Phaseolus vulgaris
Kidney bean's Quick Bloom carries the initiative rider for a guaranteed opening strike in the wild, and its Duff Stuff trait lends real DEF to an otherwise paper-thin body.
Kidney bean opens with Quick Bloom, one of the handful of moves that seizes the initiative: in a wild fight it takes hard priority and strikes first regardless of speed, which pairs with an opening initiative (42) already high for the category to make it a reliable first-mover. It also holds Duff Stuff, a real defensive trait that props up a body which — bare — is among the softest in the game. It is a soft-bodied ruderal (an annual forb), native to eastern and western North America and South America, where it is a buffer, and invasive across Africa, East Asia, Europe, Oceania and South Asia, where it becomes an attacker.
Its starter, Quick Bloom, unlocks at Lv 1 for 2 Sun: Seizes initiative: first in the wild, acts again on a kill. — about 41 native / 45 invasive, the biggest single hit in its kit. In a wild encounter the rider makes that strike land first regardless of tempo; if both sides bring one they cancel. In the arena the rider instead lets kidney bean act again when it scores a killing blow. The free ability, Ecesis (Lv 25), Establishes fast: heal 35% and gain speed. The advanced attack, Somnolent Smell (Lv 40, 6 Sun), A narcotic scent — the foe sickens and sleeps through its turn. — around 24 native, 29 invasive. See moves.
Kidney bean keeps two always-on traits. Duff Stuff arrives at Lv 10: while it is on the field its effective DEF rises by half the combined DEF of your living benched ruderals (annual forbs, grasses, aquatics, bulbs) — genuine armor on an otherwise paper-thin card, and it fades as those allies faint, so it rewards a ruderal-heavy bench. Soil Seed Bank stacks on at Lv 68: a roughly even chance, when it is knocked out, to come back once at a sliver of HP as a weak seedling. Below Lv 10 it holds neither. See abilities.
Kidney bean is not toxic, thorny or a climber, so no Moss Pole fits it. Its Duff Stuff pays off behind a bench of other ruderals; pick field gear that shores up the native buffer or sharpens the invasive attacker accordingly.
At Lv 40 kidney bean reads 103 HP native (89 uncushioned) on a base DEF of just 1 — nearly nothing before Duff Stuff adds to it. ATK is 23 native, rising to 36 invasive. Retreat costs 13 Sun. Native it projects a bench overshield; invasive it pays Faustian self-damage each damaging hit and concedes 2 prizes on a knockout. See stats.
By Lv 100 HP reaches 190 native while its base DEF stays at just 1 — so at the cap its durability is still almost entirely borrowed from Duff Stuff and a good bench. Retreat rises to 26 Sun and the early tempo bottoms out; the mature card keeps its wild first-strike rider but not its raw speed. Leveling swells its HP without making it a wall.
Roughly USDA zone 6a — it should come through winters that bottom out near -21 °C. Colder than that and it wants shelter, a wall, or a winter indoors. In the plant's own terms its comfortable range runs from a cold edge near 3.0 °C up to a warm edge around 29.5 °C, which puts it in a Subtropical · wide-ranging band. Use that as a guide rather than a promise: the zone is an estimate carrying better than a full zone of error, which is why it reads "roughly."
The chip on the card reports the climate where you are standing, so the reading changes as you travel. Thrives here means your local winter low and summer heat both fall inside kidney bean's range, and it earns x2 battle XP; In range means it survives but sits near one of its edges (the longer label says which), for x1.25; Colder than its range and Hotter than its range mean your season runs past an edge, with no bonus. Battle XP is the only thing climate changes — it touches nothing about damage, stats, growth speed or the economy. A plant that reads "colder than its range" is usually just a tender plant facing a hard winter outdoors, not a weak card.
A Ruderal: extra damage into Specialists (succulents, conifers, ferns, epiphytes), extra taken from Competitors (perennial herbs, vines, shrubs, broadleaf trees), neutral against the Weird categories. See weaknesses & resistances.
Kidney bean is the most playable of this batch of weeds, on the back of two things: the wild first-strike rider on Quick Bloom, which lets it open the exchange against a faster foe, and Duff Stuff, which turns a bench of ruderals into real armor. As a legume it fixes its own nitrogen — about one in four caught in the wild arrives with the Nitrogen amendment applied, a free head start worth a few hundred coins, though it sits in a soil slot and decomposes after roughly a month. Its bean is edible (a fruit part), so matching fruit fertilizer (phosphorus) pays coins. Play it invasive behind a ruderal bench to combine the opening rider with Duff DEF and the attack climb; native, it is a sturdier-than-usual buffer. It skirmishes on tempo until about Lv 28, after which its bulk leads.
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.