Echites tuxtlensis
The Echites tuxtlensis (Echites tuxtlensis) is a Vine that plays as a defensive buffer.
The Echites tuxtlensis is a tropical climbing vine of the dogbane family from Mexico and Central America. In battle it plays as a Vine. It is native to Eastern North America, Western North America, and South America and listed as invasive nowhere, so it fills the defensive buffer role only.
Its kit unlocks in three stages. The starter attack, Tangle, is available from Level 1 and costs 2 Sun, dealing 25 as a native and 25 as an invasive. Its effect: Tangles the foe up in growth.
The free ability, Liana Loop (Level 25), costs no Sun because it is once per battle: Loops around the foe — Bind and Wither.
The advanced attack, Tendril Trap (Level 40, 6 Sun), deals 20 native and 20 invasive: A tendril snare that saps as it tightens. 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 Allelopathy, a wilt aura that saps the enemy active's ATK every checkup, on both single-player and player-versus-player boards. From Level 68 a second, different trait stacks on top: Apical Dominance, extra ATK while it is at full health. 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. As a vine its growth habit resolves to a climber, so isClimber returns true and it can equip a Moss Pole — a natural fit that suits its clinging style. 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 6 — a modest band with a hard cap on its own attack damage — a vine wears a foe down rather than hitting through it. It retreats for 12 Sun. Turn 1 is ordered by its initiative (23) and every turn after by its SPD (43). It is slow off the mark but relentless after — outpaced on the opening exchange, then pulling ahead as the fight settles. 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 risen to 11 and HP toward 190, but its damage stays capped and its once-quick tempo has sunk to roughly 1% of cap. Retreat climbs to 23 Sun. Late, it is a clinging attritional body, not a finisher.
It is a Competitor on the succession wheel: it crowds out Ruderals (annual forbs, grasses, aquatics and bulbs), hitting them for 1.5× and resisting their blows, but is outlasted by Specialists (succulents, conifers, ferns and epiphytes), which turn its 1.5× disadvantage against it. The Weird categories (carrion-aroids, carnivores, mycotrophs and vascular parasites) sit off the wheel and trade neutrally with it. See weaknesses & resistances and categories.
A native-only Competitor vine with Allelopathy wilt and binding attacks. Frail and damage-capped; a utility harasser that leans on its wilt aura and Moss Pole. 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 22: 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.