Citron (Plants vs. Zombies Heroes)

For other uses, see Citron (disambiguation).

“	A warning! This bounty-hunting orange from the future likes his battles both defensive and aggressive. Citron is known for putting walls of Wall-Nuts and then firing heavy artillery from behind them. Incoming!	”
—Dr. Zomboss

Citron is a plant hero in Plants vs. Zombies Heroes, and a leader of the Guardian and Smarty classes, alongside Beta-Carrotina. His signature superpower is Peel Shield, which shields all plants for the turn it is played and draws a card.

Origins

Citron is based on his appearance in Plants vs. Zombies: Garden Warfare 2. With his signature superpower being based on and named after the Peel Shield ability from the same game.

His time-travelling cybernetic nature and backstory of preventing a future conflict invoke the Marvel Comics character Cable, while his usage of energy shields and orange themed design coincidentally invoke obscure Marvel Comics character Captain Citrus.

Statistics

Classes: Guardian, Smarty
Superpowers:
- Signature: Peel Shield - Plants can't be hurt this turn. Draw a card.
- Other:
  - Transmogrify - Transform a Zombie into a random Zombie that costs 1.
  - Nut Signal - Make a 6 Wall-Nut with Team-Up. Draw a card.
  - Root Wall - A Plant gets +2 and can't be hurt this turn.
Boss Fights:
- Zombie Mission 04: Code Orange! Citron Invades!
- Zombie Mission 18: To the Moon!
- Zombie Mission 28: Moon Madness!
- Zombie Mission 40: Peel that Orange!
Battle Area: Space Base

Hero description

Wanted to be a poet, but couldn't find anything that rhymed with orange.

Strategies

PvZHeroes.com strategy

Citron combines the two Amphibious Plant classes: Guardian and Smarty. His water wing wins the game in the water lanes while his defensive Guardian Plants hold the ground.

With

Citron is perhaps a very difficult hero to play as for most players, but becomes quite formidable as you learn how to play as him. Due to his access to both Guardian and Smarty plants, Citron proves most powerful in his ability to stall for time and avoid taking damage. His defensive Team-Up plants, such as nuts, can tank a good amount of damage. His Freezing and Bouncing cards can temporarily disable priority zombie targets so that they can be properly dealt with later on.

He also has the ability to cover all lanes with access to a large number of Amphibious plants, some of which also have the Team-Up trait and can help defend more valuable Amphibious fighters. His superpowers also allow him to stall for time - Transmogrify is great for dealing with troublesome zombies, while Nut Signal, Root Wall, and Peel Shield are extremely effective at blocking zombie attacks.

With all these tools at his disposal, Citron should be able to stall until he can bring out the big guns, and protect them as well. The Great Zucchini functions impressively well with Splash Damage plants to clear the field. Those valuable plants should be protected with defensive Team-Up plants, or possibly Peel Shield if none are present.

Another unique strength that Citron has is that he can deal with Gravestone zombies more efficiently than any other hero. Besides Grave Buster, which he can use to destroy gravestones, Citron also has access to a variety of Smarty cards that can nullify Gravestone zombies to a lesser extent, namely Spyris and Cool Bean. Especially with Cool Bean, he can play Winter Squash first and then Cool Bean to destroy all gravestones on the field. This will prove very useful when against zombie heroes who utilize Gravestone zombies, especially Sneaky heroes.

With the amount of Team-Up plants Citron has, decks using Go-Nuts can be incredibly devastating for the opponent. He can make usage of cheap nuts from the Guardian class and quickly make them heavy hitters for an overwhelming victory.

Like Wall-Knight, however, Citron's main weakness is that he has no way to consistently boost his plants' strength, meaning that Hearty heroes can ruin his defenses very easily by using Rolling Stone and Weed Spray. His superpowers do not make up for it either, as they are all defensive. What makes things worse is that he lacks instant damaging cards, and his only instant-kill options for zombies with 3 strength or below are Shrinking Violet, Winter Squash, and Witch Hazel, but they can only do so much against swarm decks unless they are also swarmed (which isn't likely to happen as they are expensive), meaning that his opponent can spam weaker zombies to overwhelm him. Citron's only other option to fight weak zombies is to wall them with his high-health plants, or use freezing cards to destroy them more easily.

Against

Citron is a force to be reckoned with. He has access to more Amphibious plants than any other plant hero, requiring the player to pay attention to the aquatic lane(s) on the field. His signature power, Peel Shield, can be equal to, or even more obnoxious than Wall-Knight's Uncrackable, so you should bring instant-kill tricks in case your fighters cannot take out Citron's plants on their own. You should also be careful about your gravestones, since he can control them due to his access to Grave Buster, Spyris, and Cool Bean (especially with Winter Squash).

Water Works

This deck allows easy coverage of the field, with Navy Bean boosting virtually all of Citron's plants. However, since most Amphibious plants do not have good stats, use tricks like The Chickening to wipe all plants with low health before Navy Bean can boost them, and Rocket Science to remove any high-strength plants like The Great Zucchini. The best hero to counter this deck would be Professor Brainstorm, since he can play both of the forementioned tricks. However, beware of Brainana, as it can prevent the use of tricks.

Make a Splash

This deck focuses on Splash Damage and the reactivation of abilities. However, once again, they do not have good stats, so using Professor Brainstorm is the way to go. This time though, beware of Rescue Radish, as it will allow plants with dangerous abilities to be played again. Brainana is also an issue here as well, so you may want to have a way to deal with it.

The Great Wall

This deck is about blocking off zombies from being able to hurt Citron or his plants easily. However, only Sportacus and Snapdragon are immune to Rocket Science, Rolling Stone, and Weed Spray; everything else gets destroyed to one of the aforementioned tricks. Hence, use Rustbolt as he has easy access to all these tricks. However, make sure Citron is defeated before the 9th turn, or he will unleash Wall-Nut Bowling on you. You should also beware of Sportacus' ability if you are to play tricks.

A Vast Expanse of Nuttin'

With this deck, Citron will stall you using his high-health plants until he can bring out Pecanolith. However, despite his plants being able to do massive damage with their health, they are all still weak to Rolling Stone, Weed Spray, and Celestial Custodian due to their lack of base strength. Therefore, using any Hearty hero will do good here. Since the only way for him to draw cards is via Planet of the Grapes, you can force him into a topdeck situation by replacing his environments with your own cheap environments. Just be careful if there are both Galacta-Cactus and Mirror-Nut on the field at once, as if you are not aware of Galacta-Cactus's ability, it will damage all of Citron's plants, activating Mirror-Nut's ability multiple times.

Rule of Three

This deck is a Team-Up deck featuring Go-Nuts and many other Team-Up plants. However, it also utilizes Three-Nut and Loco Coco to give most, if not all his plants a good head start. Citron also bring in Poppin' Poppies, who will heal him in a pinch with her Lil' Buddies. If unprepared, Citron's Go-Nuts will boost many of his plants, wrecking your defenses easily. Since his plants will start from 3 strength, Rocket Science, Rolling Stone, and Weed Spray are not recommended. Instead, a sports deck with Knockout and more importantly, Chum Champion is optimal, since Knockout can only destroy so many plants. Targeting any Witch Hazels is also important, as they can pick off your key zombies easily. Since they will most likely behind a Team-Up wall, playing tricks is recommended.

Strategy decks

Main article: Community-built decks/Citron

**Swim toward a swift victory with this soaking wet Strategy Deck. Use Navy Bean to buff Amphibious Plants including The Great Zucchini, who'll make your opponents' chances disappear.**

x3	x1	x4	x4	x3
x4	x4	x2	x4	x2
x4	x2	x2	x1

**Splash damage is great, but it's even better when delivered from behind a Force Field. Protect your Plants with powerful Environments so you can keep dishing out the damage.**

x4	x4	x4	x1	x4
x1	x2	x4	x3	x3
x4	x2	x2	x2

**Combine Peel Shield and Root Wall with powerful Environments to build an invincible wall of Plants. Plant a Gravitree behind a Force Field and they will have nowhere left to run.**

x4	x2	x4	x2	x4
x3	x4	x2	x1	x4
x2	x4	x3	x1

**Nuts finally fight back! Place a Sportacus or Mirror-Nut in a Planet of the Grapes to draw a fist full of cards. Then, when Pecanolith finally lands, your docile defenders turn on the offensive.**

x4	x4	x4	x3	x4
x2	x4	x2	x4	x4
x4	x1

Cosmic Bean and Primal Wall-Nut may not seem like much of an offense. But Three-Nut starts all your Plants with 3 Strength. Then Go-Nuts gives all your Team-Up Plants more Strength yet. Wall-Nut Bowling never hit harder!

x3	x1	x4	x4	x2
x4	x4	x4	x4	x4
x4	x2

Gallery

Plants vs. Zombies Wiki has a gallery for Citron.

Visit this page to see it.

In other languages

Please note that only official translations are used.

Language	Name	Description
English	Citron
Simplified Chinese	香橼猎手
Traditional Chinese	香櫞
French	Citron
German	Zitron
Italian	Cedro
Japanese	シトロン
Korean	시트론
Brazilian Portuguese	Citrinador
Russian	Цитрон
Spanish	Pomelo

Trivia

All of the zombie missions that have Citron as the main opposing plant hero have exclamation marks in their names.
Citron's battle theme is a remix of Green Shadow's, with more brass as opposed to woodwind. This is shared with Captain Combustible.
Nightcap, Citron, Beta-Carrotina and Rose are the only plant heroes that does not have an specific known plant fighter counterpart in the game.
- Dr. Zomboss states that Citron is from the future, implying he was not hit by the Hero Laser.
He and Beta-Carrotina have access to the most Amphibious and Team-Up plants among all plant heroes.
- This is because they lead the same classes which are the only two with Amphibious plants, as well as the majority of Team-Up plants.
Citron's description references the infamous issue of attempting to rhyme with orange, something that is frequently perceived as being impossible due to there being no words to rhyme with orange.
- Ironically, there are actually two words that do rhyme with orange; those being blorenge, and sporange. There are also many words that almost rhyme with orange, such as aurand and cornage. However, most of these are not used much at all in English.
In the Random Battle Mode, Citron seems to be using Chompzilla's cards, including the playable Wild Berry glitch instead of his cards.
One of his strategy decks, "Water Works," might be a reference to The Waterworks, an American novel.
Another one of his strategy decks, "The Great Wall," is likely a reference to the Great Wall of China.
Citron and Beta-Carrotina are tied for having the most Event cards, each having 16.