Ashy sunflower

Overview

The Ashy sunflower is a rhizomatous prairie perennial. In battle it plays as a Perennial herb. It has no wild native or invasive range on record — a cultivated plant — so it always plays as the neutral base card.

Moves

Its kit unlocks in three stages. The starter attack, Steady Growth, is available from Level 1 and costs 2 Sun, dealing 34 as a native and 36 as an invasive. Its effect: A reliable, even strike.

The free ability, Chronosequence (Level 25), costs no Sun because it is once per battle: Time on its side: +3 ATK and speed, kept.

The advanced attack, Crown Division (Level 40, 6 Sun), deals 38 native and 44 invasive: Splits the crown and strikes from both halves. 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.

Abilities

This card actually keeps two always-on traits, drawn from its category pool with the rest discarded. From Level 10 it carries Bitter Principle, so striking it Withers the attacker and cuts its ATK. From Level 68 a second, different trait stacks on top: Deep Taproot, which makes it immune to Bind — nothing pins it in place. 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.

Features

It carries no Toxin or Thorns trait, so it inflicts no contact recoil on an attacker. 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.

Stats

Read at the Level 40 snapshot, its DEF is 1 — a low-to-middling band — firmer than a weed but no wall. It retreats for 12 Sun. Turn 1 is ordered by its initiative (41) and every turn after by its SPD (47). It is slow off the mark but relentless after — outpaced on the opening exchange, then pulling ahead as the fight settles. It has no wild range on record — native nowhere, invasive nowhere — so it always fights as the neutral base card, taking neither the native HP cushion nor the invasive attacker edge. 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.

At Level 100

By Level 100 its DEF has crept up its modest band to 1 while HP grows toward 190; retreat rises to 24 Sun and the brisk early tempo sinks to roughly 1% of cap. It matures into a sturdier body that no longer strikes first.

Weaknesses & Resistances

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.

Gameplay uses

A middling perennial herb with no wild range on record, so it always plays neutral. Its Crown Division advanced hit is respectable, but nothing here stands out; a solid-but-plain collection card. 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 neutral crossover falls around Level 37: below it it leans on its turn-order edge, above it on bulk and attack — and it only grows stronger as it levels.