Anyone who thinks Plants are balanced...

I would agree with almost every word you wrote if not for:

1.) Forget-Me-Nuts

2.) Brainana

3.) Dark Matter Dragonfruit

There are other cards that can ruin zombie plans, but these ones really throw of your resource allocation math.

So I agree that:

1.) The zombie/trick phase split often makes zombies a little trickier to play;

and 2.) in part because they’re “trickier,” zombie/trick decks have a lot of creative potential.

But I think the three cards listed above prove how hard it is to take this information and assert that “Zombies are better.”

Sometimes Occum’s Razor applies. (Simplest = best.)

It's berry clear what's the main issue. 

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@npgibbs wrote:
It takes a super power from SF to get ahead of the sun count while a gourmet trick x 4 of uncommon quality gets any brainy Zombie there.

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A Super Power or one of several sun-producing plants.  Yes, they can be destroyed, but they can also be pumped up or even simply block a lane.  Many of them also get Team-Up, which is a rather nice perk.

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@jj48car wrote:

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@npgibbs wrote:
It takes a super power from SF to get ahead of the sun count while a gourmet trick x 4 of uncommon quality gets any brainy Zombie there.

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A Super Power or one of several sun-producing plants.  Yes, they can be destroyed, but they can also be pumped up or even simply block a lane.  Many of them also get Team-Up, which is a rather nice perk.

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Yes they can be destroyed. But after seeing HG drop an Octo Zombie on turn 3 I laugh at any topic claiming plants are balanced. Zombie players are capable of some of the most outrageous tricks and unfortunately they can occur very early in the game.

Ok, yes, Zombies have a few ridiculous combos.  Plants have their entire decks consisting of nothing but ridiculous combos.  

The problem is, most well-tuned Plant decks aren't playing against the Zombie deck; they're playing against themselves.  If the Plant deck works properly, it is 100% guaranteed to win, regardless of how well or how poorly the Zombie deck works.  The only way for a Zombie deck to win against them is for the Zombie deck to work well and the Plant deck to perform poorly.

I'm also curious as to how an Octo Zombie got out on turn 3, and how repeatable it is.  Because I do repeatedly see Plant players play Lily of the Valley on Turn 2, followed by a Doubled Mint and +2/+2 power on Turn 3, for a 5/6 plant that's going to double every turn.  I regularly see Berries and Freezing decks devoted entirely to making sure that the Zombie player doesn't get to do anything all game long.

Yes, Zombies have some potent combos, if they manage to get all their cards together, but Plants have far more synergy in their theme decks, and often synergize with actual game mechanics rather than just arbitrary keywords.  The only Zombie decks that even come close to that level of synergy are Sports decks, and that's really just because of how ludicrous Invulnerability is.  (Personally, I think all cards that currently make a Plant or Zombie invulnerable should instead just give it Armored 2.  Still very useful, but at least possible to overcome with enough work.)

I laugh at posts that claim that one instance of a powerful Zombie combo completely balances against the very repeatable power of Plants.

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@npgibbs wrote:

Yes they can be destroyed. But after seeing HG drop an Octo Zombie on turn 3 I laugh at any topic claiming plants are balanced. Zombie players are capable of some of the most outrageous tricks and unfortunately they can occur very early in the game.

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Only for 1 combo? you can called the whole saga unbalanced? ._. I'm sure that even that, it's quite difficult to achieve, many other things can be achieved more easily. 

I have 4 octo zombies from the beginning, I always get them in premium packs, I never managed to use them more than with a deck of many tricks with boogaloo and play he on turn 8, so, if you discover the way to play on turn 3, please tell me, lol,  i want to have that fun  and at least get profit of Octo. 

Forget it, it's not worth to try, I remembered that octo is beastly, so, obviously HG got him from chest, what is quite uncommon, It is not as such a combo or game strategy. It's not even worth it to take as an example,  it's 1/100 .

You know what I've noticed while playing?  A lot of my opponents are using zero removal.  None.  I mean, your example of a doubled mint that was Lily'd and the +2/2...  A deadly could kill it.  Or alien ooze.  Or any number of combinations from a pretty deck that probably could have taken out Lily along the way. Or just keeping Lily off the board like you should have.  

But, none of that happens.  It's all zombies and environments.  

I don't know if it's the same from there zombie side.  But I know I will most of my games and could lose a lot more of people would carry some removal in their deck.

Octo Turn 3 is easy. (I said easy. Not reliable.)

You say your opponent used Chest. So (s)he probably also used Medula Nebula, which could come out turn 2 w/Terror Former? Chest/Nebula is one of the truly insane zombie combos on the surface: together they’re broken; apart they’re hardly worth playing. (I used to try, but no longer do it in any of my competitive decks.)

So +2 brains from Chest (assuming its cost was reduced). +3 from Vendor (assuming its cost was reduced and it was played on chest). Presto. 8 brains turn 3.

The reason Turn 2 Bad Moon Rising is much, much trickier than Turn 3 Octo Zombie is that you literally can’t go through Nebula.

So, OK: “Whoever thinks Zombies are balanced has never seen Turn 3 Octo.”

Here’s my counter. “Whoever thinks plants are balanced has never seen their tried and tuned Ult. deck beaten by vanilla beans & bounce by the EA AI.” (For those of you not in the know, by vanilla I mean “no abilities...”)

Are we having fun yet? :-)

@daalnnii, @everonewhoisntplayingremoval: You gotta pack removal, guys. Come on!

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@daalnnii wrote:

You know what I've noticed while playing?  A lot of my opponents are using zero removal.  None.  I mean, your example of a doubled mint that was Lily'd and the +2/2...  A deadly could kill it.  Or alien ooze.  Or any number of combinations from a pretty deck that probably could have taken out Lily along the way. Or just keeping Lily off the board like you should have.  

But, none of that happens.  It's all zombies and environments.  

I don't know if it's the same from there zombie side.  But I know I will most of my games and could lose a lot more of people would carry some removal in their deck.

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I carry removal in my deck, but there's no guarantee that you'll always have a removal card when you need it, especially in the earliest turns.  I suppose I could go the route many Solar Flare players do and just make 90% of my deck removal and never actually play any Zombies, but at that point, why bother even playing the game if instead of trying to win I'm just focusing on preventing my opponent from playing at all?

Furthermore, the existence of removal doesn't prevent cards and combos from being overpowered.  Suppose there were a 1-cost, 1/1 card with the ability, "Start of Turn:  You win the game."  Would that be balanced simply because a lot of removal cards could wipe it out before next turn?

@jj48car There are several cards with that ability. One I think is called QDCM. One is called Astro-Shroom.

That's why I provided a much easier to come by it with deadly...  But, control decks are a thing.  They're a thing in just about every card game.  It may not be the finest to play or play against, but they are legitimate strategies.  

That said, it's always against plants.  Is Lily still really that much of a problem?  There are so many ways to kill that card the turn it's played, it's ridiculous to even bring it up.

If you are going to say the entire deck plants have access to is OP you really need to give an example instead of rhetoric.

And if the takeaway from playing an Octo Zombie cool story is the Octo Zombie then you are missing the trees in the forest. The point of the story is:

1. He managed to generate 7 brains on turn 3. Seven. And it was not an inmpossibly hard combination. With reduced brain cards and evolving zombies sitting on a Nebula you can generate a higher than turn brain count in a way that isn't difficult.

2. Teleport IS a problem. It breaks the mechanics of the game. The entire reason why Zombies get 2 cycles is because you are only supposed to play tricks on the last cycle.

But I see the pro Zombie players are not touching that point with a 10 foot pole. It is one thing to see a Zombie player get to 11 brains on turn 6 and then drop a huge trick but it is another when Zombie players can beat the brain count and then drop a high brain Zombie on an open lane during the trick phase that will either kill you right there and then or give you nightmares to deal with in the next round.

Being able to play Zombies on the trick phase needs to go away.

Being able to take your health above 20 needs to go away. 

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@puntwothree wrote:

Octo Turn 3 is easy. (I said easy. Not reliable.)

You say your opponent used Chest. So (s)he probably also used Medula Nebula, which could come out turn 2 w/Terror Former? Chest/Nebula is one of the truly insane zombie combos on the surface: together they’re broken; apart they’re hardly worth playing. (I used to try, but no longer do it in any of my competitive decks.)

So +2 brains from Chest (assuming its cost was reduced). +3 from Vendor (assuming its cost was reduced and it was played on chest). Presto. 8 brains turn 3.

The reason Turn 2 Bad Moon Rising is much, much trickier than Turn 3 Octo Zombie is that you literally can’t go through Nebula.

So, OK: “Whoever thinks Zombies are balanced has never seen Turn 3 Octo.”

Here’s my counter. “Whoever thinks plants are balanced has never seen their tried and tuned Ult. deck beaten by vanilla beans & bounce by the EA AI.” (For those of you not in the know, by vanilla I mean “no abilities...”)

Are we having fun yet? :-)

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Unfortunately I forgot the sequence but he did not get the most ideal scenario because when I tried to recreate it he could have done it on turn 2.

He played HG superpower on turn 2 and not 1. Everything in his hand cost 1 less. He would have had 1 brain left so he could not play nebula. He has Interdimensional, Teleport, Buried Treasure.

I remember him having Interdimensional on Nebula and when he teleported that changed to something I cannot remember right now. I think he also played a sports zombie at a reduced cost which helped him generate brains. I wish I wrote it down but it was impressive. Well played sir, well played.

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@daalnnii wrote:
I just disagree. Both sides have some crazy combos that can seem overpowered, but get beaten everyday and have weaknesses in their own ways. The problem a lot of people have is that there may not be an answer in the style of deck you're running, so it's viewed as overpowered.

The other things people don't generally consider when coming up against these combos:. They don't always work because of card draw. For every time you've lost to that combination, you could have three times you've beaten that exact same deck and didn't even realize it because their cards just weren't there when they needed. There is, in fact, a luck aspect to this game.

There are certain decks that are stronger than others, that's a fact, and I would like to see a balance pass in the future to either bring care in line with others of their rarity, or just to change this stale meta as a whole; but that isn't too say I find any one mechanic to be so overpowered it can't be beaten. It's really hard to balance a game where luck, the player disparity in both experience and cards, and counter decks exist. Speaking from my own experience as someone with pretty much every plant card, I've beaten with and been beaten by just about every strong strategy out there. The game is in an overall good place, just a boring one right now.

As for teleport and over healing... They're both very strong mechanics that do work outside the normal game mechanics, but I wouldn't call them overpowered either, especially considering both sides have one of them. (In the case of teleporting, two actually). They're just things that make the game now interesting. Not a bad thing.

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To be fair would you provide a concrete example of an OP combo in the plant world?

The wonderful (and frustrating) thing about the game is the randomness. It is this that is the ultimate equalizer no matter how legendary your hand is. I have made it to UL 5 or 6 times and I have been beaten by the simplest of decks because I got behind in the early rounds. And I always try to get a 1 sun card to start just in case I get hit with a Ninja or Con Man or...

But EA in an effort to create awesome cards created some illogical ones. To me the poster child for illogical is Intergalactic Warlord. To buff every card currently has and will have is unreasonable. I posted my screenshot of 50 health using imitator + astrovera.

It is like a comic book where the writers keep trying to come up with more powerful characters to keep the reader engaged. Then it gets Thanos ridiculous.

I'll show you two of my more simple decks that have had flawless victories that can SEEM overpowered on the receiving end.  Under the right circumstances, they have both lead me to flawless victories with more health than I started with...  If say that could definitely seem overpowered if you're the one I was facing.

If that deck doesn't float your boat for not even letting them to my hero, maybe this will

@npgibbs I don’t get it.

1) You say Terror Former was Turn 2.

2) Nebula cannot be played Turn 1.

3) Nebula cannot be played Turn 2, unless Terror Former has been played Turn 1.

4) You say there WAS a Nebula in play.

Are you saying, 5) Nebula was played, and somehow your opponent generated a positive brain-count with it, even though it wasn’t in play at the time Interdimentional Zombie was played, and that all of this happened on Turn 3?

It seems far more likely that you miscounted, and all this went down turn 4.

No offense.

Like I said, turn 2 Dark Moon Rising does not use Nebula. It does not use Interdimentional Zombie or Chest or even Brain Vendor. You need multiple copies of Mustache Waxer + Terror Former in your opening hand. It’s very, very, very statistically hard to pull off. But it is potentially a Turn 2 win, which is at least tied for the fastest in the game.

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@puntwothree wrote:

@npgibbs I don’t get it.

1) You say Terror Former was Turn 2.

2) Nebula cannot be played Turn 1.

3) Nebula cannot be played Turn 2, unless Terror Former has been played Turn 1.

4) You say there WAS a Nebula in play.

Are you saying, 5) Nebula was played, and somehow your opponent generated a positive brain-count with it, even though it wasn’t in play at the time Interdimentional Zombie was played, and that all of this happened on Turn 3?

It seems far more likely that you miscounted, and all this went down turn 4.

No offense.

Like I said, turn 2 Dark Moon Rising does not use Nebula. It does not use Interdimentional Zombie or Chest or even Brain Vendor. You need multiple copies of Mustache Waxer + Terror Former in your opening hand. It’s very, very, very statistically hard to pull off. But it is potentially a Turn 2 win, which is at least tied for the fastest in the game.

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I cannot remember. I wish I could. But I am sure it was in turn 3. I am not offended (easily) so don't worry about it.

Look at the big picture - if he played Terror on turn 1 you can see a path to getting 7 brains on the third turn by playing Nebula on turn 2 and having a Vendor, Interdimensional, and teleport. It is not like this is impossible or even really difficult - HG can produce a tremendous amount of brains by playing Terror. And to give that Zombie access to a teleport makes it dangerous.

But if he did it on turn 4 does that make it go from unacceptable to acceptable? Probably not.

I have been beaten badly by many decks in my time playing this game. Some of the most brutal coming at the hands of the insane scaling pet decks. Some losses you can understand but some are annoying.