Japanese Honeysuckle

Overview

Japanese Honeysuckle is a shrub, and it plays as a Shrub card. It is native to East Asia, where it fights as a buffer, and invasive in Eastern North America, where it takes the attacker role.

Moves

• Tick Tumble (unlocks at level 1, costs 2 Sun) deals 28 damage native and 33 invasive. Shakes the tick load loose onto the foe.
• Arrested Succession (unlocks at level 25) is the free once-per-battle ability: Stops the forest before it starts — the foe stalls and can't heal. It costs no Sun.
• Sucker Punch (unlocks at level 40, costs 6 Sun) deals 33 damage native and 38 invasive. Comes up from the roots before the foe sees it.

None of its moves carries an initiative rider, so it never seizes first strike or an extra turn — its turn order is set by its tempo (see Stats). As a mild plant it also carries a Poison rider: every damaging attack it lands Poisons the target (1 stack). Poison is damage-over-time that ignores DEF and slips past the overshield, so it wears down even armored walls.

Abilities

Read off the card's actual trait schedule, it keeps these always-on traits, arriving at the levels shown:

• Toxin arrives at level 10: striking it Poisons the attacker (1 stack, from its mild toxicity), so it bites back on contact — and this fires in player-versus-player battles too. Sulfur soil does not neutralize it.
• Sapromyophily — a taunt — arrives at level 68: wherever the engine would pick a single victim out of a group (a forced swap, a chip aimed at one benched plant), it draws that pick onto itself instead of an ally, shielding your bench. Against a lone wild plant there is no choice to redirect, so it does nothing there — the honest caveat.

Features

It carries the Toxin keyword. It is not Moss Pole-eligible (it is not a climber). A Calcium/Magnesium amendment is the most useful slot for its soft body; a Cloche shields an attacker from contact poison.

Stats

Read at level 40, where every move is unlocked: DEF 10, retreat 12 Sun. Its tempo splits the usual way — initiative 46 orders turn 1 and SPD 61 orders turn 2 onward — and it is slower off the mark but steadier afterward — it cruises faster than it opens.

Its two nativity roles read differently. Native, it is a buffer: HP 103 (a +15% cushion baked in) and a benched HP overshield for your active, with ATK 20. Invasive, it is an attacker: HP 89 and ATK 34 — the higher figure is the introduced-range term the engine adds for a spreading invader, showing as the card matures. The invasive form pays "Faustian" self-damage to its own bench on every damaging attack (10 + level - 1, growing as it levels) and concedes 2 prizes when knocked out.

At Level 100

Maturity firms it into the shrub band — DEF reaches 20, well above any weed — while HP grows to 190. Retreat rises to 22 Sun and its tempo sinks to its floor; a sturdy mid-weight, not a glass cannon.

Weaknesses & Resistances

Japanese Honeysuckle is in the Competitor group on the succession wheel. It deals x1.5 to the Ruderal group (annual forbs, grasses, aquatics, bulbs) and takes x1.5 from Specialists (succulents, conifers, ferns, epiphytes), against which its own damage is resisted to x0.667.

Gameplay uses

A firm shrub that poisons whatever bites it and, once grown, taunts single-target picks onto itself to spare your bench — solid defensive glue in either role. It is not edible, so any fertilizer you feed it banks x1.25 XP rather than coins. The Total power gallery below marks its crossover — the level where its rising bulk overtakes its falling speed — at level 36 at home and 36 abroad; either way it only grows stronger with level, so there is never a reason to under-level it.