Angelica arguta
Lyall's angelica is one of the fastest perennial herbs in a sustained fight — fewer than one in sixteen matches its SPD — yet it opens slow, ceding turn one before it takes over.
Lyall's angelica is built for the long turn. Its sustained tempo (SPD) of 51 at Lv 40 is matched by fewer than one perennial herb in sixteen — near the top of a very large category — but it is slow off the mark: its opening initiative 32 sits in the bottom third. It cedes turn one and then out-paces almost everything after it, the mirror of a fast starter that fades. A soft-bodied western North American herb (Angelica arguta, Apiaceae), native to western North America and invasive nowhere, it plays only as a native buffer.
Three slots unlock as the card levels:
None of these carries the initiative rider, so the slow-opener, fast-cruiser pattern in the Overview is the whole tempo story: expect to move second on turn one and first from turn two on. Most cards you own sit well below Lv 40, holding only the starter until the ability and advanced attack unlock. See Moves and Abilities.
Lyall's angelica keeps two always-on traits, drawn from the perennial-herb pool:
The card carries no special trait keywords, and it is not a climber, so it does not take a Moss Pole. Given its paper-thin armour, a Calcium/Magnesium soil amendment is the most useful gear you can give it — flat DEF stacks straight onto its floor. See field gear.
Read at Lv 40. HP is 103 with the native +15% cushion included; DEF is 4, right down near the category floor — this is a genuinely soft card. Tempo is the whole point: opening initiative 32 is low and decides turn one, while sustained SPD 51 is high and decides every turn after, so it fights from behind on the opening exchange and leads the rest. Retreat costs 16 Sun. As a native it can project a bench overshield, and with no invasive role it never pays the invasive self-damage. See Stats.
By Lv 100 its HP swells to 190, but its DEF barely moves — 8 — the classic soft-weed pattern: biomass piles on as health while the armour stays near the floor for life. Retreat rises to 33 Sun. Its inverted tempo sinks toward its floor by the cap, so even this fast card is a small mover in absolute terms at Lv 100 — quick for its category still, but nothing like the turn-one edge a low-level copy shows. Maturing buys it a deep HP pool and little else on defence.
Roughly USDA zone 1b — it should come through winters that bottom out near -46 °C. Colder than that and it wants shelter, a wall, or a winter indoors. In its own terms it runs from a cold edge of -12.0 °C to a warm edge of 18.4 °C, in the Boreal band — a genuinely cold-hardy montane herb whose real limit is heat, not frost: that low warm edge means summers much above it push the plant out of its comfort zone. Read the zone as roughly right rather than exact; it comes from a regression with an error of more than a full zone.
The card's climate chip puts this in front of the player:
| Chip | What it means | Battle XP |
|---|---|---|
| Thrives here | your local winter low and summer heat both sit inside its range | x2 |
| In range | it survives where you are but sits near one of its edges | x1.25 |
| Colder than its range | your winters drop below what it tolerates | no bonus |
| Hotter than its range | your summers run past its warm edge; the likely verdict in a warm-summer region | no bonus |
The reading is for where you are standing, so it changes as you travel, and climate affects only battle XP — never damage, stats, growth or coins.
As a perennial herb it is in the Competitor succession group. It hits Ruderal plants (annual forbs, grasses, aquatics, bulbs) for ×1.5 and resists them to ×0.667, but it loses the exchange with Specialists (succulents, conifers, ferns, epiphytes), who hit it for ×1.5 while it returns only ×0.667. It is neutral against other Competitors and the off-wheel Weird categories.
Lyall's angelica is a native buffer that plays the long game: it moves second on turn one, then out-speeds most of what it faces, leaning on a big once-per-battle heal and, later, a Resprout save to grind an opponent down. The catch is its DEF, which never leaves the floor, so it needs a bench of natives behind it feeding the overshield — alone, a hard hitter simply punches through it. It earns its keep as a single-player coin generator: it is edible with the eaten part being the leaf, so feeding it Nitrogen (the leaf-matching fertilizer) pays ×1.25 coins, while any other nutrient banks ×1.25 XP instead. It fights as a fast skirmisher until about Lv 30, after which its growing bulk and attack take over — so, as ever, there is no reason to hold it back from leveling. A modest but honest card: fast, self-healing, and let down only by its armour.
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.