Zombies are not Balanced
Zombies are not balanced(...again). There is so much to talk about I don't even know where to start. They are way stronger than the plants. I was on something around a 7 to 8 game loss streak as the ...
Forum Discussion
The main reason for why playing zombies is easier right now is because starting players first have access to plants, so they play more plants, so a zombie player is likely to be matched against a lower rank plan player who has fewer cards and knows the game less well. The opposite happens with plants. Due to the long wait times, high ranked players are only playing with zombies and thus it is more likely that a plant player will be matched against a higher ranked player.
As far as balancing, I promise you that it might feel unbalanced, but once you get to know the cards and tricks better you'll see that actually it is quite well balanced. Playing creatures second gives plants a very big advantage over zombies and playing tricks first allows plants to buff their own plants and kill zombies before you can buff them or do bonus attacks to finish the game. Once you start getting matches against higher ranked plant players, you'll see just how potent they are, or you may find that yourself as you gain experience.
You should probably know that most veterans consider plants to be the slightly more powerful faction due to some rather nasty tricks they have at the higher rarities, but even just with commons and uncommons they are pretty much on par.
Also, here are a few counters:
Arm Wrestler -> any direct damage or debuf. or Bonk Choy at 1 sun. You can also Combo something like Snowdrop and Iceberg Lettuce. Don't worry if they play it first turn and you don't have an imediate counter, they eventually come up. Another good counter is actually Pea Pod. If they played the wrestler turn 1, you can play your Pea Pod and your's will automatically grow, no questions asked. then they have to deal with it but you can buff it, move it or block it and they are in trouble.
Tennis ZOmbie, ignore its first attack, then just leave it there to fill up your block meter.
Gravestones ->Gravebuster obviously, and if you don't have it then you need to know what it might be (this takes some experience) but its just a question of playing in front of, or not.
Chicken Mascot imp is a risk for the zombie player. If they play it at 3 brains, they run the risk of it bein taken down by something like Shrowm for two plus BUff-shroom (a deadly combo that counters a lot of things) or simply a Zapricot.
While its true that certain matchups are harder, it goes both ways.
great write up gabochidillo
also to add plants have a bunch of mechanics that zombies do not such as strikethrough, team up, splash and freeze.
but there are a couple of problematic cards with zombies, my current deck rarely loses as i keep abusing valkyrie and teleport to one shot kill them for 4 brains pretty consistently.
@marobaro wrote:
great write up gabochidillo
also to add plants have a bunch of mechanics that zombies do not such as strikethrough, team up, splash and freeze.
but there are a couple of problematic cards with zombies, my current deck rarely loses as i keep abusing valkyrie and teleport to one shot kill them for 4 brains pretty consistently.
Zombies have the Hot Dog Imp which is strikethrough, Team Up is easily countered by FRENZY and cards like the chicken stampede and Weed Spray, splash seems good but splash plants like the Lightning Reed are super rare. Freezing is good, but even Brain Freeze can do that. The only special thing plants have is Team Up. But even if you are using Wall-Nuts and defensive plants, the zombies also have the Deadly power to ignore all of it.
I think we are all arguing with Dino, because plants don't get enough credit, and a lot of us long time players have learned how to get wins with them. But ultimately, he is right. Zombies are better. When I'm actively trying to rank up I always play as zombies. They are much more consistent than the plants.
Dino is also right about the Arm Wrestler. He is overpowered for sure. Keeping the same boosting mechanics, but starting him at 1/2 instead of 2/2 would still be very useful but much more fair.
I agree in that I also prefer playing with Zombies.
However, I can't fully agree that they are imbalanced as I haven't found definitive proof of that. The fact that I got destroyed by 4 different plant players in a row playing with different plant avatars against the zombie deck that I've been very successfully playing for diamond and taco league tells me that plants can most certainly counter a good zombie deck when properly played.
Something I could agree with is that zombies are easier to play due to the fact that they play tricks last. With plants there is more need to know what kind of things the zombie player is capable of doing and in having a deck built with the tools to play around them effectively.
For example, that weed spray trick. If you know the zombie player might have that trick, then you avoid over-committing to the board and build your plant deck to assume that you might play a zombie player with that card (and the chickening). That means looking to add buffs to your deck and using them when you see that the zombie player could potentially play it.
By the way, every single card game has cards like this and situations where it feels like "they played this card and there was nothing I could do about it". What this usually means is that you need to play differently so that you don't get into a state where that card destroys your game. There is also the rock/paper/scissors effect where you can build a deck that is specialized to be strong in certain popular matchups but you assume that if you go against a deck with a specific card your deck is just not equipped to deal with it and you just accept the loss. If you see that zombies are using that card a lot, then you build your own deck to avoid being wrecked by it.
Anyway, my recommendation is to play zombies as much as you can, since you obviously feel they are superior. If you continue winning then that is great for you, but at some point you will reach higher level players that will start to beat you and that's the easiest way to learn the weaknesses of zombies and the strengths of plants.
As for Arm wrestler, I consider it a very solid card. It could definitely be nerfed to a 1/2 as GrinningRuiner suggested but I'm not sure it's actually necessary. Time will tell.
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Zombies have the Hot Dog Imp which is strikethrough, Team Up is easily countered by FRENZY and cards like the chicken stampede and Weed Spray, splash seems good but splash plants like the Lightning Reed are super rare. Freezing is good, but even Brain Freeze can do that. The only special thing plants have is Team Up. But even if you are using Wall-Nuts and defensive plants, the zombies also have the Deadly power to ignore all of it.
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In this paragraph you make it sound like all zombie decks have access to these cards all the time and that's just not true. Yes, there will be matchups where the zombie player has exactly the right counter to the play you made but that's how all card games work and that works out exactly for plants too. You can have the counter to their cards just like them. They played the hot dog imp? you can move it, buff your plants, do a bonus attack, set its stength to 0, freeze it, destroy it, etc.. and there is nothing the zombie player can do about any of those (except the buff perhaps). One of the best plays against a deadly zombie is to set their attack to 0, and actually, one of the best strategies is to just leave the zombies with lanes full of 0 strength zombies. A lot of players don't realize at first just how disruptive it is because you can't replace characters and it is far more problematic for zombies because they don't have team up.
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I don't have an iceberg lettuce and even if I did, I would have to draw THAT, AND Snowdrop to stop the Arm Wrestler??? Two cards for one??
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This is actually a combo that gets you a 3/4 and destroys one of their creatures. It's 2 for 2 (you play and keep the flower 1 for 1, then you play the .letucce on their creature and it is killed by the flower without taking damage, 1 for 1). While it's not card advantage, having a 3/4 on turn 2 is very powerful and will most likely turn into card advantage or get in for a lot of damage unless they have something similarly powerful to counter it with.
