Dryopteris expansa
A native-only fern that plays as a defensive buffer.
The Northern Buckler Fern is a fern in Supplant. It is native to East Asia, Europe, Eastern North America and Western North America and is recorded as invasive nowhere, so it plays purely as a defensive buffer: a card that shores up your team rather than an attacker.
Its kit fills in across three slots, and most of your copies will be well below the snapshot level of 40 where all three are live — the plant unlocks them as it grows. Spore Broadcast is the starter attack, available from level 1 for 2 Sun. The free once-per-battle ability, Frond Chemistry, unlocks at level 25: Bitter frond chemistry — the foe is poisoned and weakened. The advanced attack, Sori Not Sorry, comes online at level 40 for 6 Sun — Empties its spore clusters over the whole bench.
Its attacks land for about 28 (starter) and 25 (advanced) at the snapshot level.
Turn order splits across two stats: initiative (13) decides who moves first on turn 1, and SPD (34) decides every turn after. This one is slow off the mark but relentless once the fight settles — it usually loses turn 1 and then takes the tempo from turn 2 onward. See turn order for how the two interact.
It reads Unpalatable from level 10, and a second passive, undefined, stacks on at level 68.
Unpalatable. Its fiddlehead chemistry poisons any attacker that strikes it (a flat 2 stacks of Poison). A Sulfur soil amendment on the attacker neutralizes this one.
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Its unpalatable fiddlehead chemistry poisons attackers on contact, and a Sulfur amendment on the attacker cancels it. For field gear, a Calcium/Magnesium amendment adds flat DEF (most worthwhile on a bulky front-liner, least on a soft body), and the N/P/K fertilizers drive its economy (see Gameplay uses). This species is not Moss-Pole-eligible: that gear is keyed on a climbing growth habit (vine, epiphyte or hemiepiphyte), and its species record carries no growth-habit tag.
At the snapshot level (40) it reads roughly HP 103, DEF 2, with a retreat cost of 16 Sun and tempo pips of 13 initiative / 34 SPD. Its DEF sits at the soft-fern floor. As a native it gains a +15% HP cushion and, while benched, projects a green HP overshield bar onto your active — its whole role is defensive support. Sun refills at +1 every 15 minutes up to a cap of 120; an empty bar attack-locks the plant. From level 52 it regenerates Sun mid-battle, and a level 85 capstone drops its starter to free. See stats.
HP grows toward 190 while DEF holds in the soft band (3) — a bigger spoiler, not a wall. Retreat rises to 33 Sun (an older plant is more rooted and costlier to pull), and the inverted tempo has sunk to its floor by now — the fast opening it had as a seedling is gone, so a mature copy leans entirely on power rather than turn order.
In the succession wheel it is a Specialist. It hits Competitor plants (perennial herbs, vines, shrubs and broadleaf trees) for extra damage (×1.5), and takes extra damage from Ruderal plants (annual forbs, grasses, aquatics and bulbs). Against its own group and the off-wheel "Weird" categories it is neutral. See the type chart.
Its only role is the native buffer: sit it on the bench to project an overshield, or field it as a body that soaks hits for your carries. A soft specialist whose value is its contact poison and bench chip, not its body. It is weak in a straight fight and best used as a spoiler. It is inedible in the game's economy, so any fertilizer you feed it banks ×1.25 XP rather than coins — useful as level fodder, not as a coin source. In the Total power gallery below you can watch it trade a fast-skirmisher opening for raw bulk as it levels: it leans on speed until about level 11, after which its power takes over. It is monotonically stronger the higher it goes, so there is never a 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.