Monotropa coccinea
Red Indian pipe is a native-only shrub card from the Americas — a sturdier bench buffer that firms up when hurt and shrugs off fire, with only modest attack.
Red Indian pipe is a Shrub-category card, native across eastern and western North America and South America and invasive nowhere, so it plays purely as a native buffer — the arena region sets that role (nativity). It is one of the sturdier support cards for its tier: a firmer wall than most soft cards, with a self-heal ability and two defensive traits, but only middling attack.
Its kit unlocks across three levels (moves):
It carries no initiative rider, so it always takes its turn strictly on tempo. With most copies far below level 40, you will lean on Tick Tumble for a long time before the heals come online.
Two always-on traits, one per riser (abilities):
Neither trait rides the 60% sustain roll, so both are dependable whenever their condition is met.
It is non-toxic and unarmed, so it neither poisons nor recoils onto an attacker (statuses). It is not a climber, so a Moss Pole does nothing for it. As a native-only defender it makes good use of a Ca/Mg amendment to push its already-respectable DEF higher, turning it into a genuine bench wall — see field gear.
At level 40 it reads 121 HP, 22 ATK and 11 DEF — firmer than the soft categories, sitting in the shrub band. Its tempo is middling: initiative 21 to open and SPD 28 to sustain, so it will often move second against lighter cards. Retreat costs 13 Sun. As a native it carries the +15% HP cushion and projects a small overshield sliver from the bench (it is a Least-Concern species). There is no invasive form (stats).
Grown out it reaches 233 HP and 39 ATK, and unlike the soft cards its DEF climbs to 21 — a real shrub wall, not just more biomass. Retreat rises to 26 Sun as it roots down, and its tempo falls to near its 1% floor, so the mature card trades the little speed it had for staying power. Maturing turns it into a slow, tanky buffer.
As a shrub it is a Competitor (weaknesses & resistances): it beats Ruderal plants (annual forbs, grasses, aquatics, bulbs) at x1.5 and loses to Specialist plants (succulents, conifers, ferns, epiphytes) at x0.667, with neutral matchups against other Competitors and the off-wheel Weird cards. See the categories overview.
Red Indian pipe is a solid native bench wall: decent HP, real DEF that grows with level, a self-heal on its ability, and Marcescence firming it up right when it drops low. Its damage is only fair, so it wins by outlasting rather than out-hitting — a good backstop behind a heavier attacker, and serviceable enough to grind single-player coins if you play patiently. It is inedible, so any fertilizer you feed it banks x1.25 XP instead of coins; treat it as an XP and collection card. Because it is bulky from the start, it is power-favored almost from birth — its crossover sits at about level 9, so it fights as a heavyweight for essentially its whole life rather than a skirmisher. Test lines against it in the Battle Lab.
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.