Pontederia crassipes
An aquatic Ruderal with an Allelopathy wilt aura โ the one card in this batch that flips the type chart the other way.
Water Hyacinth is an aquatic card โ and, unlike the rest of this batch, it belongs to the Ruderal succession group, so its matchups run opposite. Native to the Amazon basin of South America, it plays a buffer; across the tropics and subtropics worldwide, where it blankets waterways as one of the planet's worst aquatic weeds, it plays an attacker. See nativity.
Aquatic kit: level-1 starter, level-10 free ability, level-18 advanced attack, and attacks are damage-capped. Native moves deal baseline power; invasive moves gain the roughly 1.75ร multiplier against that cap.
Aquatics carry Allelopathy: a wilt aura that debuffs the enemy active plant while this card is out. That passive pressure is its real contribution โ see abilities.
No innate combat keyword; poison-rider only if flagged toxic. For field gear, lean defensive/support as a native to stack its wilt-and-wall game, and offensive as an invasive.
Moderate HP and level-scaling Def, light Sun, cheap 10-Sun retreat. Native โ HP ร1.15 cushion and bench HP overshield; invasive โ ATK spike (against the damage cap) with Faustian bench self-damage per damaging attack.
As a Ruderal group card its wheel runs the opposite way to the Competitors in this batch: it hits Specialist foes (succulent, conifer, fern, epiphyte) for ร1.5, and is resisted to ร0.667 by Competitor foes (perennial-herb, vine, shrub, broadleaf-tree). Other Ruderals and Weird are neutral.
Allelopathy makes native water hyacinth a genuinely useful support wall โ it chips the enemy active just by being on the field, and it is your go-to answer into Specialist decks that the Competitors here can't handle. As an invasive it is a capped-damage attacker, workable for PvE coins but not a heavy hitter. Best valued for the wilt aura and its off-angle type coverage.