Linaria repens
Pale Toadflax (Linaria repens) is a perennial herb that buffers your team where it is native and attacks where it has become invasive.
Pale Toadflax is a perennial herb — a soft, quick plant that hits harder as an invader and hardens slowly. It is native to Europe, where it plays a defensive buffer, and has become invasive in eastern North America, where it fights as an attacker.
Its kit unlocks in three stages. Its starter attack, Bitter Sap (unlocked at level 1, 2 Sun), deals 27 as a native or 31 as an invader: Bitter compounds poison the foe. Its once-per-battle ability, Seral Persistence (level 25, free), is pure utility: Refuses to be replaced: heal 60%, and the foe can't heal. Its advanced attack, Crown Division (level 40, 6 Sun), deals 36 native or 44 invasive: Splits the crown and strikes from both halves.
These are the always-on traits this card actually keeps, and the level each one arrives at (a plant draws at most one trait per growth stage). From level 10, Basal Rosette gives a small flat DEF bonus — the ground-hugging rosette shrugs off a little of every blow, the way it shrugs off grazing and mowing. From level 68, Contractile Roots ramps its DEF up over the course of a fight, adding a point each checkup up to a cap as the roots pull the crown deeper.
On the field it draws on field gear to shore up its weaknesses. With little natural armor it leans on amendments that add DEF or on healing gear to offset its fragility. Native and invasive copies want different gear — the native buffer favors defensive and healing picks, the invader favors damage and speed.
Read at level 40, where every move is unlocked, it holds 103 health and 19 attack as a native, with 1 DEF. That is thin armor, so it takes close to full damage from any real attacker; its defense is its health pool and its tricks, not its DEF. Its retreat costs 11 Sun. On tempo it opens at 37 initiative (which orders the first turn) and cruises at 36 speed (which orders every turn after). Its opening and sustained tempo are close, so it holds a steady place in turn order across the fight. As a native it carries a 15% health cushion (103 versus 89 as an invader), and while benched it projects a green overshield bar onto your active plant, sized by how threatened it is. As an invader its attack identity is built from how widely it has spread, so its 28 attack outstrips its native 19; it pays for that aggression with self-damage to its own bench on every damaging attack, and concedes 2 prizes when knocked out.
Grown to level 100, its health swells to 190 and its attack to 33, but its armor stays low (1 DEF) — it never becomes a wall, just a bigger version of the same soft plant. Retreat rises to 21 Sun as the older plant grows more rooted, and its once-quick tempo has sunk to a sliver — it goes late in turn order now. Maturing buys it raw bulk and hitting power; it costs it the speed edge it had as a seedling.
In the succession type chart, Pale Toadflax's category (perennial herb) belongs to the Competitor group. Ruderal, Competitor, and Specialist form a wheel: Competitor hits Ruderal plants (annual-forbs, grasses, aquatic plants, and bulbs) for 1.5× damage, and takes 1.5× from Specialist plants (succulents, conifers, ferns, and epiphytes), resisting each the other way at about two-thirds. The off-wheel Weird categories are neutral both ways.
A middling card. Its Contractile Roots let it firm up over a long fight, and its wider attack as an invader in eastern North America gives it some bite, but its base armor is negligible. Play it as a fragile skirmisher and coin-earner. It is not a coin-earner through fertilizer — feeding it any nutrient banks 1.25× experience rather than coins, so its off-battle value is leveling and family-tree collection. On the power curves below, it fights as a fast skirmisher until about level 27 as a native (level 28 as an invader), after which its growing bulk and attack take over from its fading speed — a shift in which edge dominates, not a sign it is weaker when grown.
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.