Alpha Clone Zombie

The Alpha Clone Zombie is the first new zombie encountered in The Moon. The Alpha Clone Zombie and summons other Alpha Clone Zombies in his row.

Suburban Almanac Entry
Alpha Clone Zombie used to be lonely. None of the other zombie’s liked him. It seemed that nobody could relate to him at all. And then he found a little remote and his life changed forever! A push of a button and he can talk to more friends just like him. He doesn’t know where they come from. Alpha Clone Zombie doesn’t even know what a clone is.

Implementation
For every Alpha Clone Zombie that enters the lawn, a total of four more can be cloned from that one zombie to fill all five rows. An Alpha Clone Zombie group will become eligible to clone a new zombie once one has been killed from any of the rows and a sufficient delay has passed (around the time it takes it to walk one row, freezing slows the delay proportionally). After the delay, the Alpha Clone Zombie farthest to the left will clone one more zombie at the same horizontal position to fill any of the unfilled rows. This mechanism prevents exponential zombie spawns.

Strategies
It is recommended to try to kill the Alpha Clone Zombie before it begins cloning, as it will create more work for you later on. Generally, make sure all lanes are sufficiently covered to ensure the Alpha Clone Zombie cannot continue replicating. Splash damage is very useful to attack multiple Alpha Clone Zombies at once. Ensure the zombie does not pass the front line of your defences, as it can clone more zombies in the lanes above and below. Blocking the zombies with defensive plants will keep them from breaching your defences. Pushing the leftmost Alpha Clone Zombies back will also cause clones to be summoned from farther back.

Trivia

 * The zombie is slower and weaker stats suggests continual re-cloning has rendered the zombie physically weaker over time.
 * The Alpha Clone Zombie is the only zombie in the Plants vs. Zombies franchise that can replicate itself. Other zombies like Dancing Zombie and Disco-tron 3000 have a similar behaviour but summon other zombies instead of replicating.