Symphoricarpos orbiculatus
The strongest card in this batch: a firm shrub with a binding starter, a bench-shelter-and-revive ability, and a hard two-pass advanced; a durable native buffer or a real attacker where it has spread.
Coralberry (Symphoricarpos orbiculatus) is a Shrub in Supplant — a thicket-forming, berry-laden shrub. It is native to eastern and western North America and listed as invasive in Europe, so it can play both roles: a defensive buffer at home and an attacker where it has spread.
Numbers below are read at Level 40, where every move in its kit has unlocked.
Its kit unlocks in three stages. The starter attack, Snarl, is available from Level 1 for 2 Sun, dealing 30 as a native and 32 as an invasive: Snarls the foe up in thorny growth — it can't pull loose.
The free ability, Nurse Shrub (Level 25), costs no Sun because it is once per battle: Shelters the whole bench — evens their health, and calls the fallen back.
The advanced attack, Bramble Scramble (Level 40, 6 Sun), deals 40 native and 46 invasive: Two passes through the brambles. None of its moves carry the initiative rider, so it never seizes first strike — turn order runs on its tempo stats (see Stats). Most cards you meet are well below this Level 40 snapshot and unlock their kit slot by slot.
Every card keeps at most two always-on traits, drawn from its category pool with the rest dropped for good. This one keeps two, and both are working traits — there are no inert abilities in the game:
Each arrives at full strength on the riser shown, so for much of the card's climb it plays with only the earlier of the two; the second joins late.
It carries no Toxin or Thorns trait, so biting it inflicts no chemical or thorn recoil — its Extrafloral Nectaries trait does that job. As a native buffer it pairs well with a Calcium/Magnesium amendment to firm up its DEF and lean on the overshield; as an invasive attacker a Cloche helps it survive its own Faustian self-damage while it presses. It is not a climber, so a Moss Pole does nothing for it. See field gear and nativity.
Read at the Level 40 snapshot, its DEF is 10 and it retreats for 12 Sun — a shrub hardens into a firm mid band, well past a weed but short of a tree. Turn 1 is ordered by its initiative (38) and every turn after by its SPD (38); its opening and sustained tempo sit level, so its turn order holds steady through a fight. As a native it takes a +15% HP cushion (103 HP, 25 ATK) and, from the bench, projects an HP overshield onto your active. As an invasive it reads 89 HP and a harder 31 ATK, but pays Faustian self-damage to its own bench on every damaging attack and concedes 2 prizes when it is knocked out. The overshield is a bench-built ring: up to four green HP bars from benched natives (spent before base HP by direct damage, but bypassed by poison, recoil and splash) and up to two gold Sun bars from benched Network trees. See stats.
By Level 100 its firm mid armor has grown into real DEF at 20, with HP toward 190. Retreat rises to 22 Sun and its tempo has sunk to about 1% of cap — it ends a tough, slow body that trades blows rather than racing.
It is a Competitor on the succession wheel: it crowds out Ruderals (annual forbs, grasses, aquatics and bulbs), hitting them ×1.5 and resisting their blows, but is outlasted by Specialists (succulents, conifers, ferns and epiphytes), which turn that ×1.5 against it. The Weird categories (carrion-aroids, carnivores, mycotrophs and vascular parasites) sit off the wheel and trade neutrally with it. See weaknesses & resistances and categories.
The pick of this batch. Native, it is a durable buffer that pins the foe with Snarl, shelters and even revives the bench with Nurse Shrub, and answers with a two-pass Bramble Scramble. Invasive in Europe, its higher ATK and that double-hit make it a genuine attacker, at the cost of chipping its own bench each swing. It has no resolved edible part, so any fertilizer you feed it banks ×1.25 XP rather than coins. On the total-power curve its native crossover falls around Level 24 and its invasive around Level 26: below those levels it leans on its turn-order edge, above them on bulk and attack — and it grows stronger the whole way, so keep leveling it.
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.