Hedera helix
A vine invader that poisons anything that strikes it and spikes its attack at full HP.
English Ivy is a vine, and it plays as a Vine card. It is native to Europe, where it fights as a buffer, and invasive in Western North America, where it takes the attacker role.
None of its moves carries an initiative rider, so it never seizes first strike or an extra turn — its turn order is set by its tempo (see Stats). As a mild plant it also carries a Poison rider: every damaging attack it lands Poisons the target (1 stack). Poison is damage-over-time that ignores DEF and slips past the overshield, so it wears down even armored walls.
Read off the card's actual trait schedule, it keeps these always-on traits, arriving at the levels shown:
It carries the Toxin keyword. It is not Moss Pole-eligible (it is not a climber). A Calcium/Magnesium amendment is the most useful slot for its soft body; a Cloche shields an attacker from contact poison.
Read at level 40, where every move is unlocked: DEF 6, retreat 13 Sun. Its tempo splits the usual way — initiative 37 orders turn 1 and SPD 37 orders turn 2 onward — and it holds a fairly steady tempo across the fight.
Its two nativity roles read differently. Native, it is a buffer: HP 121 (a +15% cushion baked in) and a benched HP overshield for your active, with ATK 25. Invasive, it is an attacker: HP 106 and ATK 36 — the higher figure is the introduced-range term the engine adds for a spreading invader, showing as the card matures. The invasive form pays "Faustian" self-damage to its own bench on every damaging attack (10 + level - 1, growing as it levels) and concedes 2 prizes when knocked out.
Maturity swells its HP toward 233, but its soft category keeps DEF at only 10 — it never becomes a wall. Retreat rises to 25 Sun and its inverted tempo bottoms out; it ends soft but bulky, and a strong attacker still punches through it.
English Ivy is in the Competitor group on the succession wheel. It deals x1.5 to the Ruderal group (annual forbs, grasses, aquatics, bulbs) and takes x1.5 from Specialists (succulents, conifers, ferns, epiphytes), against which its own damage is resisted to x0.667.
A vine invader that poisons anything that strikes it and spikes its attack at full HP. A decent harasser that still wants bench support. It is not edible, so any fertilizer you feed it banks x1.25 XP rather than coins. The Total power gallery below marks its crossover — the level where its rising bulk overtakes its falling speed — at level 21 at home and 23 abroad; either way it only grows stronger with level, so there is never a reason to under-level 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.