Buff Explanations

Melon-Pult: Melon-Pult is currently in an awkward spot thanks to its direct competition against Snapdragon and how clearly worse it is. +2 health just doesn't at all compensate for the increase of cost by 1, leading to Snapdragon almost always winning over Melon-Pult.

By giving Melon-Pult a huge buff in stats but slightly nerfing the splash damage, Melon-Pult now no longer directly competes against Snapdragon and acts more like a well-statted plant with a minor benefit, similarly to Aloesaurus. This also makes Melon-Pult much better as a dry plant by being an on-curve threat that you can simply throw on the board to apply pressure or push the advantage.

Sap-Fling: Oh boy does Sap-Fling struggle against Smarty's much better 6-drops. Brainana and Winter Melon have much stronger abilities and even Tricorn is better by simply having tons of pure stats.

By buffing up Sap-Fling's stats to 7/5, it is now a slightly under-curve plant with a moderate ability, separating it from the strong abilities but weak bodies of Brainana and Winter Melon while also being a safer plant than Tricorn thanks to its immediate ability.

Morning Glory: A 1-cost 3/3 sounds nice, but for how late you get it into the game, it really leaves a lot to be desired. Simply increasing the buff to +2/+2 and making it activate when you've made only 5 sun should help Morning Glory's ability be much more impactful in the late-game.

Metal Petal: Metal Petal is simply outclassed by basically every sun-producer in the game. Even putting aside Metal Petal's awful stats, +1 sun on Turn 5 is simply proportionally less valuable than +1 sun on Turn 2. By buffing its stats to 3/6, it now acts as a safer but less rewarding ramp option with on-curve stats for the cost.

Torchwood: Torchwood is uniquely bad due to how it's entirely stuck to pea decks while still being terrible even there. It is exceptionally inflexible even as a synergy card since other cards dependent on synergy can at least attack or synergize with themselves.

Torchwood can now buff the strength of any non-Pea plant by +1, making it slightly more flexible and usable outside of Pea decks. Torchwood also gained an additional health point, making it slightly better at protecting the plants behind it as well and making it marginally better in both normal decks and Pea decks as well.

Tennis Champ: Its base stats of 1/1 are just awful and almost entirely undoes the benefit of its ability. You can very easily just ignore a Tennis Champ just because it'll become a useless block charger on the next turn. Giving it the Mini-Ninja treatment of increasing its stats to 2/1 but nerfing the buff to +2 should significantly help Tennis Champ, letting it be a consistent threat even after the first turn.

Space Pirate: Space Pirate's fragility and lack of a gravestone makes it too weak to take over Stealthy Imp. Raising its health to 3 but dropping its base strength to 2 and raising the Anti-Hero to 3 to compensate should at least make it a decent sidegrade to Stealthy Imp, trading the Gravestone for toughness and evasiveness.

Trapper Zombie: 3/3 stats and a weak environment are not worth 4-brains. Sneaky is already overcrowded with 3-cost gravestones, so a simple +1/+1 buff should do.

Medic: Medic's poor stats are just not worth the healing. Buffing it to 3/5 so it has on-par stats should make up for it. It also allows Medic to synergize with itself by healing other damaged Medics back up more consistently.

Trash Can Zombie: Trash Can's low strength makes it hard to meaningfully take advantage of its invincibility. Simply raising its strength to 3 should make it a sort of sticky zombie that can win a trade, block damage, then be buffed later.

How the FUCK are we in goddamn 2026, and I'm STILL hearing unironic suggestions to nerf shamrocket?! I swear, FryEmUp's rant about how shamrocket should cost FIVE SUN has permanently broken people's mind about how they view removal cards in PvZH (No offense to Fry but that take was still really bad).

Buff Explanations

Chomper: Chomper is badly outclassed by Whack-A-Zombie. A 2/3 body is not worth the extra sun needed to play it due to how pathetic of a threat it is. Now I could just buff it to a 3/2 or 3/3, but I decided to take a different approach by giving Chomper a new ability to both differentiate it from Whack-A-Zombie and buff it overall. Chomper now gets the strength of the Zombie it destroys, growing up to 5 strength and turning into a sort of counter-aggro card that destroys the Zombie Hero's threat and fights back with a threat of its own. I reverted its health buff to compensate for its new ability since I thought it might be too punishing growing up to a 4-cost 5/3 while simultaneously destroying a zombie.

Toadstool: Toadstool simply has too little impact on the turn it is played. Destroying zombies is something Cob Cannon already does better and the ramping is usually too late to matter by then. Just like Chomper, I gave Toadstool a new ability; Toadstool now gives you back 2 sun if it successfully destroys a Zombie, giving it more impact on the turn it's played and potentially allowing you to play a crucial extra card. This should give it a mild niche over Cob Cannon by acting as a conditional overstat that simultaneously destroys a zombie during the later turns.

Grape Power: Grape Power is just fully outclassed by Fertilizer. The plant you need to buff has to have an insane amount of strength for it to be meaningfully better than Fertilizer's strength buff, and the lack of a health buff without paying up an additional 1 sun on top of the 3 you already spent can really suck against certain match-ups. It's basically always better to take the safer and more consistent +4/+4 of Fertilizer over the unreliable and inconsistent doubling of Grape Power.

I decided to simply drop Grape Power's price down to 2. This means it no longer has to compete against Fertilizer as strongly and is much better with high-strength plants due to the higher reward at a lower cost and the better potential for combos. Fertilizer is likely still better due to its great potency with low-cost plants, but Grape Power should now at least be better as a combo piece and as win-more.

Jumping Bean: Yet another card outclassed by an already existing card. This time, Jumping Bean is simply outclassed by Jelly Bean. I decided to simply buff Jumping Bean's health to 4. I didn't want to buff its strength or lower its cost since that would make it too similar to Jelly Bean for my liking, so this should hopefully be a good enough buff to make Jumping Bean better without it being Jelly Bean 2.0.

Spring Bean & Backyard Bounce: Both Spring Bean and Backyard Bounce have the problem of putting you at a card disadvantage thanks to not actually being proper removal cards. Reducing their cost to 2 though could make them dangerously effective at unclogging lanes, so I simply decided to give both of them card draw. This means you at least don't lose card advantage by merely using them.

Blowgun Imp: Blowgun Imp's evolution is fundamentally flawed. It is a bounce that happens during the Zombie phase, which is in the completely wrong phase and allows the Plant Hero to just easily replay the card with basically little impact to them. I ended up completely replacing its evolution but keeping everything else.

Now, Blowgun Imp's evolution creates a second Blowgun Imp. This is great both for more damage and for more control by threatening 6 damage with strikethrough while also threatening 2 lanes of plants with deadly. Blowgun Imp is also better at being synergetic with Imp decks by creating two strikethrough imps, using weaker imps to create much bigger threats and allowing for Imp Commander to potentially draw an additional 2 cards.

Newspaper Zombie: Why the hell does this card not have 5 health but goddamn Teleportation Zombie does? Buffing its health should make it better as a combo piece by making it easier to activate multiple times without accidentally killing it in the process (or getting killed by your opponent). It also makes it a bit better against the 1-cost 2/2s by actually winning the trade against them instead of going even.

Kangaroo Rider: This card is abysmal with how actively detrimental its own ability actually is. It is straight up worse than running even Drum Major, because at least Drum Major actually stays on the board instead of going back into your hand over the smallest bit of damage, forcing you to spend 4 more brains for a shitty 4/4.

Kangaroo Rider now always costs 0 brains after the first bounce. This allows it to act as a sort of self-healing Zombie without actively ruining your tempo over it. It also allows it to be a potentially dangerous combo piece if played as a 0-cost 4/4 and a bunch of buffs, or as a way to activate Cat Lady or Zookeeper multiple times over.

Monster Mash: Holy shit is this WAAAAAY overpriced. A single Leftover costs 1 brain, but Monster Mash costs five times as much for merely twice the effectiveness. It is easily the worst AoE buffing card in the entirety of Hearty. I dropped its price down to not just 4 but all the way down to 3. I also decided to add in a conjure ability as a further minor buff and also just for fun. I didn't want to drop it to 2 brains since being basically 2 leftovers for one card might've been too strong.

Yet another set of balance changes by me. This time, the changes I made are a bit more radical than before, so criticism is extra-appreciated here. I'm especially concerned about Loco Coco, The Great Zucchini, Electric Blueberry, and Disco-Tron 3000.

Buff Explanations

Spineapple: Spineapple is just way too hard to get value out of, requiring you to run plants that deal literally no damage instead of other better cards, and all you get for doing so is a bunch of 2 strength plants. Spineapple also bricks really badly since it won't do anything if all your plants already got buffed, meaning every Spineapple after the first is just a 3-cost 2/3.

As such, I made it easier to use by making it buff minions with up to 2 strength instead. This also helps Spineapple's issue of bricking, allowing it to buff some plants more than once, including itself.

Prickly Pear: Prickly Pear is beyond overpriced for what it does. It is effectively just a 5-cost 2/10 at best, which is god-awful. By dropping its cost to 4, increasing its damage to 3, but dropping its health to 7 to compensate, it's now effectively a 4-cost 3/7 that always hits face. Honestly, I think it could get buffed further by dropping its cost down to 3, but I'll keep it at that in case 3-cost is too much.

Loco Coco: Oh huh, 3 Guardian cards getting buffed in one post, looks like Kabloom's finally getting a break. Anyways, Loco Coco is just a straight up worse Poppin' Poppies in almost every scenario. Loco Coco also has a really weak evolution ability, only buffing 0-strength plants to 3-strength.

To fix it being worse than Poppin', I buffed its ability to make a Wall-Nut in every other lane. This makes Loco Coco a more flexible sidegrade to Poppin', letting it be equally good in every lane unlike how Poppin' is clearly strongest in Lanes 2 and 3. It's also now slightly stronger for when you are already at an advantage by protecting your plants better than Poppin' does, though Poppin' is likely still stronger for when you are at a minor disadvantage thanks to its healing.

To fix its weak evolution, I made it set all plants with less than 3 strength to have 3 strength. I didn't want it to give a flat +3 buff since that might be too much when it already creates 3 Wall-Nuts to buff by itself, so setting to 3 will do. This, like Spineapple, makes its evolution much easier to use and also much more synergetic with nuts, putting all your nuts out of range of Hearty Removal (besides Knockout, but that costs 3 and only removes one lane anyways).

Electric Blueberry: You didn't actually think we'd go an entire post without buffing at least 1 Kabloom card, did you? Electric Blueberry is a horrendous card; it's a 5-cost card that has 0 strength and its ability is only a mere 6 damage that you have no control over. What's worse is that you don't even get the 6 damage if it dies during combat, so it's actually straight up worse than an on-curve 5-cost plant with no abilities in basically every way.

I ended up reworking this card. First of all, it has team-up. Second of all, it now deals damage only down its lane instead of being completely random. Finally, it now attacks before combat instead of after. To compensate for all the buffs, I reduced the damage from 6 to 5. Since Electric Blueberry now attacks down its lane before combat, it can actually protect itself by killing the zombie in its lane before it can even attack. What's also cool is that it can help unclog a lane for another plant thanks to its team-up trait by killing the zombie there before the plant attacks. Electric Blueberry is still a bit of an understat since a 5-cost effectively 5/5 is not good, but attacking first and unclogging lanes should heavily make up for it.

The Great Zucchini: The Great Zucchini is easily Smarty's worst card by a WIDE margin. Yes, it's worse than even Weenie Beanie. The problem is that it's a 9-cost card that does nothing to actually win the game. It has god-awful stats at only 7/7 and an absurdly weak ability for how late it comes into play; turning a bunch of zombies into 1/1s is just really pathetic when you were waiting for 9 turns to play it. Worst of all, it's so comically easy to play around despite how expensive it is thanks to it having zero effect on Gravestones, not preventing buffs, and not preventing teleports. The only thing great about The Great Zucchini is its absurd price.

Initially, I was just going to make Great Zucchini transform gravestones too and have a mechanic that stops tricks, but unfortunately, Brainana and DMD already exist and I'm pretty sure I'm gonna get killed by this community if I suggested we make Brainana 3.0, so I thought hard on how else to buff this card (without reducing its cost). After a long time of thinking over it, I decided to heavily double down on Zucchini being an anti-Zombie of sorts, contrary to how Brainana and DMD are both anti-Tricks.

The Great Zucchini now completely shuts down any and all zombies by denying them from activating their abilities and setting their strength all the way down to 0 with no way to raise it back up. It also now destroys every zombie before the combat phase, unclogging every lane so it and other plants can't simply be chump-blocked, acting more as the finisher it should be. Additionally, Zucchini's strength has been raised all the way to 10, packing a way stronger punch by taking off a whole half of the opponent's health, acting even more as a finisher.

Honestly, part of me tells me that it's still too weak thanks to its vulnerability to Tricks and its high cost of 9, but perhaps it's best if I leave it with at least some weaknesses. The Great Zucchini should now be a death sentence to any unfortunate Zombie Hero that can't remove it with their tricks, completely destroying their entire board and leaving a massive plant to make quick work of their health. And since this is the Smarty class, you can make damn sure they stay dead by denying them their Tricks phase as well on the next turn with Brainana or DMD.

Squash & Locust Swarm: This one is likely controversial here thanks to the general PvZH community's extremely negative views on removal cards and control decks, but I'll include it anyways. Squash and Locust Swarm have been bad for an extremely long time by now, and the "recent" balance changes have not been kind to them either. With Locust Swarm getting overshadowed by Alien Ooze and B-Flat, Squash entirely outclassed by Cuke, and both having seen no relevance in the meta for years by now, it's clear that they both desperately need a reduction in their price to see use.

Mountain Climber: Good god is its stats hot garbage. a 4-cost 2/2 with bullseye that's sometimes a 4/4 is just abysmal. At 4/4, it is now at least always on-curve even if the Heights lane is unavailable, and a 6/5 with bullseye is really dangerous stats for a 4-drop. I made the Bullseye a part of its ability since this card was a bit too similar to Skyshooter and Moonwalker for my liking, so this should make it feel a little different; though one could argue that it should just have unconditional bullseye anyways.

Screen Door Zombie: Another card that suffers from having bad stats. Just increasing its stats to 6/4 should make it a decent threat, and its ability should now matter a lot more since it can win trades against a good portion of plants with its high strength and ability. It'll also be super dangerous if it gets Frenzy somehow by plowing down an entire lane while taking no damage back.

Disco-Tron 3000: Disco-Tron's ability is a bit weak for a 6-cost card. Creating a 3/1 and a 1/1 is not much by this point, especially when Disco-Tron itself already has bad stats for the price. Disco-Tron now creates a 3/1 in every lane, making it better by clogging the entire board on its own when your opponent is ahead, but also making a bunch of decent threats if your opponent is behind.

Pied Piper: Pied Piper just isn't that good, even in the scenario it kills a plant. As a 3/1, it can now both kill a plant and deal a nice bit of counter damage. It can also now trade against one plant with 4 health if you need to control the opponent. Also, having another 2-cost, 3-strength Gravestone besides Ice Pirate is nice.

Zombot 1000: Zombot is so close to being actually kinda good, yet it's still so far. With its new ability of gaining +1/+1 for each plant it kills with its ability, it should become a much deadlier finisher by killing a whole bunch of plants and countering with absurd strength, making it much better at clutching up games and as a finisher in general.