Cypripedium kentuckiense
A rare, native-only epiphyte-category orchid with strong damage-over-time resistance and a self-healing ability, a fragile collection piece.
Kentucky lady's slipper is in the epiphyte battle category: a soft, Specialist-group card. It is native to eastern North America and invasive nowhere, so it plays only the native buffer role — a +15% HP cushion fielded, an HP overshield projected onto your active when benched. As a Vulnerable species it is a prized catch.
Its starter, Aerial Root (Level 1, 2 Sun), deals 31 and Lashes with an aerial root. The free ability, Canopy Soil (25), is A whole soil built in the branches: heal 65% and +4 ATK. — a large heal plus an ATK boost, its best turn. The advanced attack, Aerial Cage (40, 6 Sun), deals 20 and A cage of aerial roots, and nowhere to go. See Moves.
From Level 10 it holds Peltate Trichomes: a protective scale layer that ignores about a third of all damage-over-time — poison, burn and blight all land softened, which matters against the poison attackers that counter armored cards. At Level 68 Lure stacks on: while it is benched, it draws bench-reaching chip damage — splash, scatter and drifting spores aimed at a random ally — onto itself, protecting the rest of your bench.
No thorns or toxin keyword. Its battle category is epiphyte, but Moss Pole eligibility is keyed on growth habit, which its terrestrial habit does not satisfy — no Moss Pole. A Calcium/Magnesium field gear amendment helps its very soft DEF; inedible, so nutrients bank XP.
At Level 40 it reads 103 HP and 21 ATK, with a soft DEF of 2. Retreat is 16 Sun. Its opening initiative is 28 and sustained SPD is 34: a middling starter that pulls ahead as the fight runs on. Its durability is chemical (DoT resistance) plus its self-heal ability, not armor.
By Level 100 HP grows to 190 and ATK to 37, while DEF stays very soft at 3 — a fragile card that never armors. Retreat rises to 33 Sun and its early speed fades. Leveling adds biomass, not toughness.
As a Specialist it hits Competitor categories (perennial-herb, vine, shrub, broadleaf-tree) for 1.5x and is resisted to 0.667x by ruderals (annual-forb, grass, aquatic, bulb); neutral against other Specialists and Weird. See the succession wheel.
A fragile card whose value is mostly as a rare collection piece — being Vulnerable, it pays a larger stewardship bounty when caught and is a notable family-tree entry. In battle its DoT resistance makes it an awkward target for poison teams, and its self-heal ability buys a strong swing turn, but its armor is negligible, so it is a support or novelty pick rather than a carry. Inedible, so fertilizer banks 1.25x XP. It skirmishes on speed until about Level 21, after which its bulk leads — level it up.
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.