When playing Gardens and Graveyards as either plants or zombies, there are some good rules to keep in mind at all times:
Plants
- Run Out the Clock: The clock is your key to victory. Simply put, if the time runs out, you win and the zombies are routed. You’re going to want to pull out all the stops and do everything you can to stall a zombie takeover. Make sure your defenses are always firing, make sure you’re always using the right Class to counter different zombie types, and keep your perimeter as secure as possible. Don’t give those zombies an inch. If there are zombies in your Garden when the timer runs out, then the round goes into overtime, giving the zombies one last chance to capture it! Vanquish all of them to make sure your Garden remains free. This fortunately is not a factor when defending your final strongholds.
- Always Keep an Eye on Your Garden: While it’s tempting to expand your scope of defense, keep in mind that your first and highest priority is and always will be your Garden. If the zombies take over all of your Gardens and accomplish all of their objectives, then the plants have lost entirely. Even if you have a large number of teammates to go around, it’s best to maintain sight of your ultimate purpose. As plants, you’re on the defensive. Wrap your strategies around this. Spawn Potted Plants to use as defense and an early warning system whenever you can.
- Defend from the High Ground: Find every high point you can on your map and exploit it like crazy. Peashooters are especially useful here with the high jumping abilities granted to them by Hyper, but if you can find a high point that’s reachable by a sniping Cactus Class, then so much the better. High points are always great in games such as this, but in this case they have the benefit of allowing you to keep an eye on your Garden—and as we’ve just established, that’s one of the best things you can do as a plant.
Zombies
- Ambush: Plants are going to be on the defensive all the time, and watching their Gardens like hawks. One of the best ways to break their ranks and gain the upper hand is to catch them off guard. Study where they’ve holed up, choose the correct Classes to deal with them, and execute your plan with precision—preferably from a distance or directions they won’t see you coming from.
- Overwhelm: Once you’ve caught them off-guard (or if you just don’t have the subtlety for doing so—don’t worry, it’s okay), you can go for taking over the plants and their Garden with superior numbers and firepower. Take note of all of your Zombot Turrets and Spawnable Zombies, and use them to create hot spots for plants and to bolster your own ranks. Use Drones from your Engineers to call in airstrikes, build Teleporters to give your troops rally points close to your objectives, and charge bunches of your forces into any weaker spots in plant defenses that you see. In other words, give ’em all you’ve got!
- Outsmart: This ties in with ambushing, but it bears mentioning separately. As zombies, you’re going to want to know your map arguably even more so than the plants, because any hole in their tightly knit defense is a path to victory. Look for underpasses, back alleys, hidden passages that only super-jumping Foot Soldiers can get to, any place where plants aren’t looking, and exploit them to their fullest!
Both
- Use the Right Class and Variant: This rule is all-important. As with the other game modes, you’re going to want to change the makeup of your team depending on which plants are defending at the time, and which map you’re playing on. This is especially important in Gardens and Graveyards, as the layout of the map changes often. If you’re working with a group of allies and notice you’re light on healing, let your buddies know, and offer to switch over to Sunflower or Scientist. If you’re finding yourself fighting at long ranges, choose a Class Variant that excels at those distances. Make sure to give your Engineers and Cacti proper backup. In all, you’re going to want to keep thinking on the fly and use all of the plants’ and zombies’ tools at your disposal to either pierce defenses or form a tight wall against all comers.