Lycopodium obscurum
A soft fern that chips the enemy bench and is unpalatable to attackers, played on a neutral footing with no native or invasive role.
Ground pine is a soft Fern that fights by chipping the enemy bench and shrugging off attackers. It has no native or invasive card in the arena, so it plays on a neutral footing — neither a native buffer nor an invasive attacker, just its base line. Its armor is thin, so it works the edges of a fight rather than trading head-on.
Its starter attack, Spore Broadcast, unlocks at level 1 for 2 Sun, dealing about 26 damage. The free once-per-battle ability, Carboniferous Revival, arrives at level 25: The age when ferns ruled: heal 70% and +4 ATK. The advanced attack, Ptaquiloside Payload, unlocks at level 40 for 6 Sun, dealing about 26 damage. Most of your ground pine sit below level 40, where only the starter is unlocked. None of its moves carry an initiative rider. See Moves.
Ground pine keeps two always-on traits. The first, Unpalatable, arrives on the level 10 riser: it makes the plant an unappealing target. The second, Spore-drift, arrives on the level 68 riser: it chips the enemy's benched plants each round, a slow tax derived from its dispersal. See Abilities.
It is non-toxic, so striking it carries no contact recoil and it lays no poison on the attacker. Its habit is terrestrial, so it is not eligible for a Moss Pole. Defensive field gear — a Cloche, or a calcium/magnesium amendment for a little DEF — offsets its thin armor. See statuses.
At level 40 ground pine reads 103 HP with ATK of 22. DEF is just 2, at the fern floor, so it takes hits with almost no armor. Its tempo tilts late: turn 1 runs on its low initiative (32) and every turn after on its faster SPD (34), so it is out-paced off the mark but relentless once a fight settles. Retreat costs 16 Sun. With no native or invasive role it carries neither a benched HP cushion and overshield nor invasive self-damage — it fights on its base stats. See Stats.
Matured to level 100, ground pine swells to 190 HP and 40 ATK, but its DEF only reaches 3 — as a soft fern it buys bulk in health and almost none in armor, so it stays exposed to any real hitter. Retreat rises to 33 Sun, and its tempo has sunk to about 1% of cap, so a mature ground pine acts last against almost anything younger.
As a fern, ground pine sits in the Specialist succession group. It hits Competitor plants (perennial herbs, shrubs, broadleaf trees) for ×1.5 and takes only ×0.667 from them; it is weak to Ruderal plants (annual forbs, grasses, aquatics, bulbs), which strike it for ×1.5 while resisting its blows. Against other Specialists and the off-wheel Weird group the matchup is neutral. See Weaknesses & Resistances.
Play ground pine as a chip-and-annoy piece: sit in front, shrug off attention with its Unpalatable trait, and let its Spore-drift wear down the enemy bench round after round. With no native or invasive role it has neither a bench buff to project nor an attacker's edge, so it is a niche neutral card that wins slowly if at all. On economy, it is inedible, so any nutrient you feed it banks ×1.25 XP toward faster growth rather than coins. It plays as a slow-opening, faster-cruising skirmisher leaning harder on its bulk as it levels, crossing over around level 27 — but it is always stronger at higher levels, so there is no 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.