Setaria pumila
Setaria pumila buffers when its region makes it native and attacks when its region makes it invasive.
Setaria pumila is a card in the Grass category in Supplant. It is native to Africa, East Asia, Europe, Oceania, and South Asia, where the arena treats it as a buffer with a small HP cushion, and invasive in eastern and western North America and South America, where it plays as an attacker. Which role you get is set by the arena region, not by the card.
Its kit fills in as it levels — most cards you catch are well below the snapshot level (Lv 40) where every slot is unlocked, so introduce them in order. The starter attack, Razors (unlocks at Lv 1, 2 Sun), lands for 50 as a native and 58 as an invasive. The free once-per-battle ability is Pioneer Sward, unlocked at Lv 25 and free to use. Closes the turf: heal 30%, and the foe's whole bench withers. The advanced attack, Turf War (unlocks at Lv 40, 6 Sun), hits for 49 native and 53 invasive. None of its moves carry the initiative rider, so it never seizes hard priority in a wild fight or an extra action in the arena. See Moves and Abilities.
It draws two working traits, one per riser. Duff Stuff arrives at Lv 10: while active, its effective DEF rises by half the summed DEF of its living benched ruderal allies (annual forbs, grasses, aquatics, and bulbs), recomputed live so it fades as those allies faint. Spore-drift stacks on at Lv 68, chipping the opposing bench over the course of the fight. Neither is one of the 60%-chance sustain effects. See Abilities.
It carries no special status keywords — no toxin, thorns, or lifesteal — so nothing it does punishes an attacker or drains the foe on contact. It is not a climber (its growth habit is terrestrial), so a Moss Pole does not attach to it. Its DEF band is soft, so a Calcium/Magnesium amendment gives it more proportional benefit than it looks — useful for a native buffer meant to soak hits. An invasive copy would rather run an attack-boosting amendment. See field gear.
Read at the snapshot level (Lv 40, where every move is unlocked): as a native it carries 103 HP (the +15% cushion is baked in) and 29 ATK; as an invasive, 89 HP and 41 ATK — the invasive edge is trait-sourced from how widely it spreads, so compare those ATK numbers to see the real gap. Its DEF is 1. Its opening tempo (56) and sustained tempo (56) sit close together, so turn order stays roughly even across the fight rather than swinging with the rounds. Its Sun bar caps at 120 and refills at +1 every 15 minutes; retreating costs 12 Sun. Benched behind an ally, a native copy projects a green HP-overshield bar onto your active, sized by its rarity, that soaks direct attack damage before base HP — though damage-over-time, recoil, and splash bypass it. See Stats and Native strength.
Fully grown, native HP swells to 190 (165 invasive) and ATK reaches 55, but DEF barely leaves its soft band — only 1 at Lv 100 — so it grows into a big-HP body with little armor, and a hard hitter still punches through it. Retreat rises to 24 Sun as it roots deeper, and its tempo has fallen to roughly 1% of cap, giving up the turn-order edge it had young. Maturing buys it survivability through sheer biomass, not toughness.
In the succession type chart it belongs to the Ruderal group. It hits Specialist categories (succulents, conifers, ferns, and epiphytes) hard (×1.5) and is resisted by Competitor categories (perennial herbs, vines, shrubs, and broadleaf trees) (×0.667); against its own group and the off-wheel Weird categories, damage is even both ways. See weaknesses & resistances and categories.
Play a native copy as a benched buffer or a durable body that soaks hits and props up your active's overshield; play an invasive copy as the aggressor, leaning on its higher ATK — but remember an invasive pays "Faustian" self-damage to its own bench on every damaging attack and concedes 2 prizes when it is knocked out. On raw stats this is a middling card: a soft-DEF body that earns its keep more on the bench and in the collection than as a front-line battler, and it wants backup. It is inedible, so any fertilizer you feed it banks ×1.25 XP — useful for leveling. Its power and tempo curves cross around Lv 38 as a native (Lv 39 invasive): below that it leans on turn order as a fast skirmisher, and above it its bulk and attack take over. Leveling always makes it stronger — the crossover is about which edge dominates, not when it peaks.
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.