Oncidium baueri
The Bauer's Oncidium (Oncidium baueri) is a Epiphyte that plays as a defensive buffer.
The Bauer's Oncidium is Bauer's dancing-lady orchid, a large epiphytic orchid. In battle it plays as a Epiphyte. It is native to South America and listed as invasive nowhere, so it fills the defensive buffer role only.
Its kit unlocks in three stages. The starter attack, Twine, is available from Level 1 and costs 2 Sun, dealing 23 as a native and 23 as an invasive. Its effect: Twines around and holds it fast.
The free ability, Mist Harvest (Level 25), costs no Sun because it is once per battle: Combs the mist for moisture: heal 30%, and the foe can't heal.
The advanced attack, Perch Punch (Level 40, 6 Sun), deals 38 native and 38 invasive: Two blows from above. 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 Canopy Anchorage, which anchors it to the bark so it cannot be Bound or shoved out of the active slot. From Level 68 a second, different trait stacks on top: Tank Reservoir, a self-supplied HP reserve bar of standing water. 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. Despite being an epiphyte, isClimber returns false for it: its family maps to the epiphyte pool wholesale but its growth habit is not curated per-species, so it does not take a Moss Pole until that habit is filled in. 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. 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 2 — a soft floor — epiphytes carry almost no armor and lean on utility and healing. It retreats for 16 Sun. Turn 1 is ordered by its initiative (27) and every turn after by its SPD (34). 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 biomass HP has swelled toward 190 but DEF has barely left its floor at 3 — a bigger, still-soft body. Retreat rises to 33 Sun and its tempo has collapsed to about 1% of cap. It never becomes a wall; it survives on its own regen and utility.
It is a Specialist on the succession wheel: it outlasts Competitors (perennial herbs, vines, shrubs and broadleaf trees) for a 1.5× hit, but is reclaimed by Ruderals (annual forbs, grasses, aquatics and bulbs), which hit it 1.5× and resist its blows. 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 native-only epiphyte with a hard-hitting Perch Punch and heal-denial utility. Soft-bodied; play it for its healing and disruption, not its DEF. It has no resolved edible part, so any fertilizer you feed it banks ×1.25 XP rather than coins — a growth boost, not an income stream. On the total-power curve its native crossover falls around Level 20: 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.