Chamaecrista fasciculata
Partridge pea — a fast annual legume with the initiative rider and reseed.
Partridge pea is an annual forb built around tempo: its Quick Bloom opener carries the initiative rider, and Reseed leaves a Seedling token behind when it falls. It is native to eastern North America and western North America and invasive in Africa and South America. That gives it two roles: a native buffer, or an invasive attacker.
Its kit unlocks in three steps, so most of the time you field it below the level where the whole thing is live. The starter attack, Quick Bloom, is available from level 1 for 2 Sun. It deals 41 damage as a native or 42 as an invasive. Seizes initiative: first in the wild, acts again on a kill.
At level 25 it gains a free, once-per-battle ability, Nudation: Strips the ground bare — heavy Wither, and the foe can't heal. It costs no Sun — its price is that you get one use per fight.
The advanced attack, Arrowseed, arrives at level 40 for 6 Sun, dealing 38 damage as a native or 39 as an invasive. A barbed seed goes in first and festers. Because Quick Bloom carries the initiative rider, in a wild encounter it takes hard priority and strikes first no matter the Speed on either side. In the arena the rider works differently: there it lets the plant act again whenever its strike scores an outright kill — never a first-strike, always a finish-and-continue. Since this is exactly the reseed archetype, expect the pattern where a lethal rider strike kills the parent, banks its prize, and leaves a Seedling token fighting on.
See Moves and Abilities for how the slots and Sun costs work.
A card keeps at most two always-on traits — drawn deterministically, with the rest of its category pool dropped for good. This one draws two, and they arrive at different levels:
Those are the only two it holds; everything else in its category's pool was passed over. See Abilities for the full trait list.
It carries no special keyword chips — it is not tagged toxic or thorned, and it is not a climber, so a Moss Pole does not fit it.
Soft-bodied cards like this one gain the most from a Calcium/Magnesium soil amendment, which adds flat DEF to a thin armor band. See Field gear for what fits.
Its gear picks shift with its role: as a native buffer, defensive amendments; as an invasive attacker, gear that presses its damage advantage. See Weaknesses & resistances for the matchup context.
Numbers here are read at level 40, where every slot is unlocked. It reads 1 DEF and retreats for 13 Sun.
Its opening initiative (52) and sustained Speed (52) are close, so it holds a steady tempo across the fight.
As a native it gains a +15% HP cushion — 103 HP versus 89 as an invasive — and while benched it projects a green HP overshield onto your active. As an invasive it trades that cushion for attack: its ATK rises from 25 to 28, a modest step, but it pays Faustian self-damage to its own bench on every damaging hit and concedes 2 prizes when it is knocked out.
The overshield, the Sun economy and damage-as-a-ratio are explained on Stats.
By level 100 its biomass HP swells to 190, but its soft-bodied armor stays low at 1 DEF — leveling buys it bulk and attack (climbing to 46 native / 53 invasive), not toughness. Retreat climbs to 25 Sun and its already-inverted tempo sinks toward its floor, so it is markedly slower old than young.
In the succession chart its category, Annual forb, is a Ruderal. It deals ×1.5 damage to succulents, conifers, ferns and epiphytes, but perennial herbs, vines, shrubs and broadleaf trees hit it for ×1.5 and resist its attacks in return (×0.667). Against everything else it is neutral.
The full wheel is on Weaknesses & resistances.
This is the textbook rider-meets-reseed card: a lethal rider strike lets it act again, and even when it dies it leaves a token to fight on. As an invasive it is a strong, disruptive budget aggressor; as a legume it also often arrives pre-fertilized with Nitrogen. Frail, so play it fast.
It has no resolved edible part, so any fertilizer you feed it banks ×1.25 XP rather than coins — treat it as a growth boost.
As a legume it fixes its own nitrogen: about one in four caught in the wild arrives with the Nitrogen amendment already applied — a free head start worth a few hundred coins — though that nodule stock decomposes after about a month.
One note on leveling: it fights as a faster skirmisher until about level 40, after which its growing bulk and attack take over as the dominant edge. It is stronger overall at higher levels — turn order is only a small lever — so there is no 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.