Spineless butcher's broom

Overview

Spineless butcher's broom is a low, evergreen shrub that fights as a durable, slow-attacking body. It is native to Europe, where it takes the buffer role, and invasive in Africa, where the same card turns attacker. It is Endangered in the wild, which — because rarer natives project a larger shield (see Stats) — makes it a useful thing to have sitting on your bench. Its attack is unremarkable, so treat it as a supporting card and a coin-earner rather than a plant that carries a fight on its own.

Moves

Its kit comes online in three steps, so a low-level card fields only the opener.

• Tick Tumble (unlocks at Lv 1, costs 2 Sun) — the starter attack, dealing 29 native / 29 invasive. Shakes the tick load loose onto the foe.
• Facilitation (unlocks at Lv 25, free, once per battle) — Shelters its own and starves the rest: heal 50%, and the foe's bench withers. This is pure utility: a big self-heal that also thins the opponent's bench, and it carries no damage number.
• Bramble Scramble (unlocks at Lv 40, costs 6 Sun) — the advanced attack, 38 native / 40 invasive. Two passes through the brambles.

None of its moves seize the initiative, so it never jumps the turn order — it acts on its tempo like a normal card.

Abilities

These are the always-on traits this card actually keeps, and they arrive on a schedule rather than all at once. At the snapshot level of Lv 40 it holds only the first.

• Sclerophylly (from Lv 10) — tough, hard-cased leaves. It subtracts a flat 3 from every incoming hit after the usual armor calculation, so it blunts a stream of small attacks noticeably even though its raw DEF is low.
• Lignotuber (stacks on at Lv 68) — an accumulated woody burl. The card becomes immune to Burn, and better than that it is released by fire: an attempt to Burn it heals roughly 4% of its maximum HP instead of hurting it.

Both are steady, always-on effects, not the kind of sustain that only triggers part of the time, so what you see is what you get.

Features

It carries no toxicity and no thorns, so it inflicts no contact recoil — an attacker can bite it freely. It is not a climber, so it cannot equip a Moss Pole. Its most valuable field gear is a Calcium/Magnesium soil amendment, which adds flat DEF on top of its soft category floor and makes the leathery body meaningfully tougher; as an edible-leaf plant it also wants Nitrogen for the coin bonus (see Gameplay uses). Play the Ca/Mg pick in either role; save Nitrogen for when you are farming coins rather than fighting.

Stats

Read at the snapshot level of Lv 40, where every move is unlocked:

• HP — 103 native / 89 invasive. The native reading carries the +15% cushion.
• ATK — 22 native / 23 invasive. The gap is small here; a modest attacker either way.
• DEF — 10, low for a shrub, which is why Sclerophylly's flat shave matters so much to it.
• Tempo — initiative 37 versus SPD 24. Initiative outruns SPD, so it is a quick starter and a slow cruiser: it tends to land the first hit of a wild encounter, then gets out-paced for the rest of the fight.
• Retreat — 12 Sun to pull it back.

Its roles split the usual way. Native (Europe) it is a buffer: the HP cushion above, plus — while benched — a green HP overshield bar it projects onto your active. Invasive (Africa) it is an attacker: it pays "Faustian" self-damage to its own bench on every damaging attack, and concedes 2 prizes when it is knocked out. See nativity and the overshield.

At Level 100

Grown to Lv 100 it swells in HP — to 190 native / 165 invasive — but its DEF only climbs to 20, the soft end of the shrub band: this plant never hardens into a wall, and it leans on Sclerophylly and a Ca/Mg amendment for its durability rather than on raw armor. Its ATK caps at 38 native / 41 invasive — note that the invasive edge, invisible at low level, opens up here, because the introduced-range bonus is deferred onto the cap. Retreat rises to 22 Sun as the plant becomes more rooted, and its once-brisk tempo has sunk to roughly 1% of cap, so a mature card is genuinely slow.

Weaknesses & Resistances

As a shrub it belongs to the Competitor succession group. It hits Ruderal categories (annual-forb, grass, aquatic, bulb) for ×1.5 and takes ×0.667 from Specialist categories (succulent, conifer, fern, epiphyte). Against other Competitors and the off-wheel Weird categories the matchup is neutral. Line it up against weeds and grasses; keep it away from conifers and ferns.

Gameplay uses

Native, it is a bench buffer: an Endangered native projects a healthy overshield bar, and its self-heal ability keeps it on the field, so it is a good body to park behind a hitter. Invasive, it can attack in Africa, but its ATK is only average and the Faustian bench cost eats into any aggression, so it is a support piece more than a finisher.

Its steadiest value is economic. It is edible with a resolved leaf part, so feeding it Nitrogen (the match for a leaf) pays ×1.25 coins — a reliable earner you can grind while filling out the family tree. It fights as a fast skirmisher up to about Lv 18 (native) — where its rising bulk overtakes its falling tempo — after which it is a slow, durable body; either way, level it up, because it is monotonically stronger the higher it goes.