Cosmos parviflorus
The Southwestern Cosmos (Cosmos parviflorus) is a Annual forb that plays as a defensive buffer.
The Southwestern Cosmos is a slender annual of the arid Southwest. In battle it plays as a Annual forb. It is native to Eastern North America and Western North America and listed as invasive nowhere, so it fills the defensive buffer role only.
Its kit unlocks in three stages. The starter attack, Superhero, is available from Level 1 and costs 2 Sun, dealing 33 as a native and 34 as an invasive. Its effect: Rallies the whole patch — the blow carries onto the bench.
The free ability, Old-Field Takeover (Level 25), costs no Sun because it is once per battle: Overruns the whole field — the foe's bench withers and sickens.
The advanced attack, Reckless Growth (Level 40, 6 Sun), deals 37 native and 38 invasive: Grows past what it can support: +4 ATK, kept. Most cards you meet are well below the Level 40 snapshot these numbers are read at, and unlock their kit slot by slot as they level.
This card actually keeps two always-on traits, drawn from its category pool with the rest discarded. From Level 10 it carries Duff Stuff, a real defence that lifts its effective DEF by half the summed DEF of your still-standing benched ruderal allies, so it hardens behind a full bench and softens as those allies faint. From Level 68 a second, different trait stacks on top: Ballistic Dispersal, which flings seed across the board when it is knocked out and chips every enemy. Both are working traits — there are no inert abilities in the game — and each arrives at full strength on the riser shown, so for much of the card's life it plays with only the earlier of the two.
It carries no Toxin or Thorns trait, so it inflicts no contact recoil on an attacker. Because its body is soft, a Cloche is a valuable ward against the damage-over-time Poison that bypasses its overshield, and a Cal-Mag amendment shores up its thin armor. See field gear for the full item list and nativity for how region sets its role.
Read at the Level 40 snapshot, its DEF is 1 — a soft floor — annual forbs sit in the lowest DEF band, so it relies on speed and pressure, not armor. It retreats for 12 Sun. Turn 1 is ordered by its initiative (44) and every turn after by its SPD (32). It is a quick starter that fades — it tends to land the first hit, then gets out-paced turn on turn. No region lists it as invasive, so it plays purely as a buffer: a +15% HP cushion (103 HP) and, from the bench, an HP overshield onto your active. It has no attacker stance. The overshield is a bench-built extra ring: up to four green HP bars from benched natives (drained by direct damage first, but bypassed by poison, recoil and splash) and up to two gold Sun bars from benched Network trees.
By Level 100 its DEF has barely left the floor even as biomass HP swells toward 190 — a bigger, softer body, not a tougher one. Its retreat creeps up to 24 Sun and its once-brisk tempo has collapsed to about 1% of cap, so the fast opener it was as a seedling is gone; late, it is a soft mass that must win before it is worn down.
It is a Ruderal on the succession wheel: it reclaims ground from Specialists (succulents, conifers, ferns and epiphytes), hitting them for 1.5× and resisting their blows, but is crowded out by Competitors (perennial herbs, vines, shrubs and broadleaf trees), which hit it 1.5× and shrug off its own attacks. The Weird categories (carrion-aroids, carnivores, mycotrophs and vascular parasites) sit off the wheel and trade neutrally with it. See weaknesses & resistances and categories.
Native-only and soft, this is a supporting harasser at best. Its Reckless Growth buff gives it a little staying ATK, but it needs a wall in front of it. It has no resolved edible part, so any fertilizer you feed it banks ×1.25 XP rather than coins — a growth boost, not an income stream. On the total-power curve its native crossover falls around Level 27: below it the card leans on its turn-order edge, above it on raw bulk and attack — it is monotonically stronger as it levels, so keep growing it.
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.