Carex brunnea
Greater brown sedge (Carex brunnea) is a ruderal grass in Supplant — a native buffer and invasive attacker whose game role is set out below.
The brown sedge is a widespread tufted sedge of damp ground. In battle it is a Grass — a Ruderal on the succession chart. Native across Africa, East Asia, Oceania and South Asia, it plays as a defensive buffer; where it has spread as an invasive into Europe and eastern North America, it turns attacker.
Its starter attack, Razors, is available from Lv 1 for 2 Sun and deals about 46 damage as a native and 48 as an invasive. The free once-per-battle ability, Pyric Herbivory, unlocks at Lv 25: Burns the sward to draw the grazers back — sets the foe alight. The advanced attack, Creeping Runner (Lv 40, 6 Sun), hits for about 34 native and 35 invasive.
From Lv 10 it carries an always-on wilt aura that saps the opposing active each checkup, wearing its attack down over the fight. At Lv 68 a second always-on trait stacks on: Intercalary Meristem, a reliable heal of about 2% of its maximum HP every checkup that regrows from the leaf base even through a Blight that would deny other healing.
For field gear, a Calcium/Magnesium amendment adds flat DEF, which a soft-bodied plant like this feels most. Its growth habit is not recorded as a climber, so it is not Moss Pole–eligible.
Read at the snapshot level (Lv 40, where its whole kit is unlocked), it shows 103 HP and 23 ATK as a native, or 89 HP and 26 ATK as an invasive, with 2 DEF. As a native it adds a 15% HP cushion and, while benched, projects an HP overshield onto your active; as an invasive it trades that for the higher attack ceiling and pays Faustian self-damage to its own bench on every damaging attack, conceding 2 prizes when it is knocked out. On defence, its DEF stays near the floor, so it relies on tempo and offence rather than soaking hits. Its opening tempo (turn 1) is 13 and its sustained tempo (turn 2 onward) 34 — making it slow to open but relentless once it gets going. Retreating it costs 16 Sun. See Stats and Native Strength for the full picture.
By Lv 100 its HP swells toward 190, but its DEF barely leaves its band at 3 — a soft-category plant stays soft no matter how much biomass it puts on. Attack reaches 42, retreat rises to 33 Sun, and its inverted tempo has sunk to a sliver, so the speed it relied on young is spent. It grows bulkier but never becomes a wall.
On the succession chart a Grass is a Ruderal. Ruderal plants hit Specialist categories hard (×1.5) and are resisted by Competitor categories (×0.667); against everything else the matchup is neutral. Weird categories are off the wheel entirely, so it trades neutrally with those.
An aggressive weedy grass: its razor starter hits hard, Allelopathy wears the foe down each turn, and it gains reliable self-healing later. Soft on defence, but a strong invasive coin-earner where it has spread into Europe and eastern North America. It has no resolved edible part, so fertilising it banks ×1.25 XP rather than coins — useful for levelling.
It fights as a fast skirmisher until about Lv 13 (a little later as an invasive, around Lv 16), after which its growing bulk and attack take over from its early speed edge.
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.