Looking for a Plants vs. Zombies Heroes guide to help you build a great deck and improve your strategy? Check out our beginner tips and tricks guide for choosing the best hero, winning battles and getting more gems, here.
It’s been nearly a week since PopCap’s new hit mobile game Plants vs Zombies Heroes released, but it continues to dominate the app store charts as the number one game of the week. The card collecting offering brings an exciting new twist to the Plants vs. Zombies Universe, allowing players take to the battlefield behind a plant or zombie hero of their choice.
PopCap has does a pretty decent job of explaining the mechanics of the game in their tutorial, but if you’ve just started playing the game or are new to the card collecting genre, keeping track of all the heroes, zombie tricks and gameplay elements can be a little overwhelming.
We’ve been playing Plants vs Zombies Heroes since its release and have picked up some useful tips and tricks for building good decks, managing resources, gaining more gems and other general strategies for winning battles. We’ll also be bringing readers more in-depth guides for using various Plant and Zombie heroes along with our favorite Plant vs. Zombies Heroes decks in the upcoming days and weeks, so be sure to check back again for follow-up coverage.
Plants vs. Zombies Heroes Tips And Tricks: Beginner Strategy Guide
As mentioned before, PopCap has done a pretty decent job of walking new players through the basic mechanics of Plants Vs. Zombies Heroes, but leaves you a little on your own when it comes to strategy. Here are some beginner tips and strategies to use whether you are playing as a Zombie or Plant hero.
Decide If You Prefer A Zombie or Plant Hero
You have a choice to play as a zombie or a plant in each game. If you play as a zombie your currency or elixir is brains. For plants, the elixir comes as suns. One the first turn each player gets one sun or brain to play. Each round players get one more sun or brain added (ex: turn one = one brain, turn two = two brains, turn three =three brains)
- Playing as Zombie – zombies get to lay their cards first, but players must remember that Zombies also get to play tricks after the plant opponent lays down his or her cards, so don’t blow all your brains on laying down cards if you have a trick you want to use later.
- Zombie Cards – Cards are played first and can do a few different things: place a zombie in a lane, enhance a zombies’ skill or allow the player to draw more cards.
- Zombie Tricks – Zombie tricks can be played after the Plant defender plays their cards. Zombie tricks can do fun things like allow you to move a zombie to another lane, or make him deadly, meaning it kills any plant it damages after the round is played. Players should always take account of which zombie tricks they hold in their hand and plan their moves carefully so they will have brains to spend on tricks.
- Playing as a Plant – plants get their turn after zombies lay down their cards but before zombies can do any tricks. Plants get to play both powers and cards in the same move.
- Plant Cards – depending on who the hero is, plant cards can do different things. The can: place a plant in a lane, enhance a plant’s skills or stats or allow players to draw more cards.
- Plant Powers – Plant powers are like zombie tricks. Plants get to play these before zombies play their tricks. Powers include these like sending direct damage to the Zombie hero, enhance a plant’s skills or stats, remove a zombie from the playing field or freeze a zombie for that round.
Redraw Any Costly Cards In Your Starting Hand
Before beginning a battle, you are dealt four cards and a special plant power or zombie trick. Players can choose to redraw on any of their beginning cards once before the game starts. A good strategy is to redraw on any card that costs more than two elixirs to deploy – especially if you have all high-cost cards. As mentioned above, in the early gameplay you’re only given a small amount of elixir to work with. If you have too many high-cost cards in your hand you won't be able to play much in the beginning and this could end up hurting you.
Defense Before Offense
Zombies get to lay down their cards first so if a zombie is played in a lane, the best thing to do is play a plant in that same lane to counter the attack. At all costs, you want to protect your hero against attack as winning the game requires completely depleting a hero of their 20 health points. If you are already defending against all zombies in lanes then it’s a good idea to lay more plants if you have them in any open lanes (remember, zombie tricks allow them to move around!) or boost the powers of any weak plants who might get knocked off by zombies during the fight. If you are playing as a zombie, the same rules can apply. Defense comes before offense.
Be Thoughtful When Playing Powers or Tricks
Powers and Tricks only cost one elixir to deploy but my experience is that it’s best to hold off on using powers until mid to late gameplay where you get more bang for your buck – unless, of course, you have no other options.
Learn To Use Elixir Efficiently – How To Choose The Best Cards To Play
With most card collecting games, there is an element of resource management that comes into play if you’re hoping to win. When you are preparing to play cards you want to make the best and most efficient choices you can while getting the best results. For example, if you have two cards that require only one elixir to deploy, look carefully at the cards’ stats before playing them. If one of your cards has a higher health or hit point, you should play it first. This is getting more bang for your buck.
Cards that allow you to spawn additional plants or zombies when played (ex: Disco Zombie or Shroom for Two) are an efficient choice. Other good choices are cards that do more than one thing (ex: Threepeater can fire shots into its own lane and the lanes on either side of it or Spineapple who gives two hit points to any plants without strength).
Plants vs Zombies Heroes Deck Building Tips And Strategies
In terms of deck building, a lot of people have questions about which hero is best or if playing as a plant or a zombie is better. To this, I have to say it just depends on your playing style. As you mess around with different heroes, you’ll discover the ones you feel most comfortable with and it's on those that you should focus your energy. Below are a few tips for building a good deck regardless of your hero.
Save Your Gems For The Good Stuff But Spend The Coins Right Away
One strategy for building a great deck is to get your hands on great cards and that requires grinding them card packs. Card packs come in premium and basic. As a new player scraping the bottom of the pile, you’ll be tempted to spend your first set of diamonds on a basic cards pack or single premium packs, but this would be a mistake.
Like with any card collecting game, the premium packs are where it’s at. You can buy them for 100-150 diamonds at a time but it’s better to hold off and go for the 1000 or 5000 gem packs as you’ll get more packs for the money. Now that might seem like a daunting amount, but trust me, the reward is worth it.
On the other hand, the H coins you gather along the way can and should be used to buy as many basic packs as you can. This will keep you satisfied until you can save up enough diamonds for the good stuff. They will also help you build basic decks for all plant and zombie heroes so you have more opportunities to test them and find the heroes you like best.
Later as you gather more and more cards, you’ll have the ability to “recycle” some of them for lightening bolts, which can, in turn, be used to craft rarer cards you may not be finding in packs. Our advice it to save, save, save those lightening bolts. Do not waste them on anything other than the card you really, really want. As a beginning player, I completely ignore crafting unless a quest requires it, as crafting anything worthwhile won’t be an option till you’ve recycled a considerable number of cards.
How To Get More Gems And Coins In Plants Vs. Zombies Heroes
Complete Quests
There are two types of quests players complete – mission quests and hero quests. Mission quests and Hero quests. You typically have a list of three Mission questions available each day and they can yield you some nice rewards – namely gems. Before beginning a mission battle, I’d make sure to check and see what the Mission quests require to complete them.
The other type of quests are Hero Quests and these are specific to the hero you are playing with. The rewards are smaller but also typically easier to complete so be sure to check those out before starting a battle with a particular hero.
Stay Away From Multiplayer Battles as Long as You Can
As soon as you see the multiplayer battles unlock you’ll probably be dying to get right into them, but if you want to build a good deck it’s better to stick with the missions storylines on a given hero as long as you can. As mentioned above, you can gather a decent amount of gems by playing missions and completing quests and those gems are then used to buy more cards, giving you stronger decks. We recommend you actually try to play with a given hero as long as you can until you get to a place where you can’t win battles any longer. The reason is, as you continue along a heroes story line, you’ll learn more and more about how the cards work with a given hero. Familiarity with decks plays a big role in doing well in battles.
Have you got a great Plant vs Zombies deck or some killer strategies you’ve learned for building decks and winning battles? Share them with us in the comments or email c.harbison@idigitialtimes.com and if we like them, we’ll include them in our next strategy article – with a hat tip to you, of course, for sharing the info with us!
