Stachys germanica
A soft perennial herb with a punchy attack, a retaliation trait, and a Bind-and-Wither control ability — a buffer when native, an attacker when invasive.
Downy woundwort is a Perennial herb that plays as a lightly armored control card with a higher attack than its softness suggests. It has both roles: it is native to Africa and Europe, where it takes the native buffer job, and invasive in eastern North America, where it becomes an attacker. As a herb its armor is thin, so it leans on offense and status effects rather than soaking.
Its starter attack, Steady Growth, unlocks at Lv 1 and costs 2 Sun, dealing 35 native / 37 invasive: A reliable, even strike.
At Lv 25 it gains a free once-per-battle ability, Hemicryptophyte Hold, which costs no Sun: Hunkers at ground level — Bind and Wither the foe. That applies Bind and Wither — see statuses — pinning the foe in place and sapping it, which is real control on an otherwise fragile herb.
Its advanced attack, Tonic, unlocks at Lv 40 for 6 Sun and hits for 35 native / 37 invasive while healing it: Strikes and mends — heal 15%. Neither attack carries an initiative rider, so it acts on the normal turn order.
It keeps two always-on traits, arriving at different levels. From Lv 10 it holds Bitter Principle — its sesquiterpene-lactone chemistry — which Withers any attacker that strikes it, a retaliation that punishes each damaging hit the foe lands. A second, different trait stacks on at Lv 68: Contractile Roots, which pulls the crown deeper and adds +1 DEF each checkup up to +5, slowly firming a plant that starts almost unarmored. The two do not arrive together — for most of the card's life it has only the retaliation, and the creeping armor is a late addition.
It carries no special trait keywords, and as a herb it is not a Moss Pole climber. For field gear, a native copy wants defensive amendments to shore up its near-zero DEF, while an invasive copy prefers attack or protective gear to press its higher ATK and blunt the self-damage it pays to swing.
Read at Lv 40, a native Downy woundwort carries 103 HP against the invasive 89, and its ATK identity shows a clear step — 25 native versus 30 invasive — so the invasive side is meaningfully the harder hitter. DEF is only 1, so it takes hits nearly in full; poison, which ignores DEF anyway, is not the counter it needs to worry about, but any solid attacker is. On tempo, turn 1 is set by initiative (39) and later turns by SPD (40) — both are high, so it is quick off the mark and stays quick, a genuine racer for a herb. Retreat costs 11 Sun. As an invasive attacker it pays Faustian self-damage to its own bench on every damaging hit and concedes 2 prizes when knocked out. A benched native copy projects an HP overshield bar onto your active, sized by rarity.
Grown to Lv 100, its HP swells to 190 native / 165 invasive and its ATK to 45 / 58, but its DEF barely leaves the herb band — 2 even at the cap. That is the soft-weed shape: more biomass and more punch, but never real armor, so it stays exposed. Retreat rises to 21 Sun, and the inverted tempo has sunk to roughly its floor, so its early speed edge fades even as its raw stats grow.
As a perennial herb it is in the Competitor succession group. It deals ×1.5 to Ruderal categories — annual-forb, grass, aquatic and bulb — and is resisted, taking only ×0.667, by Specialists — succulent, conifer, fern and epiphyte. Its thin DEF means a resisted matchup can go badly fast, so pick your fights.
An invasive Downy woundwort is a decent single-player coin earner: it hits harder than its native self, opens fast, and its Bind-and-Wither ability plus Bitter Principle retaliation let it control and chip a foe. Its frailty is the catch — it needs a bench to fall back on, because it will not out-trade a sturdier card head-to-head. As a native it works as a quick harasser and overshield contributor. It is inedible, so any fertilizer you feed it banks the ×1.25 XP (growth) bonus rather than coins. In Battle Lab terms it is a light, fast card that stays speed-favored until about Lv 30 as an invasive, after which its rising attack and HP take over.
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.