Plants vs Zombies Heroes: Starter Deck Building Tips, Tricks & Strategies

Starting from scratch, building a competitive Plants vs Zombies Heroes deck takes time, patience, and understanding. Here are some starter tips.

Plants vs Zombies Heroes is a digital collectible card game all of its own. It uses the deck-building optimization and mechanics of Hearthstone while embodying the lane-based combat style of Plants vs Zombies. To succeed, you need to tailor your starting decks to both your strengths and the opponent’s weakness in multiple lanes to make sure you can, eventually, strike the opposing hero’s health down to zero.

In this Plants vs Zombies Heroes guide, I will be talking about the general tips and tricks necessary to build up a deck from scratch. It’s intended for those who don’t have dozens or hundreds of dollars to throw at gems to buy packs: straight-up beginners. There are certain things to look out for, certain things you’ll need to avoid, and certain ways you need to spend the resources provided to you throughout the game.

If you’re looking for deck build strategies for specific hero builds, we will be providing those in the future. For now, here are some tips, tricks, and general deck-building strategies for Plants vs Zombies Heroes!

Complete Your First Sets Of Hero Quests Early

There is no quicker way to get rare cards (or better) for your starter heroes than to push through their hero quests. These can be done at any time in tandem with the thrice-hourly quests, and help to build an understanding of what it’s like to play that class.

Each of the hero quest lines in Plants vs Zombies Heroes starts out by using that hero’s superpower, then moves on to you using synergy combos that play to the hero’s natural deck-building strength, and ends with the opportunity for at least a Rare, Super Rare, or Legendary card at the end, as well as a fair number of Uncommon cards.

Rewards for completing these quests include gems (it’s important to save these up; more on that later), crafting energy, Rare cards and eventually a six-card pack dedicated to the two card classes that hero uses. Considering you start out with just the most basic of common cards for each class, these quests become demonstrably valuable to getting the ball rolling, making them your first stop on the way to making a competitive deck.

Push Through Both Plants & Zombies Campaigns…To A Point

While the hero quests will get you some of the better cards in the game, Plants vs Zombies Heroes is about creating full decks from top to bottom. To complete your sets of common cards, you need to buy up as many basic packs as possible. The best way to earn the 100 Hero Coins necessary to buy them up is to rush through the Plants and Zombies missions, with each win netting you 15 coins and each boss battle earning you 100.

However, there is a major caveat to this strategy. The first ten mission sets of five for each Plants vs Zombies Heroes campaign are fairly easy, with the AI essentially rolling over on your way to victory. As someone who has completed dozens of mission sets down the line as part of the soft launch (before the reset), at the 11th mission mark, the game’s missions become extremely difficult. In certain encounters, the AI even starts bringing out multiple Legendary cards in opposition.

That’s why it’s important to grab as many of these early Plants vs Zombies Heroes missions as possible until they start to become a challenge. You will absolutely need to earn those quest gems reliably through these missions, as doing so through multiplayer presents multiple problems.

First, most multiplayer participants are doing ranked battles. As you can lose stars at higher echelons of Plants vs Zombies Heroes leagues, you don’t want to use your weaker alternate decks necessary to complete those quests at the risk of losing all your progress at your current online level.

In summation, the best way to build up the basics of what will eventually be a strong deck comes through early mission hero coins followed by online play hero coins.

Play Online Early For Easy Gems, Better Education

The best part about the first single-digit levels of ranked multiplayer Plants vs Zombies Heroes play is that the stakes are so low. You don’t lose stars, the first five levels require only five stars to advance, and you get both hero coins in completed games and gems for advancing up levels. You even get hundreds of gems for advancing to the next league level, which is huge when trying to earn and use premium packs.

That’s one big reason why you need to play online. The long-term reason, ultimately, is that you will only learn how to make competitive Plants vs Zombies Heroes decks once you see how yours can be countered by other players. Additionally, you will get a better understanding of the pros and cons for heroes that you’re facing off against, establishing a better knowledge of how the game works on a grand level.

Finally, as you run the gamut of online heroes, you will even start to see the splits in strategies in which decks are created. Most decks have multiple ways of building towards a synergistic style, whether it be an early zerg rush, early sun for high mana cards, self-healing preservation, trick-based gameplay or otherwise.

Don’t Touch Gems Until You Save 2,000 (Or, At Least, 1,000)

Because of the number of heroes you get access to, as part of the Plants vs Zombies Heroes starter package, you will get an easy flow of gems through hero quests and early online leagues. It will never be this easy again, as after that initial first thousand of so gems, they will only be earned through competitive levels of multiplayer leagues and through quests earned every three hours.

If you don’t plan on spending dozens and hundreds of dollars on special hero pack offers or other card sets, it is in your best interest to save up until you hit 2,000 gems. That will get you access to the 20+3 Premium Multipack, which guarantees you at least one Super Rare card and 138 new cards in total.

It will take some time and patience to hit 2,000 gems, but during that time you will get a better understanding of the six different Plants vs Zombies Heroes characters you have access to. Furthermore, you may even get access to a new hero in the process, which will unlock more gem opportunities and more opportunities to find the primary hero right for you.

Early Failure Helps Build Later Success

Unless you throw your money at Plants vs Zombies Heroes, you will not instantly become a great player. In fact, you need to embrace the early failure in more ways than once.

To earn all of your starters, you need to play dozens upon dozens of games. Not win, not even complete; you need to just play them. One way to rush through this process is to concede defeat.

Not only does that make it easier for you to unlock those new heroes, but with enough losses in a row, Plants vs Zombies Heroes will feel sad for you and just hand you a Premium Pack to unlock for free. You get to increase the strength of your card collection all while completing the task necessary to help you unlock your characters. It’s a great way to kill two birds with one stone.

Eventually, Make Two Decks For Each Hero

As previously mentioned, with more online players you encounter, the more you’ll learn about what you like in a deck and what you wish to eventually get with future characters. However, the deck you start out with may quickly become outdated the more cards you get. If your primary Beast deck, built for pet-based synergies, isn’t aided with the cards you happen to earn, perhaps it’s time to break out a high health, high damage, late-game deck instead.

That’s why it’s crucial, in the early stages of a creating a Plants vs Zombies Heroes primary deck, to make a second for each of the characters you play often. It helps to know which styles of gameplay work well against online opponents, and the only way to do that is to explore the options that you have.

Cycle Back To Older Heroes Once You Earn More Cards

When I was blasting through the soft launch of Plants vs Zombies Heroes, I had mained a Green Shadow deck through the first few months I played. I had established a deck that would create a soft defense to hide plants I was slowly, but surely, making more powerful with buff bonuses. After a certain level of gameplay, however, opponents found holes in the defense, and exploited them. I needed to adapt, and fast.

That’s when I explored other heroes, looking at the new options I had with the cards earned from weeks and months of 100-gem Premium Packs. That’s when I looked to Wall Knight, someone who I’ve now taken as a starter Hero as part of the reset.

With the new card collection at my disposal, including some Super Rares and a Legendary available from his two separate classes, I now had a deck that let me build a quick wall of nuts (including in the water lanes), a Spineapple to give all those defensive lanes attack strength, a Mirror-Nut aimed to attack the hero for 2 damage done to each nut, and Smackadamia to top off every nut’s max health by two. Pair that with some Solar synergies hiding behind those nuts, including Venus Flytraps healing Wall Knight and Pepper M.D.’s gaining extra strength and health from those heals.

Next: What Is Plants vs Zombies Heroes? A Starter’s Primer

Not only did Wall Knight not provide those options early on with my play, but I didn’t even like the strategies that hero had in the first place. Relying on defense and building offense slowly relies on maintaining those defenses, which only come later in this deck. That’s why it’s imperative to cycle back to previous Plants vs Zombies Heroes characters that you passed up earlier. Not only may you find their new offerings viable in online play, but you may wind up with the best deck you can possibly have.