Commelina diffusa
Commelina diffusa buffers when its region makes it native and attacks when its region makes it invasive.
Commelina diffusa is a card in the Annual forb category in Supplant. It is native to Africa, East Asia, Oceania, and South Asia, where the arena treats it as a buffer with a small HP cushion, and invasive in Europe, eastern and western North America, and South America, where it plays as an attacker. Which role you get is set by the arena region, not by the card.
Its kit fills in as it levels — most cards you catch are well below the snapshot level (Lv 40) where every slot is unlocked, so introduce them in order. The starter, Yolo (unlocks at Lv 1, 2 Sun), is a colonizing spread with no fixed damage number — it ignores armor and hits harder each time it lands. The free once-per-battle ability is Germination Flush, unlocked at Lv 25 and free to use. The seed bank breaks at once: +4 ATK, kept for the match. The advanced attack, Covercrop Crush (unlocks at Lv 40, 6 Sun), hits for 33 native and 36 invasive. None of its moves carry the initiative rider, so it never seizes hard priority in a wild fight or an extra action in the arena. See Moves and Abilities.
It draws two working traits, one per riser. Duff Stuff arrives at Lv 10: while it is active, its effective DEF rises by half the summed DEF of its living benched ruderal allies (annual forbs, grasses, aquatics, and bulbs), recomputed live so the bonus fades as those allies faint. Reseed stacks on at Lv 68: on a knockout it leaves behind a Seedling token that steps into the slot. Neither rides the 60% sustain chance — both are reliable. See Abilities.
It carries no special status keywords — no toxin, thorns, or lifesteal — so nothing it does punishes an attacker or drains the foe on contact. It is not a climber (its growth habit is terrestrial), so a Moss Pole does not attach to it. Its DEF band is soft, so a Calcium/Magnesium amendment gives it more proportional benefit than it looks — useful for a native buffer meant to soak hits. An invasive copy would rather run an attack-boosting amendment. See field gear.
Read at the snapshot level (Lv 40, where every move is unlocked): as a native it carries 103 HP (the +15% cushion is baked in) and 28 ATK; as an invasive, 89 HP and 39 ATK — the invasive edge is trait-sourced from how widely it spreads, so compare those ATK numbers to see the real gap. Its DEF is 2. Its opening tempo (51) and sustained tempo (51) sit close together, so turn order stays roughly even across the fight rather than swinging with the rounds. Its Sun bar caps at 120 and refills at +1 every 15 minutes; retreating costs 16 Sun. Benched behind an ally, a native copy projects a green HP-overshield bar onto your active, sized by its rarity, that soaks direct attack damage before base HP — though damage-over-time, recoil, and splash bypass it. See Stats and Native strength.
Fully grown, native HP swells to 190 (165 invasive) and ATK reaches 52, but DEF barely leaves its soft band — only 3 at Lv 100 — so it grows into a big-HP body with little armor, and a hard hitter still punches through it. Retreat rises to 33 Sun as it roots deeper, and its tempo has fallen to roughly 1% of cap, giving up the turn-order edge it had young. Maturing buys it survivability through sheer biomass, not toughness.
In the succession type chart it belongs to the Ruderal group. It hits Specialist categories (succulents, conifers, ferns, and epiphytes) hard (×1.5) and is resisted by Competitor categories (perennial herbs, vines, shrubs, and broadleaf trees) (×0.667); against its own group and the off-wheel Weird categories, damage is even both ways. See weaknesses & resistances and categories.
Play a native copy as a benched buffer or a durable body that soaks hits and props up your active's overshield; play an invasive copy as the aggressor, leaning on its higher ATK — but remember an invasive pays "Faustian" self-damage to its own bench on every damaging attack and concedes 2 prizes when it is knocked out. On raw stats this is a middling card: a soft-DEF body that earns its keep more on the bench and in the collection than as a front-line battler, and it wants backup. It is edible with a resolved leaf part, so feeding it the matching Nitrogen fertilizer pays ×1.25 coins; any other nutrient banks ×1.25 XP instead — a steady coin earner in single-player battles. Its power and tempo curves cross around Lv 36 as a native (Lv 37 invasive): below that it leans on turn order as a fast skirmisher, and above it its bulk and attack take over. Leveling always makes it stronger — the crossover is about which edge dominates, not when it peaks.
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.