Fragaria ananassa
A prickly, self-healing perennial herb that plays either arena role, with a real thorn recoil and a late survival trick.
Garden strawberry is a low, spreading Perennial herb that fights as a scrappy, defended skirmisher. It is native to Western North America and has spread as an invader across East Asia, Europe, Eastern North America, Oceania, and South America, so the arena can cast it either way — as a native buffer for your bench or as an invasive attacker. It is a middling but useful card: cheap, prickly, and hard to finish off once it matures.
Its starter attack, Volatile Oils, unlocks at level 1 for 2 Sun and hits for about 25 as a native and 29 as an invasive — a plain strike with no rider. The free once-per-battle ability, Autogenic Reaction, arrives at level 25: Remakes its own ground: +6 ATK and heal 25%. The advanced attack, Tonic, unlocks at level 40 for 6 Sun (32 native / 37 invasive), another straightforward hit. Most of your strawberries sit below level 40, where only the starter is live. None of its moves carry an initiative rider, so it never seizes a turn.
Strawberry keeps two always-on traits. Thorns arrives on the level 10 riser and is on full from then. Resprout comes in much later, on the level 68 riser: it lets the plant survive one otherwise-lethal hit at roughly a quarter health, but it fires only about 60% of the time, so treat it as a coin-flip reprieve rather than a guarantee.
Strawberry carries the Thorns keyword, so an attacker that strikes it in melee takes contact recoil back. It is non-toxic — no hazard ring, no poison rider. Its growth habit is terrestrial, so it is not eligible for a Moss Pole. As a native, defensive field gear suits its stalling game; as an invasive, lean into offense to make its aggression count.
At level 40 strawberry reads 103 HP native / 89 invasive, with ATK of 18 native versus 30 invasive — the invasive form hits meaningfully harder. DEF is just 3, at the soft floor of the perennial-herb band, so it takes hits with almost no armor. Its tempo is front-loaded: turn 1 runs on initiative (34) and every turn after on SPD (33), so it leads off the mark but is out-paced in a long fight. Retreat costs 14 Sun. As a native it gains a +15% HP cushion and, while benched, projects an HP overshield onto your active; as an invasive it pays self-damage to its own bench on each damaging attack and concedes 2 prizes when knocked out. See Stats.
Matured to level 100, strawberry swells to 190 HP native / 165 invasive and 31 / 61 ATK, but DEF only reaches 5 — a soft herb gains bulk in health, never armor, so it stays vulnerable to any real hitter. Retreat rises to 29 Sun and its tempo has sunk to roughly 1% of cap, so a mature strawberry acts last against almost anything young.
As a perennial herb, strawberry is in the Competitor succession group. It hits Ruderal plants for ×1.5 and takes only ×0.667 from them; it is weak to Specialist plants, which strike it for ×1.5 while resisting its blows. Against other Competitors and the off-wheel Weird group the matchup is neutral. See Weaknesses & Resistances.
Play strawberry as a cheap, defended trader: the thorn recoil taxes melee attackers, and Resprout can steal an extra turn late. As a native it is a passable buffer for a fragile hitter; as an invasive its harder punch makes it a serviceable early aggressor. Its value is mostly economic — it is inedible, so any nutrient you feed it banks ×1.25 XP toward faster leveling. It fights as a fast skirmisher early and leans on its bulk later, crossing over around level 23 as a native and 25 as an invasive — always worth leveling.
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.