move is Mario with his non-damaging F.L.U.D.D. You can also get Kirby to copy one of Squirtle's water moves or Ivysaur's grass moves, but that's a rare situation.
  • Super Smash Bros. Ultimate: The Hero's Metal Slash command is a One-Hit Kill against a metal opponent, and a pathetic attack otherwise. In competitive play, the only way to even have a metal opponent is if another Hero uses Kaclang. In more casual matches, the metal effect is still not very common (only one item causes it, and Kalos Pokémon League's Ironworks Chamber has a pool with a similar effect). And in Spirit Battles, where Metal Slash would be useful against pre-determined metal opponents, it's programmed to appear very rarely.
  • Ness and Lucas's shared down special, PSI Magnet, as well as Mii Gunner's identical Absorbing Vortex function as this. They give the user the ability to absorb energy projectiles and heal by a significant amount, which can be a godsend in competitive matches where any amount of healing is rare and valuable. However they only work against energy projectiles, so physical projectiles and normal attacks will pierce right through. Against the many characters who don't use that specific type of projectile, some of which still use projectiles, the move won't serve any use. In Ultimate, though, all three versions of the move have hitboxes, which gives the move some extra use against any character - Ness can use it for combos, Lucas can use his to KO, and Mii Gunner can use it for defense.
  • While the Smash community's views of character matchups can be extremely fluid, players eventually determined that Lucas, a mid-tier, has some useful tools for dealing with top-tier Steve, as this video explains in more detail.
• In Team Fortress 2, two of the Sniper's unlockable secondary items are this: The Razorback prevents a single Back Stab from a Spy, while Darwin's Danger Shield gives massive fire resistance and afterburn immunity, reducing the effectiveness of Pyros. But only those two specific mechanics; they do nothing to protect the Sniper from the bullets fired by the Spy's Revolver or Pyro's Shotgun.
• Warcraft RTS series
  • Exorcism in Warcraft II only affects two units in the game: Death Knights and their skeletal minions. The research time and cost to unlock this very niche ability leaves it neglected very often as researching the Mage spells usually takes priority and are much more versatile.
  • Paladins return as a hero unit in Warcraft III and their healing spell and "Exorcism" are rolled into the spell Holy Light. In 1v1 games, the Paladin is only specifically excellent against the Undead faction as Holy Light works as a potent nuke spell against all of their biological units and also heals your own troops. Paladins also make helpful support heroes in team games for healing allies and buffing their armor with Devotion Aura.
  • In Warcraft III, The "Magic" damage type is an inversion of this trope as it is decent as an all-round element that is only hampered by fortified, hero, and medium armor. However, units with Spell Immunity may not be affected by this element at all. This means as powerful as the late-game Units like Gryphon Riders are, Nightelf Dryads are completely immune to their storm hammers and can counter-attack as well.
• In the Wargame series of RTS games (Wargame: European Escalation, Wargame: AirLand Battle, and Wargame: Red Dragon), missile-based Anti-Air units can only be used against aircraft (fixed-wing and helicopters); even an infantry squad equipped with small arms can destroy them if they can get close enough to an unprotected missile launcher. Wild Weasel aircraft specifically target radar-based Anti-Air units. Gun-based anti-air units avert this trope, as they operate on the principle of More Dakka; while they might not be too effective against armored units, they can chew up infantry and soft-skinned vehicles in short order.
• In the original Defense Grid: The Awakening, Missile Towers were extraordinarily powerful with incredibly high damage and range- but could only target air units. There were only 2 types of air unit among the ranks of the alien invaders and they were very uncommon, but they were also so threatening (since they didn't follow the same paths as ground units and any core they stole would be immediately lost forever even if the unit was shot down) that they demanded an overwhelming response. While the staple Gun and Cannon Towers could also target air units, they would also be splitting their fire with oncoming ground units, so it was generally regarded as a good idea to just buy a couple of Missile Towers on any map featuring fliers just to be done with it. This only further solidified flying units as a widely disliked aspect of the game, and in the sequel fliers were removed altogether, with Missile Towers being repurposed as a more precise alternative to Meteor Towers for long-ranged bombardment of ground units.

Tabletop Games

• Burning Wheel: The Feint action in the Duel of Wits minigame is primarily intended to counter the Rebuttal action, leaving the speaker vulnerable to pretty much everything else, including the basic Point and Dismiss "attacks".
• Chess:
  • Castling is specifically to counter the threat created by having the critical king jeopardized when the central pawns are deployed to control the board's center. This leaves the king vulnerable to diagonal pieces such as the bishop or queen. Castling is allowed once per game, which moves the king to one side, safe behind a wall of pawns. It was so useful that everyone would do it manually (sometimes using the "King knight move" that allowed a King to move like a knight once per game) and eventually Castling got made in order to stop wasting time on moves that were always going to happen.
  • 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. It's also the only capture that only a pawn can do: any other piece (e.g. a bishop) in a similar position is not allowed to use it.
• Dungeons & Dragons:
  • Throughout the franchise, the Shield spell has the trait of being one of the few things that can block Magic Missile, an otherwise Always Accurate Attack.
  • The Collar of Tusmit is a magic item with only one effect: it grants its wearer immunity from being decapitated, such as by a vorpal sword.
• The Republic of Rome: The Intrigue card "Mob Incited to Violence" may only be played to counter another Intrigue card played to counter a Tribune (itself an Intrigue card). Only one instance of this card exists in the entire game, but it functions mainly as a deterrent from messing with the Tribunes, since its effects are potentially brutal: depending on their luck, the targeted player may have all of their senators currently in Rome killed by the mob.
• The Lux et Tenebrae Expansion Pack for Res Arcana introduces the Possessed Demon Slayer, whose second ability lets you ignore attacks from Demons. There are only two Demons capable of attacking (three if you're also using the Perlae Imperii expansion).
• Stratego: The Spy (generally the single weakest piece) can capture the enemy Marshal (the single strongest piece).
• Warhammer 40,000: Across versions there have always been limits on the ability to kill individual, specific models in a unit like those with special weapons or a squad leader, or targeting the army leader special characters within certain ranges of their troops. A very small number of units, mostly special sniper characters, over the years have received rules that cancel out those rules and allow them to shoot & kill those special individuals directly.

Discussions and in-universe examples

Anime and Manga

• In Saint Seiya, during the Poseidon arc, Shun fights against Scylla Io, an opponent with multiple fighting techniques that almost succeeds at killing him. To defeat his opponent, Shun manages to create on the spot a bunch of new attacks involving his chain which are specifically made to counter each of Io's techniques (a spider web to entangle the bee, a net to catch the eagle, a spiral duct to strangle the snake, a spiked trap to catch the wolf, and a wrap to stop the bear).

Literature

• In The Unexplored Summon://Blood-Sign, the setting's magic system functions like a card game, except that the "cards" are supernatural entities with minds of their own. One of these entities, the White Queen, is so much stronger than the others that wars to monopolize/bribe/influence her have become commonplace. Eventually one of the few summoners immune to that madness created a new entity that could defeat the Queen and nobody else, making the game less luck-based. It also meant the Queen was freed of attempts to enslave her, so everyone was happy.

Web Video

• The Duel Logs: Very specific counter cards are conversed in two of his Top Ten List videos:
  • "Top 10 Worst Incredibly Specific Counter Cards" discusses bad niche counter cards. Some are victims of Crippling Overspecialization, and others are just bad at their job.
  • "Top 10 Niche Counter Cards in YuGiOh" is about the best niche counter cards.
• Conversed in Nizzahon Magic's "MTG Top 10: Worst Counterspells", where several cards ended up on the list because they were too narrow.

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