Toughleaf dogwood

Overview

Toughleaf dogwood is a hardy shrub native to eastern North America, with no invasive range, so it plays native-only — a buffer and a wall, not an attacker. It carries the highest base HP of the shrubs in its wave and, once mature, a taunt that pulls single-target hits onto itself, which makes it a genuinely useful bench guardian for protecting a fragile carry. Its own attack is modest; its job is to absorb, pin, and protect.

Moves

Its kit unlocks in three stages, so a low-level card only has the opener.

• Snarl (unlocks at Lv 1, costs 2 Sun) — the starter attack, dealing 27. Snarls the foe up in thorny growth — it can't pull loose. It binds the target so it cannot swap out, letting the dogwood hold a foe in the active slot.
• Chaparral Climax (unlocks at Lv 25, free, once per battle) — Owns the dry hillside: heal 60% and +4 ATK. A large self-heal that also permanently raises its attack for the rest of the fight; no damage number of its own.
• Hedgerow Havoc (unlocks at Lv 40, costs 6 Sun) — the advanced attack, 25. The whole hedgerow comes down on the bench. It reaches across the enemy bench.

None of its moves seize the initiative, so it acts on its tempo in normal order — the bind on its opener is about denying an escape, not about striking first.

Abilities

These are the always-on traits this card keeps, on a schedule. At the snapshot level of Lv 40 it holds only the first.

• Sclerophylly (from Lv 10) — tough, hard-cased leaves that subtract a flat 3 from every incoming hit after the armor calculation. Against a stream of small attacks that flat shave adds up, propping up an otherwise modest DEF.
• Sapromyophily (stacks on at Lv 68) — a taunt. Wherever the game picks a single victim out of a group — a scattering attack, a forced swap, incoming spore drift — this card takes the hit instead of one of your other plants. Because it arrives here fully matured, it holds that focus at any HP. The honest caveat: against a lone wild plant there is no group to pick from, so the taunt does nothing in a one-on-one wild encounter; it earns its keep on a populated bench and in player-versus-player matches.

Both are steady, always-on effects rather than chance-based sustain.

Features

It is neither toxic nor thorny, so it gives an attacker no contact recoil despite its "snarling" flavour. It is not a climber and equips no Moss Pole. Its best field gear is a Calcium/Magnesium amendment for flat DEF, which suits its wall role; with no invasive form, you always gear it as a native.

Stats

At the snapshot level of Lv 40:

• HP — 121, the +15% native cushion included; the beefiest of its peer shrubs.
• ATK — 19, low; this card does not win by damage.
• DEF — 12 at this level, held up further by Sclerophylly's flat shave.
• Tempo — initiative 35 versus SPD 34. The two are nearly even, with initiative a hair ahead, so it opens at roughly the same pace it sustains — an even-tempo card rather than a burst-then-fade one.
• Retreat — 14 Sun.

Native-only, it plays as a buffer: the HP cushion, plus a green overshield bar projected onto your active while it is benched. See nativity and the overshield.

At Level 100

Grown to Lv 100 its HP climbs to 233 — huge — while its DEF caps at 24, mid-shrub: it becomes a big-bodied wall rather than an armored fortress, leaning on that deep HP pool and its taunt to soak damage. Its ATK tops out at 34, so it stays a defender to the end, and its tempo has dropped to about 1% of cap — slow but very hard to remove. Retreat rises to 29 Sun as it roots in.

Weaknesses & Resistances

As a shrub it is a Competitor on the succession wheel: ×1.5 into Ruderal categories (annual-forb, grass, aquatic, bulb), ×0.667 from Specialist categories (succulent, conifer, fern, epiphyte), neutral against other Competitors and the Weird categories. Send it into weeds and grasses; keep it clear of conifers and ferns.

Gameplay uses

This is a defensive anchor. Its large HP, flat damage reduction, self-heal, and — from Lv 68 — its taunt let it stand in front of your team and eat the hits meant for a squishier hitter, and the bind on its opener stops a foe from fleeing the matchup. It will not close out fights with its low attack, so pair it with a real damage dealer; on its own it is a wall and a collection piece.

It is not edible, so any fertilizer feeds it ×1.25 XP instead of coins — a good use for spare leveling nutrients. It plays as a fast skirmisher only up to about Lv 19, after which its bulk takes over and it becomes the heavyweight wall it is meant to be; level it freely, since it grows monotonically stronger.