It has the Amphibious trait, and its ability resets the zombie hero's brain counter to zero the turn it is played. Its closest zombie counterpart is Ra Zombie.
It is based on the banana, an edible fruit, botanically a berry, produced by several kinds of large herbaceous, flowering plants in the genus Musa. Its head bears a resemblance to Megamind's, and also some of those in Murderous Maths.
Its name is a portmanteau of "brain," referring to its ability and head, and "banana," the real-life plant it is based on.
Its card description contains the word "brain drain", meaning a situation where there is an emigration of highly trained or qualified people from a particular country, which usually does not mean well for the country of departure. However, the term is taken literally and positively, as it refers to its ability to reduce the zombie hero's brains to 0.
Statistics[]
Class: Smarty
Tribe: Banana Plant
Trait: Amphibious
Ability: When played: The Zombie Hero loses their Brains.
Set - Rarity: Premium - Legendary
Card description[]
In this case, "brain drain" is a good thing.
Update history[]
Update 1.4.14[]
▲ Trait added: Amphibious
Tribe change: Fruit → Banana
Update 1.16.10[]
▲ Strength change: 3 → 4
Rarity change: Super-Rare → Legendary
Update 1.22.12[]
Animation change: Legendary shine added.
Strategies[]
With[]
Brainana has low stats for a high-cost plant and lacks any type of meaningful synergy, so it's bad for a fighter. This means that this plant is used not because of its stats, but because of its ability. You will only be able to shut down any of your opponent's tricks (Unless a Kabloom hero has a Seedling that transforms into it, preventing the Zombie hero from playing any cards that costs brains. While it should never be relied upon, Brainana does becomes much more potent in this particular instance, allowing you to wreak havoc on your opponent with little fear of retaliation.)
Therefore, it is better to play it in the late game, as your opponent gets more brains for tricks and environments, as well as Teleport and Teleportation Zombie against the Brainy class.
Because of its low stats, it's not very good. Doing only four guaranteed damage for six sun is hardly an efficient trade. It also does not protect against Zombies in Gravestones or Zombies already played, meaning it is quite useless against decks archetypes like Aggro or Tempo.
Brainana's stats can be boosted with Half-Bananas when they activate their ability
While Brainana also guarantees the safety of your plants leading into the Fight! phase, as your opponent cannot play tricks to destroy them or decrease their stats, this is hard to set up against a competent deck, as getting a board presence is quite hard when playing a deck like control. Brainana also only skips one singular turn, so is hardly impactful enough to win an entire game.
It is also possible for all Smarty heroes to use Rescue Radish to bounce Brainana, so if you are saving up brains for a trick like Bad Moon Rising, be wary of this, as your efforts to save brains will be for naught.
Against[]
While Brainana's ability cannot be played around with the exceptions of other bad cards such as Gentleman Zombie or Ra Zombie, its low stats make it very easy to counter. It does only four damage on turn 6, which is quite low. Using a big, threatening zombie such as Cryo Yeti, Interstellar Bounty Hunter, Supernova Gargantuar, or Gas Giant makes Brainana very easy to counter, since it will always lose the trade against them. Alternatively, you can spread out your board presence using lots of small cards to deal massive damage to the Plant Hero.
You should usually not worry about Brainana's ability. If it depletes your brains at the start of the turn (from a transformation) then there's nothing you can do, but otherwise, it only affects trick-based decks or those abusing Teleportation Zombie.