Buddleja globosa
A mid-armor shrub that buffers your bench in South America and turns attacker across Africa, Europe and Oceania, picking up a late-game taunt at Lv 68.
The orange ball-tree is a shrub, so it sits in the Competitor succession group with a firmer armor band than a weed or herb. Which way it plays depends on where the arena drops it. It is native to South America, where it takes the nativity buffer role, and it has naturalised as an invasive across Africa, Europe and Oceania, where it becomes an attacker. Its most distinctive feature is a late taunt that only comes online near the end of its leveling, so for most of a player's collection it is a straightforward buffer-or-brawler shrub.
It unlocks its starter, Tick Tumble, at Lv 1 for 2 Sun: Shakes the tick load loose onto the foe. It deals 27 as a native and 29 as an invasive.
At Lv 25 it gains its free once-per-battle ability, Facilitation: Shelters its own and starves the rest: heal 50%, and the foe's bench withers. This is pure utility and deals no damage, so treat it as a swing move — a big self-heal that also chips the enemy bench.
Its advanced attack, Hedge Fund, unlocks at Lv 40 for 6 Sun: Draws on its reserves — heal 30%. It hits for 27 native and 29 invasive, and folds in another self-heal, which makes this card unusually durable in a drawn-out exchange. Neither attack carries the initiative rider, so turn order is decided purely by its tempo stats. See moves.
Read off its actual trait schedule, this card keeps two always-on abilities, and they arrive far apart. At Lv 10 it gains Marcescence — it hangs onto its dead foliage as standing cover, a defensive trait that is live at full strength from the moment it arrives.
At Lv 68 it stacks on Sapromyophily (the lure taunt). This is a real board effect, not filler: wherever the engine would pick one victim out of a group — a forced swap, an incoming splash, a single-target grab — this shrub pulls that pick onto itself instead of an ally, shielding your bench. Because the taunt has no magnitude to scale, a still-maturing one would only hold focus while above half HP, but this card's arrives already matured, so above Lv 68 it always holds. The one honest caveat: against a lone wild plant there is only one target anyway, so the taunt has nothing to redirect there.
This card carries no special trait keywords and is not a climber, so it takes no Moss Pole. As a native buffer, lean toward defensive and Sun-economy field gear; as an invasive attacker, favor gear that raises its attack output. A Calcium/Magnesium soil amendment adds flat DEF, which suits the shrub's firmer armor band.
At Lv 40, every move is unlocked and priced at base Sun. Its DEF is 13 — mid-tier, the shrub band, firmer than a herb but nowhere near a tree wall. As a native it reads 103 HP and 18 ATK, carrying the +15% native HP cushion, and while benched it projects an HP overshield bar onto your active. As an invasive it trades bulk for punch: 89 HP but 24 ATK, the higher figure reflecting its introduced range on top of its native spread. The invasive form also pays escalating "Faustian" self-damage to its own bench on every damaging attack (it grows with level), and concedes 2 prizes when knocked out. On tempo it opens at initiative 29 and sustains at SPD 34 — a middling starter that holds a similar pace across the fight. See stats.
Maturing carries it well past its Lv 40 read. HP climbs to 190 native / 165 invasive and ATK to 31 / 47. DEF firms to 28 — a genuine shrub-tier wall, though still short of a tree's. Retreat rises to 33 Sun as the plant becomes more rooted, and its tempo pips have sunk to roughly their floor, so a grown orange ball-tree is a slow, tanky bench-protector rather than a racer.
As a shrub it is in the Competitor group: strong (x1.5) into Ruderal cards (annual forbs, grasses, aquatics, bulbs) and weak (x0.667) into Specialists (succulents, conifers, ferns, epiphytes). It trades evenly with other Competitors. See weaknesses & resistances.
This is a solid support shrub. Both its ability and its advanced attack heal, so it grinds out single-player battles well and is hard to burn down through direct damage. As a native, bench it to feed the overshield and swap it in as a wall. As an invasive, use it as a self-sustaining attacker, but mind the Faustian bench cost — don't run it alongside fragile benchmates you can't afford to chip. Its Lv 68 taunt turns it into a dedicated bodyguard for a bench of valuable natives in the arena. It is not edible, so any fertilizer you feed it banks x1.25 XP rather than coins. As a rough guide to the power-vs-tempo curve, it fights as a quicker skirmisher early and leans on bulk and armor above about Lv 20 native (Lv 22 invasive).
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.