Juncus dichotomus
The Forked Rush (Juncus dichotomus) is a Grass that plays as a defensive buffer where native and an attacker where invasive.
The Forked Rush is a tufted wetland rush. In battle it plays as a Grass. It is native to Eastern North America, Western North America, and South America, where it takes the defensive buffer role, and invasive in Europe and Oceania, where it becomes an attacker.
Its kit unlocks in three stages. The starter attack, Razors, is available from Level 1 and costs 2 Sun, dealing 48 as a native and 50 as an invasive. Its effect: Two passes of razor-edged blades.
The free ability, Pioneer Sward (Level 25), costs no Sun because it is once per battle: Closes the turf: heal 30%, and the foe's whole bench withers.
The advanced attack, Grazing Damage (Level 40, 6 Sun), deals 29 native and 30 invasive: Grazes the whole field down — the foe sickens. 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: Spore-drift, which drifts spores onto the enemy bench each checkup and chips the back row. 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. 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 2 — a soft floor with a hard cap on its own attack damage — a grass grinds rather than hits through armor. It retreats for 16 Sun. Turn 1 is ordered by its initiative (32) and every turn after by its SPD (32). Its opening and sustained tempo sit close together, so its turn order holds roughly steady through a fight. By nativity it splits two ways. As a native it gains a +15% HP cushion (103 HP against 89 invasive) and, from the bench, projects an HP overshield bar onto your active. As an invasive its aggression is built from how widely it spreads plus an introduced-range term — compare 26 native ATK against 31 invasive — and it pays Faustian self-damage to its own bench on every damaging attack, conceding 2 prizes when it is knocked out. 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 biomass HP swells toward 190 while DEF stays near the floor at 3; retreat rises to 33 Sun and the fast early tempo sinks to roughly 1% of cap. Late, it is a soft, capped grinder — no longer the sprinter it was young.
It is a Ruderal on the succession wheel: it reclaims ground from Specialists (succulents, conifers, ferns and epiphytes), hitting them for 1.5× and resisting their blows, but is crowded out by Competitors (perennial herbs, vines, shrubs and broadleaf trees), which hit it 1.5× and shrug off its own attacks. The Weird categories (carrion-aroids, carnivores, mycotrophs and vascular parasites) sit off the wheel and trade neutrally with it. See weaknesses & resistances and categories.
The only grass in this batch: a soft, damage-capped Ruderal whose Razors starter lands two fast hits and whose Allelopathy saps enemy ATK. A quick harasser that grinds; frail, so keep it moving. 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 crossover falls around Level 22 native and 24 invasive: below it the card leans on speed, above it on bulk and attack. It only grows stronger with level, so there is never a reason to hold it back.
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.