Bidens frondosa
The Devil's Beggarticks (Bidens frondosa) is a Annual forb that plays as a defensive buffer where native and an attacker where invasive.
The Devil's Beggarticks is a fast weedy annual with barbed seeds. In battle it plays as a Annual forb. It is native to Eastern North America and Western North America, where it takes the defensive buffer role, and invasive in Africa, East Asia, Europe, and Oceania, where it becomes an attacker.
Its kit unlocks in three stages. The starter attack, Quick Bloom, is available from Level 1 and costs 2 Sun, dealing 42 as a native and 45 as an invasive. Its effect: Seizes initiative: first in the wild, acts again on a kill. This starter carries the initiative rider. In a wild encounter that means hard priority — it strikes first regardless of either tempo stat (if both sides bring a rider, they cancel and the normal order decides). In the arena the rider does something different: it does not grant first strike, but when the plant lands a killing blow it seizes the turn and acts again, and it can chain such kills across a chipped bench.
The free ability, Disclimax (Level 25), costs no Sun because it is once per battle: Holds the ground open — the foe stalls and withers.
The advanced attack, Choke Bloom (Level 40, 6 Sun), deals 42 native and 45 invasive: Crowds the foe out, sapping its strength. 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 Rapid Cycling, a little SPD gained each checkup up to a cap. From Level 68 a second, different trait stacks on top: Reseed, which leaves a fresh Seedling token on your bench on a knockout, once per match. 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. 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. Its edible leaf means the matching Nitrogen (N) fertilizer pays bonus coins (see Gameplay uses). 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 1 — a soft floor — annual forbs sit in the lowest DEF band, so it relies on speed and pressure, not armor. It retreats for 12 Sun. Turn 1 is ordered by its initiative (38) and every turn after by its SPD (53). 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 27 native ATK against 36 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 barely left the floor even as biomass HP swells toward 190 — a bigger, softer body, not a tougher one. Its retreat creeps up to 23 Sun and its once-brisk tempo has collapsed to about 1% of cap, so the fast opener it was as a seedling is gone; late, it is a soft mass that must win before it is worn down.
It is a Ruderal on the succession wheel: it reclaims ground from Specialists (succulents, conifers, ferns and epiphytes), hitting them for 1.5× and resisting their blows, but is crowded out by Competitors (perennial herbs, vines, shrubs and broadleaf trees), which hit it 1.5× and shrug off its own attacks. The Weird categories (carrion-aroids, carnivores, mycotrophs and vascular parasites) sit off the wheel and trade neutrally with it. See weaknesses & resistances and categories.
Its Quick Bloom starter carries the initiative rider and hits hard — in the wild it strikes first, in the arena it finishes a kill and keeps going. A genuinely aggressive ruderal opener with edible leaves; still soft, so press the advantage early. Because its edible part is a resolved leaf, feeding it Nitrogen pays ×1.25 coins; any other nutrient banks ×1.25 XP instead. On the total-power curve its crossover falls around Level 31 native and 33 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.