Polystichum imbricans
A native-only rock fern: slow and frail, but with the Specialist's ×1.5 edge on Competitor cards.
Cliff sword fern is a western rock fern native to western North America and invasive nowhere on record — a native-only soft Specialist. It is slow off the mark but carries the fern's type advantage.
The kit unlocks in three stages, so most cards below the level-40 snapshot are still filling it in. The starter, Frond Flail, is there from level 1 at 2 Sun — Flails with two fronds at once. It lands for 36 damage. The free once-per-battle ability, Gametophyte Rest, comes online at level 25: Falls back on the hidden generation: heal 35%. The advanced attack, Prothallus Parlay, arrives at level 40 for 6 Sun and hits for 19 — Falls back on the hidden generation: heal 30% and gain speed.
This card keeps two always-on traits, drawn from its category pool and read straight off its schedule (the rest of the pool is dropped for good). The first is live for most of the card's life; the second stacks on late.
It is not a climber, so no Moss Pole. Its Unpalatable recoil is neutralised by a Sulfur amendment. A Calcium/Magnesium amendment firms its thin armour. See field gear.
Read at the level-40 snapshot, where every slot is unlocked, it shows 103 HP with 2 DEF, 16 Sun to retreat, and tempo pips of 13 initiative (which orders turn 1) and 34 SPD (every turn after). It holds no invasive range in any tracked region, so it is a native-only card: it plays as a buffer, taking a +15% health cushion and, while benched, projecting a green overshield bar onto your active. There is no attacker scenario to build for it. Damage is diminishing armour — a hit scales by its attack over attack-plus-DEF, so a big attacker punches through cover a small one cannot, and poison ignores DEF entirely. See stats and the overshield.
By level 100 the floor-to-cap law has carried it well past that snapshot: health rises to 190 (native) / 165 (invasive), attack to 31 / 31, and retreat stiffens to 33 Sun as it roots down. DEF barely leaves its soft band even so (3) — this is a light-bodied card that swells in health without ever becoming armoured — and the inverted tempo has sunk to roughly 1% of cap. It is still strictly stronger at higher levels; the tempo it loses along the way is only a small turn-order lever.
Roughly USDA zone 5a — it should come through winters that bottom out near -27 °C. Colder than that and it wants shelter, a wall, or a winter indoors. In its own terms it runs from a cold edge of -0.4 °C to a warm edge of 23.3 °C, a Temperate band. Somewhere near the cold edge it will want a sheltered spot or a wall; below it, protection or a winter indoors. Treat the zone as a rough guide, not a promise: it comes from a regression whose error runs a little over one full zone, which is why the card hedges it as roughly.
The card's climate chip is the player-facing form of all that — it reads your current location, not the plant's homeland, so it changes as you travel.
| 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 |
The chip's only effect is on battle XP: a card that thrives or sits in range banks a multiplier when it fights, and nothing else — damage, stats, growth speed, catch rate and the coin economy are all untouched by climate. A reading of colder than its range is usually just a fact about the winter outside your window, not a verdict on the plant.
On the succession wheel this is a Specialist. It strikes Competitor cards — perennial herbs, vines, shrubs and trees — for ×1.5 damage, and takes ×1.5 in return from Ruderal cards — annual forbs, grasses, aquatics and bulbs. Every other matchup is neutral.
Play it as a native buffer and a matchup pick: as a Specialist it hits Competitor cards (herbs, vines, shrubs, trees) for ×1.5. Unpalatable taxes attackers and Prothallial Reserve offers a late save. It is slow and soft with capped damage, so it is a support and collection piece rather than a carry. Inedible, so fertilizer banks XP.
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.