Sun Tzu

Appy qi and zheng, the regular and the irregular. This is the left hook in the Gulf War. This is the deception before D-day.

This idea of misdirection reminds me of The Prestige. The pledge is the ordinary, the turn is the extraordinary, the prestige is the victory?

The technique of defeat in detail (basically divide and conquer) too is an instance of this. The force divides so that the opposition divides, and then they rapidly coalesce turn by turn destroying the splintered opposition.