Pilea depressa
A scrappy self-healing perennial herb with a touch more armor than most soft cards — a modest but resilient native buffer and light invasive attacker.
Depressed clearweed is a perennial-herb that plays as a self-healing grinder. It is native to South America, where it takes the native buffer role, and invasive in Oceania, where it becomes a light attacker. Both roles are available.
Three stages of kit (moves):
No move carries an initiative rider, so turn order rides purely on tempo.
Its trait schedule keeps two always-on abilities:
For most of its life it has only Basal Rosette; Deep Taproot is a very late addition.
Despite being in the nettle family (Urticaceae), this card holds no Toxin or Thorns trait, so it is safe to strike and gives no contact recoil. It is not a climber, so it is not Moss Pole eligible. A calcium/magnesium field gear amendment stacks more flat DEF on top of Basal Rosette, leaning into the durable-buffer plan.
At the Lv 40 snapshot (stats): HP 103 native / 89 invasive, DEF 4 (a hair above the softest floor, thanks to Basal Rosette), retreat 16 Sun. Its ATK steps up with nativity — 17 native to 24 invasive — so the invader hits harder while paying Faustian self-damage to its bench on each attack.
On tempo it is a middling opener that picks up later: initiative 23 is low-to-average on turn one, and its sustained speed 34 is higher, so it tends to move second early and hold its own from turn two. Benched as a native, it projects an HP overshield onto your active.
It keeps a little more armor than its softer cousins: HP climbs to 190 native / 165 invasive, ATK to 30 / 46, and DEF reaches 8 — still light, but the highest of these four soft cards, so diminishing armor blunts small hits a touch. Retreat rises to 33 Sun and the inverted tempo has sunk to roughly 1% of cap, so the mature card is slow. Maturity buys it bulk, a bit of armor, and Bind immunity.
Perennial herbs are in the Competitor succession group (weaknesses & resistances): ×1.5 into Ruderals (annual-forb, grass, aquatic, bulb), ×1.5 taken from Specialists (succulent, conifer, fern, epiphyte), neutral against other Competitors and the Weird categories.
This is a modest card that punches a little above its weight: between the 12% lifesteal on its starter, a 40% burst heal, a Wither to soften the foe's attack, and slightly firmer DEF than most soft cards, it grinds out attrition fights well as a native buffer. As an invasive it is a light attacker at ATK 24 that leans on the same self-healing to stay in. It is inedible, so fertilizer banks ×1.25 XP rather than coins. It fights as a fast skirmisher until about Lv 20, after which its bulk and attack take over; higher levels always make it stronger, so never hold it back. Try its sustain math in 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.