Dichanthelium ovale
A soft native grass that saps the enemy active with a wilt aura and later chips their bench, but has almost no armor — native-only, fielded only as a North and South American native.
Egg leaf witchgrass is a soft, tufted Grass that fights as an attrition specialist: it saps the enemy active with a wilt aura and, later, gnaws at their bench, but has almost nothing in the way of armor. It is native across Eastern and Western North America and South America, and no invasive card exists — the arena only ever fields it as a native buffer for your bench. It is a fragile, chip-damage card that leans on its auras rather than its own hits.
Its starter attack, Duffit, unlocks at level 1 for 2 Sun and lands a sharp slicing hit for about 35 damage. The free once-per-battle ability, Pioneer Sward, arrives at level 25: Closes the turf: heal 30%, and the foe's whole bench withers. It is a permanent attack bump rather than a heal. The advanced attack, Turf War, unlocks at level 40 for 6 Sun (48 damage) and runs its rhizomes under the field to strike the foe's whole bench. Most of your witchgrass sit below level 40, where only the starter is unlocked. None of its moves carry an initiative rider, so it never seizes a turn. See Moves.
Witchgrass keeps two always-on traits. From the level 10 riser it carries Allelopathy, a wilt aura that steadily saps the enemy active — a background bleed that rewards drawn-out fights. At the level 68 riser it adds Spore-drift, which chips the enemy's benched plants a little each turn. Neither rides the sustain coin-flip, so both work whenever it is on the field; together they make it a steady source of chip damage even when its own attacks are weak. See Abilities.
Witchgrass carries no special trait keywords — no thorns, no toxin, no spore chemistry that punishes contact — so nothing bites an attacker for striking it, and being non-toxic there is no chemical recoil either. Its habit is terrestrial, so it is not eligible for a Moss Pole. As a native, defensive field gear — a Cloche, or a calcium/magnesium amendment for a little extra DEF — helps prop up its thin armor while its auras do the work.
At level 40 witchgrass reads 103 HP and 25 ATK. DEF is just 1, at the soft floor of the grass band, so it takes hits with almost no armor — damage is diminishing armor (ATK ÷ (ATK+DEF)), not flat subtraction, and with a floor this low incoming hits land nearly full. Its tempo splits across two clocks: turn 1 runs on initiative (41), every turn after on SPD (56); whichever is higher tells the story — a higher SPD means a slow opener that cruises, a higher initiative means a fast start that fades. Retreat costs 12 Sun. As a native it gains a +15% HP cushion and, while benched, projects an HP overshield onto your active. See Stats.
Matured to level 100, witchgrass swells to 190 HP and 46 ATK, but its DEF only reaches 1 — as a soft grass it gains bulk in health and almost none in armor, so it stays exposed to any real hitter. Retreat rises to 24 Sun as it roots in, and its tempo has sunk to about 1% of cap, so a mature witchgrass acts last against almost anything younger.
As a grass, witchgrass sits in the Ruderal succession group. It hits Specialist plants (succulents, conifers, ferns, epiphytes) for ×1.5 and takes only ×0.667 from them; it is weak to Competitor plants (perennial herbs, vines, shrubs, broadleaf trees), which strike it for ×1.5 while resisting its blows. Against other Ruderals and the off-wheel Weird group the matchup is neutral. See Weaknesses & Resistances.
Play witchgrass as a chip-damage support that grinds an opponent down through its auras rather than its attacks: its Allelopathy wilt and, later, its Spore-drift and bench-hitting advanced strike wear down the whole enemy team while it stalls. It is fragile, though, so protect it — as a native buffer it lends the HP cushion and overshield, but it folds fast under a real hitter. On economy, it is not an edible-part plant, so fertilizer earns no coin bonus — any nutrient instead banks ×1.25 XP, a growth boost that levels it a little faster. It plays as a soft skirmisher whose auras take over as it levels, crossing over around level 35 — but it is always stronger at higher levels in raw stats, 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.