Ipomoea × multifida
A garden-hybrid vine that belongs to no wild region, so it always fights as a neutral card built around utility.
Cardinal climber is a Vine — and a garden hybrid rather than a wild plant. It is native to no wild region and invasive in none, so in every arena it fights as a neutral card: it never gains the native HP cushion and never pays the invasive attacker's costs (see nativity). That shows in its power gallery below, which carries only the neutral line. Like every vine it is a Competitor in the succession wheel, and it is a soft, low-damage card that earns its keep through utility.
Because it always plays neutral, its moves read a single damage number rather than a native-versus-invasive split. Its opening attack, Creeping Spread, is available from Lv 1 for 2 Sun — Creeps across the foe's whole bench. It hits for 23.
At Lv 25 it unlocks its free once-per-battle ability, Inhibition: Chokes off recovery — the foe can't heal. A heal-lock like this is genuinely disruptive against any opponent that relies on regeneration or lifesteal to grind you down.
The advanced attack, Tendril Trap, arrives at Lv 40 for 6 Sun — A tendril snare that saps as it tightens. It hits for 21. No move carries an initiative rider, so turn order is decided normally. Below the Lv 40 snapshot a card will be missing part of this kit.
This card keeps two always-on traits. From Lv 10 it holds Heteroblasty: +4 ATK on the first two turns of a fight only — a front-loaded burst that fades after the opening. From Lv 68 it adds Apical Dominance: +5 ATK while it is at full HP, so it hits hardest before it has taken any damage. Both are attack shifts that reward striking early and clean. Cardinal climber is not toxic, so contact carries no poison recoil.
As a vine it is Moss Pole eligible — isClimber resolves it to a climber, so a Moss Pole fits it. Choose the rest of its field gear to suit how you are using it; since it holds no region, there is no native-versus-invasive gear split to weigh. It carries no thorns or toxin keyword, so it does not recoil on attackers.
Playing neutral in every arena, it reads about 89 HP and a low 22 ATK at the Lv 40 snapshot — the softest attack of the three morning glories. DEF is a soft 8 and retreat costs 16 Sun. Its tempo is balanced: opening tempo (initiative) is 32 against a sustained tempo (SPD) of 34, so it is roughly even off the mark and on the cruise — neither a notable quick starter nor a slow one (see Stats). Because it is native nowhere, it never contributes a green native overshield bar from the bench, and because it is invasive nowhere it never pays the Faustian bench cost — it simply plays its base line on both sides of the board.
Maturing lifts its HP to roughly 165, while DEF only firms to 15 — a soft vine to the end, never a wall. Retreat climbs to 33 Sun as it roots down, and the inverted tempo sinks to about 1% of cap, erasing the even-tempo balance it shows at mid-level. Leveling buys biomass; it does not buy armor.
As a vine it is a Competitor. It hits Ruderal categories (annual-forb, grass, aquatic, bulb) for ×1.5 and is resisted, taking ×0.667, against Specialists (succulent, conifer, fern, epiphyte). Against other Competitors and the off-wheel Weird categories it is neutral both ways.
Cardinal climber is the weakest attacker of the morning glories and, holding no region, it never gets the native cushion or the invasive damage step that lift its cousins — so treat it as a utility and collection piece rather than a carry. Its real value is Inhibition's heal-lock, which shuts off an opponent's regeneration for a turn and can swing a grind against a sustain-heavy card; pair its early Heteroblasty and full-HP Apical Dominance bursts to land clean damage while the buffs are up. It is inedible, so any fertilizer banks ×1.25 XP rather than coins. As a hybrid it still completes a slot in your Convolvulaceae family tree. If you want the arc in one line: it plays about evenly on speed and power until roughly Lv 26, after which its slowly-growing bulk edges ahead — it is not stronger young, it simply has no single dominant edge before then.
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.