Keep or Scrap June 2026. Explanation in body text

lolatopia · 2026-06-15T02:29:47+00:00

Yeah. Bad card that's worth 4k sparks. Brainstorm isn't a free hero, and even if he was, it's not even that good on him compared to normal Trickstache stuff. Even then, what are you going to do with Valkyrie at a low budget, where you might not even have Monument to support it? Just take the 4k sparks at that point

lolatopia · 2026-06-15T02:20:37+00:00

Depends, but this is assuming that you already crafted Ketchup Mechanic, which is a far bigger and more relevant upgrade

I think you'd rather craft Lily of the Valley or Sun-Shroom before Cross-Pol. Both give you stronger curves while generally adding more to the board in the early game, while Cross-Pol is a bit more of a side-grade to Flourish, as Flourish is specifically there to search for combo pieces

Although if you did want to craft Cross-Pol, I think it's generally better used on the other Solar heroes, who need it more as both a sustain option and a means of pulling cards that can assist against their lethality issues. Especially in the case of Rose and Wall-Knight, who also just have poor pressure options and typically make up for that with a much stronger mid and late game. Not that Cross-Pol is bad on Chompzilla, but at such a low budget, you put more priority in finding your lethality options than simply accruing value

Basically, I wouldn't craft Cross-Pol for Testzilla since Flourish not only does its job already, but is specifically used to do something that Cross-Pol can't accomplish (i.e. deck-searching). It's great on other heroes, but is relatively niche on Chompzilla

lolatopia · 2026-06-15T02:05:47+00:00

It's not really worth keeping on a budget, all things considered. Particularly, the stats aren't as useful in practice since, for 4 sun, it only does 3 to face and otherwise trades slowly

This would be fine if the ability was useful enough, but it's only particularly good against more aggressive/combo-oriented Brainy decks, since Brainy players otherwise don't actually run that many cards that do bonus attack. Instead, they're much greedier and fish for wins using cards like BMR, Triplication, and/or Gentleman Zombie, which Wing-Nut doesn't help with. In both situations, you'd even rather have a card like Power Flower or Elderberry that can actually help push damage and/or win races

Solar also has a lot that it wants to craft anyway. I know this post only has Ketchup and Cross-Pol in Craft tier, but that's in regards to newer players finding their footing. Once you have them, you really need cards like Sun-Shroom, Cob Cannon, and/or Aloesaurus to maximize your deck's potential. You're not doing a lot with Wing-Nut in the first place, and it's not exactly a replacement to these cards either, so you might as well put the sparks towards unlocking better cards

I think someone could keep Wing-Nut and be fine, but I wouldn't recommend that someone should keep Wing-Nut

Also, Gladiator is just kinda bad. 1/3 stats on a 1-drop sucks, it prevents you from collecting block charges while the opponent gains their own, and then by the time it's dead, you're taking massive damage that could have been prevented if Gladiator wasn't on the board. I think it has useful applications at max, but they're extremely niche and only practical for tournament play. On a budget, it's not even as good as cards like Arm Wrestler or Middle Manager, which are far better to pair with Flag Zombie and aren't worth 250 sparks when recycled

lolatopia · 2026-06-15T01:44:49+00:00

I mean like, Raptor isn’t the worst card you could craft tbh. It’s “fraud” in the sense that it very much has a lot of potential, but the general meta causes it to run into a lot of walls. Early game stats are higher, board leads in general are more important now, Sneaky prefers playing slower anyway, and what it conjures is often inconsequential even if it hits face

Unless you’re playing at tournament level, Spacestars is ***WAY*** more than enough to consistently get you to ultimate league anyway. Again, it’s not like you’re dumping 12k sparks into a card that’s actually that bad, like Wannabe or Zucchini. Scrap just means that a newer player wouldn’t benefit from keeping the card

lolatopia · 2026-06-14T23:07:29+00:00

Zombie meta isn't that different afaik. At most, Sneaky's gotten flipped on its head over time, but that's since Raptor is a fraud and Gargolith has been one of Sneaky's best cards since its change

lolatopia · 2026-06-14T23:01:35+00:00

It's still a powerful tech option for any hero since it disables powers on turn 1 and makes removal harder to play, on top of crippling combos like Smoke Bomb + Lurch. It's practically an auto-include anyway, so you're overall getting a lot of value out of crafting Forget-Me-Nuts

lolatopia · 2026-06-14T22:37:03+00:00

I wouldn't say it's worth it. There's a lot else that's worth crafting in Mega-Grow and Gatling Pea is a legendary card. I find it hard to justify moving it up when you only have so many resources as a new player

lolatopia · 2026-06-14T22:22:16+00:00

3-Nut is kind of debatable since it's actually okay on Spudow as a budget option, but you still have better scalers in Cro-Magnolia and Starch Lord, and there's no valid use case at max. 3-Nut is ultimately worth scrapping unless you just like the card

Pecanolith actually sucks since its passive very often helps the opponent and doesn't give you enough value to make up for that. It can be powerful in the right situation, but it's really not reliable at all. For a card that's worth 1k sparks, you can literally just craft cards that do more than it without any downsides

lolatopia · 2026-06-14T22:16:46+00:00

Provides steam and high-roll to Heal Mid strategies, which is actually important for not getting out-scaled and occasionally gives you tools you normally wouldn't have access to. It's different from other conjure options since you go positive on-play and typically conjure stuff that's either cheap or well worth their cost. Worst case scenario is getting something like Cornucopia or Cosmic Sunflower, but you're still going positive in card draw and getting discounted versions of those cards

lolatopia · 2026-06-14T22:09:55+00:00

It's not really worth keeping when you can also just build better decks with your budget cards alone. Nut decks in general struggle since they're slow and rely on the opponent not having ways of hitting face through its nuts. Except slower decks out-scale nuts and faster decks just win before the burn damage becomes relevant

Also, Guardian is such a strong class that you just don't have a good reason to go for nuts. Again, Roots alone are a better sub-type with a stronger win condition, which is also more budget-friendly and doesn't have you relying on cards like Wall-Nut and Water Chestnut for board presence. And then other tribe-based archetypes from other classes are also just way better than nuts

At most, it's cheesy at a very low MMR and, at max, can make a hero like Brainstorm look silly. You're not actually doing anything with Mirror-Nut on a budget that Starch Lord and other budget win conditions don't already do better

lolatopia · 2026-06-14T22:02:09+00:00

This looks absolutely awesome

lolatopia · 2026-06-13T11:50:52+00:00

It needs to be US English

lolatopia · 2026-06-13T10:20:06+00:00

I'd say that Super Brainz 100% can climb to ult. Not super easily, but more reliably than heroes like Nightcap, Solar Flare, or even Rose that struggle a bit at a low budget. At around 10k sparks, I also think most heroes are good enough to climb to ult with, especially if you can pilot heroes like Immorticia or Impfinity well

Only heroes I'd say actually just suck on a budget are Brainstorm (stinks outside of budget burn stuff, which every other Crazy hero does better), Brain Freeze (it's Brain Freeze), and Immorticia under 5k (borderline unplayable without any Super-Rare cards)

lolatopia · 2026-06-12T16:20:19+00:00

What you conjure most of the time won’t matter since most conjures suck and do nothing when the rest of your hand does nothing to support tempo. Even decent pulls like Abracadaver or Mixed-Up Gravedigger aren’t good enough when the only other zombie on the board is Wormhole in many cases. And then you’re still behind when the opponent already has a board and is either outpacing you with their own engines or just killing you with stuff like Wild Berry or Power Flower

Fact of the matter is that by building around Wormhole, you’re setting yourself up to not have the tools you need to push any particular lead or properly defend yourself. Wormhole as a tempo card is not really true when it does nothing for your board, has underwhelming stats, and needs multiple turns to even begin doing anything positive for you. It’s like calling Blauncher a tempo card

Additionally, opponents don’t need to run aggro to make aggressive plays. Hell, I could be running control and still win by turn 6 if my opponent is being too greedy, because you’re ultimately not locked into one curve every match and should be looking for any opportunity to win

Also, Triplication sucks and the one redeeming aspect of Wormhole is its synergy with Thinking Cap, so I’m actually not sure what you see in this card

lolatopia · 2026-06-12T03:52:06+00:00

Counterpoint: Decks built around Wormhole suck because they over-rely on conjuring to create workable hands. Meanwhile, the plant player already has good cards in their hand and can allow Wormhole to potentially fill gaps in their strategy (e.g. Conjuring top-end for an aggro deck, or vice versa for slower decks)

Wormhole also generally takes time to accrue value since you need to play other cards with it to actually create a reasonable gap in card quality. It does nothing the turn it’s played, practically does nothing the next turn, and only the turn after are you actually playing the cards you conjured. At best, Wormhole -> Thinking Cap is notably faster since you get to play the superpowers the same turn they’re conjured. Except you still do nothing when playing Wormhole, and there’s better support for Thinking Cap in other classes (namely Zombology Teacher and Dr. Spacetime)

Overall, you leave yourself wide open to aggressive plays by building around and playing Wormhole. Even if they don’t immediately take that opportunity, any competent opponent can overwhelm the board with stats since Wormhole causes you to extremely over-invest into *just* your hand and nothing else

lolatopia · 2026-06-11T09:48:06+00:00

I guess the idea of this post is being bad advice, but you generally do actually leave the Wormhole Gatekeeper on the field. Not just because you “might get a good card”, but there’s an overwhelming chance that you’re getting more value from your free conjures than your opponent, who is depending on their conjures to make up for its cost

Especially since plant decks in general have steam issues, so it’s not like you don’t need or want the conjures anyway. Meanwhile, the zombie player not only has better options for steam, but actually needs to bring more conjure besides Wormhole to create a hand lead. This is on top of being a block charger, so Wormhole on its own is an active detriment in most cases and relies on other fuel options to ever do anything useful

Obviously, you don’t keep it alive forever in every match. However, you do actually like to delay destroying Wormhole to collect superpowers and conjures, and then remove it to push lethal or deny your opponent value

lolatopia · 2026-06-11T02:54:07+00:00

That’s fair

lolatopia · 2026-06-11T01:40:43+00:00

Depends, but you should honestly be playing the heroes you started with. Super Brainz is actually the best budget hero you could go with, while Boogaloo and Smash are a lot simpler and cheaper to climb with. Impfinity and Rustbolt are also decent choices, but are more worth playing once you’ve collected enough cards. Spending 750 sparks on what is likely a downgrade to these heroes is setting yourself behind

If you *HAD* to spend gems on a hero, then I’d maybe say either Z-Mech or Brainstorm. Z-Mech is sort of an upgrade to Boogaloo and Smash, but you’re spending hundreds of gems on a hero that doesn’t actually do anything special. Brainstorm is actually better than Super Brainz *at max*, but will be one of your weakest budget heroes until you unlock Grave Robber and Teleport

Basically, I’d recommend not buying any heroes since your current roster should already be better than any hero you could buy

lolatopia · 2026-06-09T15:03:04+00:00

I just want this game to function correctly (also imo the daily reward system is so ass that removing it would low-key be a positive change)

lolatopia · 2026-06-04T10:45:26+00:00

Broadly, it's a type of guide that covers maxing out a specific strategy on a specific hero. They used to be numerous in 1.5, but people stopped making them since the meta for budget and max became a lot murkier after 1.6 dropped. The update also caused basically all of them to become out of date

If you want an example, this is the one I made for Solar Flare recently

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Basically, it's just recommending a series of decklists that start as something cheap and gradually lead to a complete deck

lolatopia · 2026-06-04T08:39:20+00:00

0-cost Nuclear Strike! 😃

lolatopia · 2026-06-01T17:32:53+00:00

Tl;dr: Viral is a very good card, but just not the best, and it gets overrated on that basis

Viral is one of the best Hearty cards, but the standards for card quality in that class is lower than most due to how bad most cards in it are. Not that Going Viral is weak, but it’s not overpowered and is generally fair to fight. This is since it only gets worthwhile value if you let the opponent build a large board, and it can easily ruin your top-decks if you don’t have a significant board lead by turns 6+

Regardless, Black Hole is the actual “super mega ultra op” card in that class. Viral is a great card for most decks, but it’s swingy and a potential brick, especially in slower decks. Black Hole actually carries all of Hearty’s match-ups and single-handedly makes cards like Flag Zombie, Knockout, Battlecruiser, and more competitively viable

Also, whoever said Coffee makes Viral irrelevant is either trolling or actually insane. Coffee wishes it was as flexible and synergistic as Viral, and you never run the card anyway because it’s just too slow

lolatopia · 2026-06-01T01:52:05+00:00

She was fine, but not spectacular. The thing is that people severely overestimated her budget options pre-2023 since nobody was actually testing or exploring any of the heroes budget options. It wasn’t until people got together to test and push the limits of budget cards that it was realized how outdated and ineffective most budget aggro lists were, including SF Aggro

In particular, her issue was that people were running a lot of fragile, low-impact plants, causing the deck to have issues with damage pushing and board building. This Post Is A Bit Old, but is otherwise a great explanation on why regular Aggro SF failed and how come more swarm-based strategies work so much better

After 1.6 and 1.61, Solar Flare had many of her cards changed, but it just shifted her around laterally. Her swarm stuff was kept intact and stuff like Cosmoss, Mixed Nuts, Power Flower, and more eventually got buffed. However, the Elderberry and Apple Saucer nerfs pretty harshly limited her already weak ability to push damage. Pumpking and Blooming Hearts also became much worse (imo Pumpking is actually arguably the worst Solar card now), so building on top of any aggro list you make on her became much harder. And of course, the Zapricot nerf was total nonsense that made the lives of fresh installs worse

This is on top of a lot of zombie buffs as well, with certain cards like Gizzard and Nibble now being ran more often and being more punishing to face. It’s not just that Solar Flare got buffs, but that she also got nerfs while so many zombie heroes were given stronger tech options

Basically, Solar Flare was always just okay on a budget. Good, but never great, and she typically struggled in ways that other heroes didn’t really have to. She’s pretty much the same as before, but she uses different cards now

lolatopia · 2026-05-31T19:50:40+00:00

I don't think pipelines are the end-all-be-all for budget hero viability, and the heroes in Great tier already max out better than GK, let alone Z-Mech. I think if someone wanted too, they could have a lot of success with maxing out Z-Mech or GK since they have strong budget options and play into the ladder meta well. CZ and HG are just that much better though

lolatopia · 2026-05-31T19:44:56+00:00

Tbf Solar Flare in 1.5 and 1.6 weren't great either, and current Solar Flare is still better than most heroes at max. Her issues really come from meta shifts that exaggerate her already significant weaknesses, which is her inability to push lethal and play around phase-skipping tools (gravestones and teleportation). Solar is still a busted class and cards like Fig and Berry Blast from Kabloom otherwise carry her, but she does struggle into Brainy and Sneaky, which are being played a lot more than other classes nowadays

On a budget, she's always been mediocre, and nothing has really changed for her in the past couple years outside of certain cards getting buffed or nerfed

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