Senecio sylvaticus
Woodland groundsel — a fast, aggressive annual with the initiative rider.
Woodland groundsel is an annual forb built to move first and hit hard: its Quick Bloom opener carries the initiative rider, and its abilities bank permanent attack. It is native to Africa and Europe and invasive in eastern North America, western North America and Oceania. That gives it two roles: a native buffer, or an invasive attacker.
Its kit unlocks in three steps, so most of the time you field it below the level where the whole thing is live. The starter attack, Quick Bloom, is available from level 1 for 2 Sun. It deals 41 damage as a native or 44 as an invasive. Seizes initiative: first in the wild, acts again on a kill.
At level 25 it gains a free, once-per-battle ability, Germination Flush: The seed bank breaks at once: +4 ATK, kept for the match. It costs no Sun — its price is that you get one use per fight.
The advanced attack, Reckless Growth, arrives at level 40 for 6 Sun, dealing 38 damage as a native or 40 as an invasive. Grows past what it can support: +4 ATK, kept. Because Quick Bloom carries the initiative rider, in a wild encounter it takes hard priority and strikes first no matter the Speed on either side. In the arena the rider works differently: there it lets the plant act again whenever its strike scores an outright kill — never a first-strike, always a finish-and-continue.
See Moves and Abilities for how the slots and Sun costs work.
A card keeps at most two always-on traits — drawn deterministically, with the rest of its category pool dropped for good. This one draws two, and they arrive at different levels:
Those are the only two it holds; everything else in its category's pool was passed over. See Abilities for the full trait list.
It carries no special keyword chips — it is not tagged toxic or thorned, and it is not a climber, so a Moss Pole does not fit it.
Soft-bodied cards like this one gain the most from a Calcium/Magnesium soil amendment, which adds flat DEF to a thin armor band. See Field gear for what fits.
Its gear picks shift with its role: as a native buffer, defensive amendments; as an invasive attacker, gear that presses its damage advantage. See Weaknesses & resistances for the matchup context.
Numbers here are read at level 40, where every slot is unlocked. It reads 1 DEF and retreats for 12 Sun.
It is slow off the mark (opening initiative 32) but faster in the long exchange (sustained Speed 37 from turn two).
As a native it gains a +15% HP cushion — 103 HP versus 89 as an invasive — and while benched it projects a green HP overshield onto your active. As an invasive it trades that cushion for attack: its ATK rises from 25 to 32, a clear step up, but it pays Faustian self-damage to its own bench on every damaging hit and concedes 2 prizes when it is knocked out.
The overshield, the Sun economy and damage-as-a-ratio are explained on Stats.
By level 100 its biomass HP swells to 190, but its soft-bodied armor stays low at 1 DEF — leveling buys it bulk and attack (climbing to 45 native / 62 invasive), not toughness. Retreat climbs to 23 Sun and its already-inverted tempo sinks toward its floor, so it is markedly slower old than young.
In the succession chart its category, Annual forb, is a Ruderal. It deals ×1.5 damage to succulents, conifers, ferns and epiphytes, but perennial herbs, vines, shrubs and broadleaf trees hit it for ×1.5 and resist its attacks in return (×0.667). Against everything else it is neutral.
The full wheel is on Weaknesses & resistances.
As an invasive it is a genuine budget aggressor — fast, hard-hitting, and able to steal turns off a kill. It is frail, so race the fight rather than grind it. A strong early single-player coin earner.
It has no resolved edible part, so any fertilizer you feed it banks ×1.25 XP rather than coins — treat it as a growth boost.
One note on leveling: it fights as a faster skirmisher until about level 25, after which its growing bulk and attack take over as the dominant edge. It is stronger overall at higher levels — turn order is only a small lever — so there is no reason to hold it back.
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.