Setaria italica
Foxtail millet — a relentless, armor-ignoring invasive grass with an edible grain.
Foxtail millet is a grass built to grind: its Colonize opener ignores armor and hits harder each time it lands, and it is fast on both the opening and the sustained clock. It is native to East Asia and invasive in Africa, Europe, eastern North America, western North America, Oceania, South America and South Asia. 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, Colonize, is available from level 1 for 2 Sun. It carries no fixed damage number — it ignores armor and hits harder each time it lands.
At level 25 it gains a free, once-per-battle ability, Sod Formation: Mats the ground over — Bind and Wither the foe. It costs no Sun — its price is that you get one use per fight.
The advanced attack, Prairie Fire, arrives at level 40 for 6 Sun, dealing 22 damage as a native or 28 as an invasive. Runs fire through the grass — and through its own ranks.
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.
Its opening initiative (56) and sustained Speed (56) are close, so it holds a steady tempo across the fight.
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 16 to 33, a steep jump, 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 28 native / 71 invasive), not toughness. Retreat climbs to 24 Sun and its already-inverted tempo sinks toward its floor, so it is markedly slower old than young.
In the succession chart its category, Grass, 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 across seven regions it is one of the better aggressors here — its armor-piercing ramp shrugs off walls that stop other cards, and its edible grain earns Phosphorus-fed coins. Soft-bodied, so keep the pressure on rather than trading slowly.
On the economy side, it is edible (the eaten part is the fruit), so feeding it Phosphorus — the fertilizer that matches a fruit — pays ×1.25 coins, while any other nutrient banks ×1.25 XP instead.
One note on leveling: it fights as a faster skirmisher until about level 41, 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.