Acer rufinerve
An armored broadleaf tree that heals the bench and later shields the active with a Sun overshield; plays either arena role.
Honshu Maple is a Broadleaf tree that fights as an armored support wall: heavy DEF, low damage, and traits that keep your whole team alive. It is native to East Asia and invasive in Europe, so the arena can cast it as a native buffer for your bench or as an invasive attacker. As a card it is a strong defensive anchor and a weak attacker — build around the armor and the healing, not the hits.
Most of your Honshu Maples sit below level 40, so the unlock levels matter. The starter attack, Whomp, unlocks at level 1 for 2 Sun, dealing about 35 damage native / 36 invasive and splashing onto the enemy bench. The free once-per-battle ability, Nurse Log, arrives at level 25: The fallen feed the next: heal 25%, even the bench, and call back the lost. — it restores HP. The advanced attack, Canopy Closure, unlocks at level 40 for 6 Sun (23 native / 24 invasive) and saps the target. None of its moves seize the initiative. See Moves.
Honshu Maple keeps two always-on traits. Mycorrhiza arrives full-strength on the level 10 riser and heals a benched ally, but fires only about 60% of the time, so the healing is intermittent. Network arrives on the level 68 riser and projects a gold Sun overshield bar onto your active from the bench — a canopy-tree effect that matters only at high level. See Abilities.
It carries no trait keywords and is non-toxic: no contact recoil, no poison rider, so nothing punishes an attacker for hitting it. Its growth habit is terrestrial, so it is not eligible for a Moss Pole. As a native, defensive field gear that stacks onto its DEF or HP fits its wall role; as an invasive, favor offense, though its damage ceiling is low.
At level 40 it reads 140 HP native / 122 invasive, with ATK of 15 native versus 17 invasive — a small edge on a low base. DEF is 23, high in the broadleaf-tree band, so it blunts hits well. Its tempo is a quick start into a much slower cruise: turn 1 leads on its initiative (30), then it is badly out-paced on its SPD (14). Retreat costs 18 Sun. As a native it gains a +15% HP cushion and a benched HP overshield onto your active; as an invasive it pays self-damage to its own bench on damaging attacks and concedes 2 prizes when knocked out. See Stats.
Matured to level 100, it climbs to an armored wall: 276 HP native / 240 invasive and 25 / 29 ATK, with DEF reaching 52 — enough to shrug off most single blows. Retreat rises to 39 Sun and tempo has sunk to roughly 1% of cap, so it acts near-last. Maturing buys the Sun overshield and heavy armor at the cost of ever being fast. See Stats.
As a tree it is in the Competitor succession group. It hits Ruderal plants (annual forbs, grasses, aquatics, bulbs) for x1.5 and is struck for only x0.667 by them; it is weak to Specialist plants (succulents, conifers, ferns, epiphytes), which hit it for x1.5 while resisting its blows. Other Competitors and the off-wheel Weird group are neutral. See Weaknesses & Resistances.
Play it as a native buffer and team anchor: its armor lets it soak turns while Mycorrhiza tops up the bench and, at high level, Network shields your active. Its own damage is low, so it wins by keeping everyone else alive rather than by attacking; as an invasive it is a poor finisher and better left in support. It is inedible, so feeding it any nutrient banks x1.25 XP rather than coins, and it banks that bonus reliably. It opens fast but is carried by its bulk, with the crossover around level 5 native (or 8 invasive) — higher levels are always stronger, so there is no reason to hold it back.
Leveling trades speed for power. A plant’s tempo (SPD + INI, the turn-order edge) fades as it grows, while its power (HP + ATK + DEF, net of the rising Sun cost to retreat) climbs. The crossover is the level where power overtakes tempo: below it the plant is a fast skirmisher, above it a heavyweight. Shown for each stance this plant can actually hold — native adds a HP cushion, invasive an attack edge, neutral neither — with the card at its crossover and fully grown at Lv 100.