Pepper M.D. is a premium uncommon plant card in Plants vs. Zombies Heroes and a member of the 
Solar class. It costs 2
to play and has 2
/2
.
It does not have any traits, and its ability gives it +2/+2 every time a plant, including it, or the plant hero, is healed.
Origins
It is based on a bell pepper, a group of the species Capsicum annuum that produces fruits in different colors, and a doctor, a professional who practices medicine.
Its name is a combination of "pepper," the real-life plant it is based on, and "M.D." (doctor of medicine), referring to its appearance and ability. It could also be a pun on the soda beverage Dr. Pepper.
Its description is an allusion to its ability, as benefiting a plant's health (healing) benefits Pepper M.D.'s health too (getting more health)
Statistics
- Class: Solar
- Tribe: Fruit Plant
- Traits: None
- Ability: This gets +2/+2 when a Plant or your Hero is healed.
- Set - Rarity: Premium - Uncommon
Card description
"A toast to your health... and mine!"
Update history
Update ????
- Rarity change: Uncommon → Common
Update 1.14.13
- Set - Rarity change: Basic - Common → Premium - Uncommon
Update ????
- Description change: Quotation marks were added on the start and end of its description.
Update 1.22.13
- ▲ Tribe change: Pepper → Fruit
Strategies
With
Pepper M.D. is an incredibly powerful card due to its ability to snowball rapidly when paired with commonly-used Solar cards for a measly 2 Sun. While it may seem like a card relegated to decks that feature a wide variety of healing cards, in reality it finds its way into nearly every serious Solar deck alongside its major partners, and the decks it creates are widely considered to be among the strongest in the current metagame. The reason for this is simple; most Solar decks rely heavily on cheap healing cards to survive the earlygame against aggressive 
Crazy decks, and Pepper M.D. means that Zombie progress will not only be negated, but turned directly into Plant progress.
The obvious winner in terms of cards to use with Pepper M.D. is Lil' Buddy, mainly due to its Sun cost of 0. For only 2 Sun, playing these 2 cards together will:
- create a 4/4 Plant, which is good value for 2 cards totaling 2 sun
- heal your Hero for 2, removing a decent amount of Zombie progress
- threaten to buff Pepper M.D. in the future, ensuring that it cannot be ignored
- create a 0/1 Team-Up chumpblocker that can absorb a hit for Pepper M.D. or anything else, also potentially removing
Deadly as a counterplay option, and which can also be used as fodder for Evolution cards such as Cob Cannon.
The value of this cannot be overstated. For example, on turn 2 you could negate whatever damage the Zombies did turn 1, block one of their Zombies with Lil' Buddy, and have a 4/4 Pepper M.D. to hit face or beat a Zombie. However, while this is an extremely potent turn 2 play, this combo remains valuable throughout the entire game, and they do not even need to be played on the same turn; whatever Lil' Buddies you draw will boost your Pepper M.D. massively. Since Lil' Buddy is very easy to obtain and should be used in the vast majority of serious Solar decks, Pepper M.D. will usually have a place in your deck alongside it. Even if Lil' Buddy is the only source of healing in your deck, it's still worth running 2 or 3 copies of Pepper M.D. just to benefit from it, especially on a budget; the combo is just that powerful. The only archetype that struggles to fit Lil' Buddy is aggro, but that's less of a reason not to use heal package and more a reason to not use Solar aggro (if all you care about is winning).
Ketchup Mechanic is another great partner for Pepper M.D.. Despite it only buffing Pepper M.D. once for 3 sun, it more than makes up for it by its powerful ability, wrestling tempo away from the Zombies with its excellent stats and healing for its cost, in particular ruining overly aggressive Zombie players. It's yet another powerful healing card that you should probably be using anyways, and makes for a fantastic curve if you played a Pepper M.D. on turn 2. It might not seem that strong, but when Ketchup Mechanic was a good turn 3 anyways, it buffing Pepper M.D. even once means that Pepper was effectively a 2 cost 4/4, which is incredible value.
Other Solar healing cards tend to be much less effective in conjunction with Pepper M.D.. 2nd-Best Taco of All Time is an okay card in decks that don't have much to do in early turns, such as Wall-Knight control and Chompzilla Onion Rings. However, the nature of the card means that decks that use it tend to want to play it before Pepper M.D., though control may end up playing both on the same turn. Astro Vera could theoretically be used in control, especially on Wall-Knight because it curves into Wall-Nut Bowling, but it's a very flawed card which is hard to fit in decks, redundant with Poppin' Poppies, and far too slow for the buff to Pepper M.D. to be relevant. Aloesaurus is a bad card, considering it offers nothing but bland stats and a weak ability, but using it alongside Pepper M.D. to constantly get huge stat boosts is pretty funny, and you really don't need to optimize your decks that much to get to Ultimate League, anyways. Power Flower is an acceptable substitute for Astrocado on budget, and its ability buffing Pepper M.D., potentially multiple times, is a nice bonus. Don't use Venus Flytrap. Venus Flytraplanet theoretically has a good synergy with Pepper M.D., but is too slow to consider in a serious deck. If you're running a deck based on it and Heartichoke, however, use Pepper M.D..
There are also some hero-specific interactions to consider:
- Wall-Knight can use Poppin' Poppies to buff Pepper M.D. by a whopping +6/+6 while also healing your Hero for 6 and blocking off most of the field, singlehandedly turning Wall-Knight control into one of the most powerful decks in the game, as suddenly Poppies is not only a powerful defensive tool, but also forces your opponent to waste resources dealing with an 8/8 or higher Pepper M.D., making it even easier to end the game with Wall-Nut Bowling. Pepper M.D. also helps whittle the enemy Hero into Wall-Nut Bowling range, ensuring that they will be defeated once it's played.
- Rose can use Rescue Radish to replay Lil' Buddy, granting a large boon to your healing capability and therefore to Pepper M.D.'s stats.
- Chompzilla and Wall-Knight can use Geyser, an already insanely strong superpower which Pepper M.D. can abuse to boost its stats to dizzying levels. Chompzilla especially has a preference for big attackers that can soak a lot of damage and therefore get healed by Geyser often, though Wall-Knight also has a lot of high HP Plants. Another fun thing about Geyser is that since it heals Pepper M.D., hitting a damage Pepper against these heroes may very well increase its health in the long run. However, Geyser is unreliable on account of being a Superpower, though Wall-Knight can use Body-Gourd to circumvent this.
- Solar Flare's
Kabloom class offers very little to Pepper M.D., but Kabloom offers very little to anything so this shouldn't be a surprise. Despite this, Heal Midrange is still probably better than anything else Solar Flare is going to do, and Pepper M.D. is the lynchpin of said archetype. However, aggro and Pineclone decks have their advantages, especially against heroes with poor removal options such as Super Brainz and Huge-Gigantacus, and work well on ranked considering their ease of use and effectiveness against non-meta decks. These decks have little use for Lil' Buddy and therefore Pepper M.D., so she's more likely to forgo it.
However, there is another type of card that synergizes with Pepper M.D.: other big attackers. Since Pepper M.D. is very vulnerable to tricks such as Exploding Fruitcake and Rocket Science, the simple solution (besides Umbrella Leaf) is to keep placing Plants which are vulnerable to these cards until the Zombies run out of removal, and then overwhelm them with your massive attackers. Every Solar hero has Cob Cannon, Elderberry, and Astrocado, with Cob Cannon being especially notable due to its ability to unblock for Pepper M.D., but Chompzilla in particular has access to powerful snowball cards like Muscle Sprout, Bananasaurus Rex, and even Black-Eyed Pea, as well as threatening attackers such as Gatling Pea, and general buffing cards like Onion Rings and Vegetation Mutation, all of which can serve to overwhelm the opponent's heavy removal. Onion Rings is especially notable as it can buff Pepper M.D. heavily, and synergizes greatly with Umbrella Leaf, an otherwise hard-to-fit card that helps Pepper M.D. with its removal weakness.
One thing to keep in mind when actually playing Pepper M.D. in-game is that you should try not to let your opponent deal with it as a 2/2, because if it dies to a cheap Trick or weak Zombie before it can buff itself, it loses a lot of value. If you're not playing it on the same turn as a healing card, you should make sure that a) you'll be able to heal it next turn and b) it won't die on Tricks. Considering that it's vulnerable to Rolling Stone, Bungee Plumber, Extinction Event, Beam Me Up, and even Teleport, you should generally avoid playing it unsupported if the opponent has any brains left over. Playing dry Pepper M.D. can be a good idea on turn 2 if the Zombies spent all their Brains and you have a Ketchup Mechanic, as you can play Ketchup on turn 3 to exploit whatever they played by buffing your Pepper and Ketchup while healing off some of the damage it dealt. Any Gravestone you see on turn 2 used all their brains, unless played in Graveyard, though you may want to front it with something else against Sneaky heroes to prevent Swashbuckler. However, note that if Huge-Gigantacus played Terror-Former 10,000 on turn 1 and a Gravestone on turn 2, it's probably a Teleportation Zombie that can summon other Zombies to easily dispatch Pepper M.D..
Overall, Pepper M.D. is extremely threatening for its cost because of how quickly it can grow big, and smart players can exploit the fact that it forces their opponent to spend a lot of resources getting rid of a 2-Sun plant.
Against
Pepper M.D. is a great threat which should be dealt with as soon as possible. It can't be left alone, so don't feel bad about using removal on it. If you can get rid of it with Rolling Stone, Bungee Plumber, or the like, do so. However, good players will ensure that it will be out of range of these cards by the time you can play them. If you see an unboosted Pepper M.D., it can be a good idea to front it with a cheap Zombie; if they buff it, you prevented it from hitting face and potentially chipped it into range of something else, and if they didn't, you killed one of their best cards and traded very positively. Weak Zombies can also be used even against buffed Peppers to prevent them from hitting face, though this should be done strategically.
Every Hero can get rid of a buffed Pepper with tricks, and should probably do so despite the high cost. Rocket Science is the best option because it comes with no drawback, other than the fact that you might not have another for their other big attackers. Bounce can reset Pepper M.D.'s stats, and replaying it is less valuable since they already used some of their healing cards to buff it in the first place and Pepper M.D. gets easier to deal with as the game goes on. Pogo Bouncer is notable for its synergy with Mixed-Up Gravedigger, a card that can be annoying for Solar heroes not named Wall-Knight. Exploding Fruitcake can be thought of as a cheaper, better version of Backyard Bounce, as unless they roll another Pepper M.D. whatever they got was almost certainly worse (and even if they do, Bouncing it for 2 Brains is a good deal). Cards that give Deadly such as Toxic Waste Imp and Super Stench can help trade very well with Pepper M.D. not supported by a Team-Up card such as Lil' Buddy; Impfinity, Huge-Gigantacus, and Super Brainz are the best at using these cards, though other Deadly cards aren't very good. The Smash has none of the above, and cards like Locust Swarm and Primordial Cheese Shover are way too expensive to be useful, so he's probably better off relying on Black Hole and Alien Ooze or just his Zombies' stats to dispatch Pepper M.D.. However, he does have access to Slammin' Smackdown, which can remove a 4/4 Pepper M.D. for 1 Brain, so against Solar Heroes, if you did face damage turn 1 then save a brain for it turn 2, if you have it.
Another way to deal with Pepper M.D. is to prevent it from increasing its stats; since its ability only activates when the Plant hero heals, you can prevent them from healing by simply not damaging them. While this doesn't work for the entire game, since you need to do damage to the enemy Hero to win, waiting a turn or two to begin doing damage is a legitimate strategy, since the more Brains you have the harder it is for heal decks to deal with all your resources. 
Brainy control decks are especially good at this, as they rarely want to hit face early anyways and have access to powerful burst options such as Trickster and Zombot Dinotronic Mechasaur. Placing a Zombie on turn 1 is often a bad idea, as it will not only charge the opponent's Super-Block Meter, but feed Pepper M.D. as well. Even 
Bullseye cards such as Quickdraw Con Man can be punished by the combination of Lil' Buddy and Pepper M.D.. Typical Crazy decks tend to be very aggressive, often leaving them vulnerable to heal decks, so consider adding cards like Binary Stars, Area 22, Secret Agent, Synchronized Swimmer, Space Cowboy, and Going Viral that are useful even in regular aggro gameplay but which serve the dual purpose of doing a huge burst of damage against heal decks. In fact, Crazy heroes can easily afford to wait a turn or two to play any Zombies thanks to the early game control offered by Bungee Plumber and Exploding Fruitcake. Waiting too long can allow the Plant hero to play other cards, however. Also, Solar Flare is likely to run aggro, so it might be a good idea to be more aggressive against her.
Don't use Sneezing Zombie.
Gallery
Pepper M.D.'s grayed out card
Four Pepper M.D.s next to each other
Old
Pepper M.D.'s statistics before update 1.14.13
Pepper M.D.'s card before update 1.14.13
The player receiving Pepper M.D. from a Basic Pack
The player having the choice between Pepper M.D. and Repeater as the prize for completing a level
In other languages
Please note that only official translations are used.
| Language |
Name |
Description
|
 English
|
Pepper M.D.
|
|
 Simplified Chinese
|
辣椒博士
|
lit. "Spicy Pepper PhD"
|
| Traditional Chinese
|
甜椒医生
|
lit. "Doc Sweet Pepper"
|
 French
|
Professeur Pepper
|
Professor Pepper
|
 German
|
Dr. Pepperoni
|
|
 Italian
|
Dottor peperone
|
Doctor Bell Pepper
|
 Japanese
|
パプリカ医学士
|
|
 Korean
|
피망 의학박사
|
|
 Brazilian Portuguese
|
Doutor Pimentão
|
Doctor Bell Pepper
|
 Russian
|
Доктор Перец
|
|
 Spanish
|
Chile médico
|
Doctor Chili
|
Trivia
- When destroyed, Pepper M.D. will somehow whiten and a flatlining sound can be heard.
Untrickable trait
Kabloom
Mega-Grow
Smarty
Solar