East Indies aster

Overview

East Indies aster (Aster tongolensis) is a perennial herb, a resilient mid-weight body in battle terms. It is native to East Asia and invasive nowhere on the map, so it only ever fields its native, defensive form — there is no attacker version of this card. Read across the fight it is slow to open but much faster once the fight settles, a real late-fight racer.

Moves

The kit fills in as the card levels — most of your copies will be well below the snapshot level of 40 used for the numbers here.

• Taproot Anchor (unlocks at Level 1) is the starter attack: Anchors deep and holds the foe with it. As a native defender it deals 27. It costs 2 Sun.
• Autogenic Reaction (unlocks at Level 25) is the free once-per-battle ability: Remakes its own ground: +6 ATK and heal 25%. It costs no Sun and deals no damage — it is pure utility.
• Rhizome Lock (unlocks at Level 40) is the advanced attack: Locks the foe down underground and saps it. It deals 19 as a native defender. It costs 6 Sun.

Abilities

This card keeps two always-on traits, drawn from its category's pool and locked in once and for all — everything else the pool offered was dropped.

• From Level 10, Basal Rosette gives a flat +3 DEF at all times, a ground-hugging rosette that resists grazing and mowing.
• From Level 68, Resprout gives roughly a 60% chance to survive one lethal hit and cling on at a quarter health.

Features

It carries no special keyword traits — no innate toxin, thorns, carnivory or succulence — so it plays as a straight perennial herb. Its growth habit is not recorded as a climbing one, so it does not take a Moss Pole. For field gear, a native copy leaning into the defender role wants a Calcium/Magnesium soil amendment to firm up its otherwise thin DEF; an attacker copy would rather spend the slot on the fertilizer that suits its role, and a Cloche is worth holding if you expect a poison-heavy opponent. See nativity for how region sets its role and abilities for the trait model.

Stats

Read at the snapshot level of 40, where every move is unlocked: 103 HP (native, including the roughly 15% cushion), 1 DEF, tempo of 29 opening / 47 sustained, and a 12 Sun retreat cost. Its Sun bar caps at 120 and refills in real time; from Level 52 it also regenerates Sun mid-battle, and a Level 85 capstone makes the starter free. Its DEF is soft (1 at the snapshot level), the low perennial herb band, so it leans on health and recovery rather than armor. As a native defender it gains a roughly 15% HP cushion (103 HP at the snapshot level) and, while benched, projects a green overshield bar onto whatever card is active for you. See stats for the full model.

At Level 100

Grown to the cap, its HP reaches 190 while DEF firms only modestly to 1 — the middling perennial herb band, tougher than a weed but no wall. The retreat cost rises to 22 Sun, and the inverted tempo has fallen to about 1% of cap from its higher early reading. Maturing buys bulk and a little more staying power, at the cost of the speed it had when young.

Weaknesses & Resistances

By category it belongs to the Competitor succession group. On the type wheel, Competitor deals extra damage to Ruderal plants (annual forbs, grasses, aquatic plants and bulbs) and takes extra from Specialist plants (succulents, conifers, ferns and epiphytes); a strong matchup lands at ×1.5 and a resisted one at ×0.667. Everything off those two edges — including the Weird categories — is neutral. See weaknesses and resistances.

Gameplay uses

With no invasive form, it is purely a defender: park it as a native on the bench to feed the overshield, or lead with it as a durable body. It is a serviceable mid-weight card — usable in single-player and worth collecting, without being a top-tier pick. It is inedible, so any fertilizer you feed it banks ×1.25 XP — a steady way to level a collection piece. Leveling steadily trades falling turn-order speed for rising bulk and attack: it fights as a fast skirmisher up to about Level 28, after which its power takes over — it is monotonically stronger the higher you level it, so there is never a reason to hold it back. The Total power panel below charts this trade-off for each stance it can hold.