Phlox adsurgens
A native-only perennial herb that opens with poison and can survive one lethal hit, but hits softly and armors thinly.
Northern phlox is a Perennial herb that leads with a poison hit and clings on through a survival trait. It is native to Western North America and has no invasive card, so the arena only ever fields it as a native buffer — there is no attacker version to build. It is a weak-to-modest card: low damage and thin armor, but the poison opener and resprout give it a small disruptive niche.
Its starter attack, Crown Split, unlocks at level 1 and costs 2 Sun, dealing about 38 damage and poisoning the target on contact. The free once-per-battle ability, Seral Persistence, arrives at level 25: Refuses to be replaced: heal 60%, and the foe can't heal. The advanced attack, Deep Root Strike, unlocks at level 40 for 6 Sun (39 damage) and is a plain hit. Most of your phlox sit below level 40, where only the starter is open. None of its moves carry an initiative rider. See Moves and statuses.
Northern phlox keeps one always-on trait: resprout. It draws only one eligible trait, so it comes in at half strength on the level 10 riser and matures on the level 68 one. When it works it lets the plant survive one otherwise-lethal hit at roughly a quarter health — but it triggers only about 60% of the time, so treat it as a coin-flip reprieve rather than a guarantee. See Abilities.
Northern phlox carries no special trait keywords — no thorns, no toxin trait (its poison comes from the move, not from contact). Non-toxic: no contact recoil, no poison rider. Its growth habit is terrestrial, so it is not eligible for a Moss Pole. As a native it wants defensive field gear to offset its thin armor while the poison ticks and resprout buys time.
At level 40 it reads 103 HP, with ATK of 16 (native-only, so there is no invasive variant to compare). DEF is just 4, low for a perennial herb, so it takes hits with little armor. Its tempo runs slow then relentless: turn 1 uses its initiative (29), every turn after its SPD (34), so it is out-paced off the mark but the faster cruiser in a long fight. Retreat costs 16 Sun. As a native it gains a +15% HP cushion and, while benched, projects an HP overshield onto your active. See Stats.
Matured to level 100, northern phlox reaches 190 HP and 28 ATK, but its DEF only reaches 8 — as a soft herb it gains health, never armor, so it stays vulnerable to any real hitter. Retreat rises to 33 Sun, and its tempo has sunk to roughly 1% of cap, so a mature plant acts last against almost anything young. Maturing buys health and the full-strength resprout, not a wall.
As a perennial herb, northern phlox is in the Competitor succession group. It hits Ruderal plants for ×1.5 and takes only ×0.667 from them; it is weak to Specialist plants, which strike it for ×1.5 while resisting its blows. Against other Competitors and the off-wheel Weird group the matchup is neutral. See Weaknesses & Resistances.
Play northern phlox as a native chip-and-stall piece: land the poison opener, lean on resprout to steal a turn, and let its HP cushion and overshield support the bench. Its damage is soft, so it is a disruptor and buffer rather than a finisher. It is inedible, so any nutrient banks ×1.25 XP, making it a steady growth-earner while you level it. It fights as a steady cruiser that leans on health as it grows, crossing over around level 23 — always stronger higher up, so keep leveling 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.