Philodendron xanadu
Philodendron Winterbourn is a status controller: it poisons on contact, can make a foe miss its turn, and shuts off the enemy bench's healing — a disruption kit on a fragile body with no wild range to lean on.
Philodendron Winterbourn fights by disruption rather than damage. Its starter poisons on hit, its ability can make a foe miss a turn outright, and its advanced move stops the enemy bench from healing — and if anything strikes it, its raphide crystals poison the attacker back. It is a carrion aroid, a Weird-group card that is neutral on the succession wheel. Unusually, it has no recorded wild range at all — native nowhere and invasive nowhere — so it never collects the native HP cushion or the invasive attacker edge; it fights from its base line whatever arena it is in.
Rot Touch unlocks at Lv 1, dealing 29 for 2 Sun — A rotting touch that poisons. The free ability Carrion Trance arrives at Lv 25: The stench holds the foe fast — it misses its turn, and sickens. — it makes the foe miss its turn and sickens it. The advanced attack Stench Offensive comes in at Lv 40, dealing 23 for 6 Sun — A stench the foe's whole bench can't recover through., which shuts off the enemy bench's healing. No move carries an initiative rider, so standard turn order applies.
It keeps two always-on traits. Raphide Bundles (from Lv 10) is a contact deterrent: when a damaging hit lands on it, its calcium-oxalate needles poison the attacker back — and this works in player-versus-player matches too. At Lv 68 Sapromyophily (a taunt) stacks on: wherever the engine picks one victim out of a group — a forced swap, an incoming spore-drift, a seed rain — Winterbourn draws that pick onto itself instead of a benched ally. Note the taunt does nothing against a lone wild plant, where there is no ally to protect; it earns its keep on a full board.
It carries no special trait keywords, and its toxicity is recorded as none — so despite the rot-and-poison flavour, it forces no toxicity hazard of its own; the poison you see comes from its moves and from Raphide Bundles, not a toxicity floor. It is not a climber, so a Moss Pole does nothing. A Calcium/Magnesium amendment adds flat DEF, which matters on a card this thin. See field gear.
Read at Lv 40. Because it holds no wild range, it never gets a stance bonus: its base line is roughly 89 HP and 22 ATK — it never collects the native cushion that would lift HP to 103, nor the invasive spread that would push ATK to 29. DEF is 1, the thinnest band in the game. Its tempo is quick on both clocks — an opening initiative of 36 and a sustained speed of 39 — so it usually moves first and keeps moving, which lets it land its status effects before the foe acts. Retreat costs 12 Sun.
HP climbs toward 190 and ATK to 40, but DEF holds at 1 — it never hardens, staying a fragile disruptor even fully grown. Retreat rises to 23 Sun, and its inverted tempo sinks to roughly 1% of cap, so the early-turn advantage it relies on to land its status effects fades by the endgame.
Roughly USDA zone 8b — it should come through winters that bottom out near -7 °C. Colder than that and it wants shelter, a wall, or a winter indoors. Its range runs from a cold edge of 11.4 °C to a warm edge of 28.9 °C, a Tropical · wide-ranging band — a warm-climate plant, effectively a houseplant across the temperate world. Read the zone as rough; the estimate carries an error of just over a full zone.
The card's climate chip is the player-facing form of that range, and it changes only battle XP:
| Chip | What it means | Battle XP |
|---|---|---|
| Thrives here | your local winter low and summer heat both sit inside its range | x2 |
| In range | it survives where you are but sits near one of its edges | x1.25 |
| Colder than its range | your winters drop below what it tolerates; outdoors it needs protection | no bonus |
| Hotter than its range | your summers run past its warm edge | no bonus |
A "colder than its range" reading is a fact about your winter, not the plant, and it shifts as you travel.
As a carrion aroid it is in the Weird group, off the succession wheel entirely — neutral both ways, giving and taking no ×1.5 or ×0.667. Its matchups turn on status and stats, not type.
Play it as a disruption and support piece: its value is denying the foe turns and healing, and punishing melee attackers with contact poison, while the Lv 68 taunt turns it into a bench protector on a full team. It is not edible, so any fertilizer banks ×1.25 XP rather than coins. With no stance bonus and a DEF of 1, it is fragile and will not carry a game on damage — treat it as a utility card that buys turns for a stronger active. In the Total power gallery its neutral line leans on speed until about Lv 30, after which its bulk leads — a note on which edge dominates, not a 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.