Phoenix roebelenii
A slow, well-armoured Broadleaf tree card that punishes being struck and, once matured, cannot be hit by splash or spread.
Pygmy Date Palm is a Broadleaf tree card with both roles: native to East Asia and South Asia, invasive in South America. That single invasive region means the attacker version is only marginally sharper than the native one. See nativity and categories.
The starter attack, Acorn Drop, unlocks at level 1 for 2 Sun, reading 25 native and 26 invasive. Drops mast — also nicks the bench.
The free once-per-battle ability, Nurse Log, unlocks at level 25 and costs no Sun. The fallen feed the next: heal 25%, even the bench, and call back the lost.
The advanced attack, Canopy Closure, unlocks at level 40 for 6 Sun, reading 25 native and 26 invasive. Closes the canopy — nothing below it recovers. It lands for the same damage as the starter at three times the Sun cost, so take it purely for the effect. See moves.
Tannin Load arrives on the first riser at level 10 at full strength. When this card is struck, the attacker takes Wither and loses attack power for the rest of the fight. It costs nothing to run and it suits a card that expects to be hit.
Canopy Gap stacks on at level 68 — an immunity to spread and splash effects, the ones that reach past the front plant. Combined with heavy armour, it makes this card very hard to remove with area damage. See statuses.
The species record lists no toxicity and no trait keywords, so no poison rider applies. For field gear, the gap is tempo rather than durability. Its growth habit is not vine, epiphyte or hemiepiphyte, so a Moss Pole does not apply.
At level 40 native reads 103 HP and 19 ATK; invasive reads 89 HP and 21 ATK. Armour is 24, which is strong. Retreat is 16 Sun. Opening tempo is 13, at the bottom of the range, with sustained tempo at 34 — it concedes the first turn nearly always. Invasive it pays Faustian bench damage per damaging attack and concedes 2 prizes on knockout. See stats.
By level 100 native reaches 190 HP and 33 ATK, invasive 165 HP and 38 ATK, with armour at 55. Tree shape: armour climbs with wood density rather than stalling. Retreat rises to 33 Sun and the inverted tempo bottoms out, leaving a very slow, very solid plant that is also immune to area damage.
Broadleaf tree is Competitor: strong into Ruderal — annual forbs, grasses, aquatics and bulbs — and weak to Specialist, meaning succulents, conifers, ferns and epiphytes. See weaknesses and resistances.
A defensive card with almost no offensive ambition — both attacks land in the same modest range, and the invasive step is tiny. What it does well is absorb: heavy armour, a retaliation trait that weakens whatever keeps hitting it, and eventually immunity to the splash damage people use to clear a board.
Use it to hold a lane while something else does the work. Do not expect it to win an exchange on damage.
It is not eaten, so a soil amendment earns no matching fertiliser coins and instead banks the ×1.25 XP an inedible plant pays. See 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.