Zerg Rush/Playing With

Basic Trope: Trying to use a large number of weak soldiers to overwhelm your opponent.

• Straight: The Dark Lord sends an massive army of weak goblins to overwhelm the Shining Ones.
• Exaggerated: The Dark Lord sends an entire nation’s population of civilians after the Shining Ones.
• Justified:
  • The Dark Lord’s goblins breed like rabbits, but their physical abilities are inherently limited.
  • The Shining Ones can defeat anything the Dark Lord can throw at them one-on-one, but they cannot rely on raising more of them. The Death Lord can.
  • The Dark Lord's military backbone is composed by magically animated constructs. (like Dem Bones or Golems) They are plentiful, easy to replace and can be rebuilt on the spot if the need arises.
• Inverted: The Dark Lord sends a few of his most powerful trolls to crush an entire Shining Ones army.
• Subverted: The Dark Lord’s goblins are actually very good fighters by themselves, and he sends them in numbers to demoralize the Shining Ones.
• Double Subverted: The goblins reproduce very, very slowly, so after defeating his army, they can’t be replenished.
• Parodied:
  • The Dark Lord sends his dust bunny army to bury the Shining Ones.
  • Zurg Rush.
  • The Dark Lord sends an army of Leeroy Jenkins after the Shining Ones.
• Deconstructed:
  • The Dark Lord is so committed to victory that he doesn’t care about mass death of his goblins, causing his massive army to rebel against him.
  • Sending the goblins against the Shining Ones only results in them being obliterated without even touching the Shining Ones.
  • The massive casualties suffered by the goblins severely depletes the Dark Lord's armies, making the Shining Ones' victory all but inevitable.
  • Since goblins are so plentiful, the Dark Lord has no problem strapping bombs to them, making them horrifyingly radioactive, and/or infecting them with a veritable bouquet of incredibly virulent diseases before sending them into battle against the Shining Ones. The Shining Ones can easily defeat goblins in conventional combat, but the Dark Lord's ruthless tactics make it even more unpleasant than usual for everyone involved.
• Reconstructed: The Dark Lord actually preformed a thorough tactical analysis of the situation and came to the conclusion that attacking en masse would have the greatest chance of success, and the rapidity of the conquest would result in less casualties in the long term and keep morale high.
• Zig Zagged: The Dark Lord's ground forces storm towards walls of the Shining City, only to stop short of the walls and send a few highly trained specialists to tear down the walls. In the mean time, an entire second army tunnels below the walls and starts a Zerg Rush on the castle inside the walls of the city.
• Averted: The Dark Lord’s armies are moderately sized and of moderate power.
• Enforced: “If we make the Dark Lord’s goblins individuals of worth, the hero’s might lose sympathy for killing them; give them a hive-mind.”
• Lampshaded: “Why do our enemies always choose quantity over quality?”
• Invoked: "Even though we can't win, let's charge them now and take as many as we can with us."
• Exploited: The Dark Lord orders an untrustworthy general to Zerg Rush in order to move him out of the way.
• Defied: The Dark Lord marches towards the Shining City with his army, seeing only a small group of defenders is present. Despite this, he carefully plans his assault.
• Discussed: "Should we charge the city now, sir?" "No, we would get slaughtered if we don't plan this carefully."
• Conversed: "An army of goblings are attacking handful of humans. Most of them will die before they win."

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Charge back to Zerg Rush, comrades! They can't kill all of us!