Cephalotaxus harringtonia
A firm-bodied conifer that heals in sun and can back your bench with a Sun overshield, playing native buffer or invasive attacker.
Japanese Plum Yew is a conifer, a Conifer card built around durability and self-healing. It is native to East Asia, where it plays as a defensive buffer, and invasive in Europe and eastern North America, where it plays as an attacker. See nativity for how region sets its role.
Branch Bash unlocks at Lv 1 for 2 Sun — Pins the foe under a fallen branch. — dealing 28 native / 28 invasive. The free once-per-battle ability Resin Seal (Lv 25, no damage) is a strong self-heal: Seals the wound with resin: heal 40%. The advanced attack Cone Cap (Lv 40, 6 Sun) reads 20 / 20 and Caps the foe under a cone — it stalls and can't heal. No move carries an initiative rider. See Moves.
It keeps two always-on abilities, arriving apart. Photosynthesis comes in at Lv 10: a sunny-weather self-heal that lands 60% of the time, not every turn. Network stacks on at Lv 68 — as a canopy conifer it then projects a gold Sun overshield bar onto your active while it is benched, and that bar backs up any active, native or invasive, once the base Sun bar runs dry. For most of its climb it has only the Photosynthesis heal; the Sun-battery role is a late trait.
No toxin or thorn trait, so there is no contact recoil to worry about. Not a climber, so no Moss Pole. As a Network carrier it is valuable on the bench for the Sun overshield it lends. For field gear, the native build wants Calcium/Magnesium to push its already-respectable DEF; the invasive build wants attack support.
At Lv 40, 103 HP native / 89 invasive, the native carrying the +15% cushion and a bench overshield. DEF is 23 — firm for a mid card, well above a weed's, because conifer armor sits in a higher band. ATK is 20 native versus 21 invasive: only a small invasive step here, so it is not a hard hitter either way. The invasive pays Faustian bench self-damage per hit and concedes 2 prizes on KO. Tempo: initiative 14 (turn 1) and SPD 34 (turn 2 onward) are both modest, a middling mover. Retreat 16 Sun. See Stats.
HP climbs to 190 / 165, ATK to 35 / 39, and — being woody — DEF hardens to 53, a real conifer wall rather than the soft floor a weed keeps. Retreat rises to 33 Sun and its tempo pips fall to about 1% of cap, so it is a slow, armored cruiser at the top. Maturing turns it into a genuine tank.
Conifer puts it in the Specialist group: strong (×1.5) into Competitors — perennial herbs, vines, shrubs and broadleaf trees — and weak (×0.667) into Ruderals — annual forbs, grasses, aquatics and bulbs. Poison bypasses its DEF, the standard counter to its armor.
Native, it is a strong defensive anchor — firm DEF, an HP cushion, a 60% sunny heal, and a Sun overshield for the bench once Network lands. Invasive, it is more of a grinder than a finisher, since its ATK gap is small; lean on the self-heal to outlast the other side. It is inedible, so any fertilizer banks ×1.25 XP, not coins. A genuinely useful card, especially as bench support. It plays as a moderate-tempo body early and becomes power-dominant after about Lv 11 as a native (Lv 13 invasive) — a bulk-forward conifer that only leans harder on its armor with age.
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.