Allamanda cathartica
The Golden trumpet (Allamanda cathartica) is a Vine that plays as a defensive buffer where native and an attacker where invasive.
The Golden trumpet is a vigorous tropical flowering vine. In battle it plays as a Vine. It is native to South America, where it takes the defensive buffer role, and invasive in Africa, East Asia, Eastern North America, Western North America, Oceania, and South Asia, where it becomes an attacker.
Its kit unlocks in three stages. The starter attack, Twine, is available from Level 1 and costs 2 Sun, dealing 23 as a native and 27 as an invasive. Its effect: Twines around and holds it fast.
The free ability, Smother Climax (Level 25), costs no Sun because it is once per battle: Blankets the whole stand — the foe's bench withers and is held.
The advanced attack, Strangle (Level 40, 6 Sun), deals 20 native and 24 invasive: Coils tight — a light blow that leaves the foe dormant. Most cards you meet are well below the Level 40 snapshot these numbers are read at, and unlock their kit slot by slot as they level.
This card actually keeps two always-on traits, drawn from its category pool with the rest discarded. From Level 10 it carries Thigmotropic Coil, so striking it Binds the attacker in its tendrils. From Level 68 a second, different trait stacks on top: Adventitious Roots, a small self-heal each checkup from roots it throws along its stem. Both are working traits — there are no inert abilities in the game — and each arrives at full strength on the riser shown, so for much of the card's life it plays with only the earlier of the two.
It carries no Toxin or Thorns trait, so it inflicts no contact recoil on an attacker. As a vine its growth habit resolves to a climber, so isClimber returns true and it can equip a Moss Pole — a natural fit that suits its clinging style. Because its body is soft, a Cloche is a valuable ward against the damage-over-time Poison that bypasses its overshield, and a Cal-Mag amendment shores up its thin armor. See field gear for the full item list and nativity for how region sets its role.
Read at the Level 40 snapshot, its DEF is 6 — a modest band with a hard cap on its own attack damage — a vine wears a foe down rather than hitting through it. It retreats for 12 Sun. Turn 1 is ordered by its initiative (23) and every turn after by its SPD (46). It is slow off the mark but relentless after — outpaced on the opening exchange, then pulling ahead as the fight settles. By nativity it splits two ways. As a native it gains a +15% HP cushion (103 HP against 89 invasive) and, from the bench, projects an HP overshield bar onto your active. As an invasive its aggression is built from how widely it spreads plus an introduced-range term — compare 21 native ATK against 32 invasive — and it pays Faustian self-damage to its own bench on every damaging attack, conceding 2 prizes when it is knocked out. The overshield is a bench-built extra ring: up to four green HP bars from benched natives (drained by direct damage first, but bypassed by poison, recoil and splash) and up to two gold Sun bars from benched Network trees.
By Level 100 its DEF has risen to 11 and HP toward 190, but its damage stays capped and its once-quick tempo has sunk to roughly 1% of cap. Retreat climbs to 23 Sun. Late, it is a clinging attritional body, not a finisher.
It is a Competitor on the succession wheel: it crowds out Ruderals (annual forbs, grasses, aquatics and bulbs), hitting them for 1.5× and resisting their blows, but is outlasted by Specialists (succulents, conifers, ferns and epiphytes), which turn its 1.5× disadvantage against it. The Weird categories (carrion-aroids, carnivores, mycotrophs and vascular parasites) sit off the wheel and trade neutrally with it. See weaknesses & resistances and categories.
A widely invasive Competitor vine that binds, wilts and smothers the enemy bench. Frail and damage-capped, but a persistent attritional harasser with strong bench control and a Moss Pole. It has no resolved edible part, so any fertilizer you feed it banks ×1.25 XP rather than coins — a growth boost, not an income stream. On the total-power curve its crossover falls around Level 23 native and 24 invasive: below it the card leans on speed, above it on bulk and attack. It only grows stronger with level, so there is never a 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.