Lactuca biennis
The Tall blue lettuce (Lactuca biennis) is a Annual forb that plays as a defensive buffer.
The Tall blue lettuce is a towering biennial wild lettuce with edible young leaves. In battle it plays as a Annual forb. It is native to Eastern North America and Western North America and listed as invasive nowhere, so it fills the defensive buffer role only.
Its kit unlocks in three stages. The starter attack, Hypergrowth, is available from Level 1 and costs 2 Sun, dealing 32 as a native and 32 as an invasive. Its effect: Bolts upward mid-fight: +3 ATK, kept for the match.
The free ability, Ruderal Rush (Level 25), costs no Sun because it is once per battle: Weedy haste — a burst of speed, kept for the match.
The advanced attack, Covercrop Crush (Level 40, 6 Sun), deals 32 native and 32 invasive: Blankets the ground — the foe and its bench wither. 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 Ephemeral Bolt, extra ATK while it stays above half health that fades once it drops low. From Level 68 a second, different trait stacks on top: Reseed, which leaves a fresh Seedling token on your bench on a knockout, once per match. 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. Its edible leaf means the matching Nitrogen (N) fertilizer pays bonus coins (see Gameplay uses). 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 1 — a soft floor — annual forbs sit in the lowest DEF band, so it relies on speed and pressure, not armor. It retreats for 12 Sun. Turn 1 is ordered by its initiative (32) and every turn after by its SPD (43). It is slow off the mark but relentless after — outpaced on the opening exchange, then pulling ahead as the fight settles. No region lists it as invasive, so it plays purely as a buffer: a +15% HP cushion (103 HP) and, from the bench, an HP overshield onto your active. It has no attacker stance. 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 its DEF has barely left the floor even as biomass HP swells toward 190 — a bigger, softer body, not a tougher one. Its retreat creeps up to 24 Sun and its once-brisk tempo has collapsed to about 1% of cap, so the fast opener it was as a seedling is gone; late, it is a soft mass that must win before it is worn down.
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.
A soft ruderal with a self-buffing kit and edible leaves. It builds ATK and speed but has no armor; a harasser that earns fertilizer coins. Because its edible part is a resolved leaf, feeding it Nitrogen pays ×1.25 coins; any other nutrient banks ×1.25 XP instead. On the total-power curve its native crossover falls around Level 26: below it the card leans on its turn-order edge, above it on raw bulk and attack — it is monotonically stronger as it levels, so keep growing 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.