Symphyotrichum cordifolium
A soft perennial herb that heals through fights and can cling to life once, playing either arena role — an Eastern North American native or a European invader.
Blue wood aster is a soft Perennial herb that fights by healing through exchanges and clinging to life once when it is lucky. Native to Eastern North America and invasive in Europe, the arena can field it either way — as a native buffer or as an invasive attacker. Its armor is nonexistent, so it wins by attrition, not by trading blows.
Its starter attack, Crown Split, unlocks at level 1 for 2 Sun, dealing about 44 damage as a native and 44 as an invasive. The free once-per-battle ability, Autogenic Reaction, arrives at level 25: Remakes its own ground: +6 ATK and heal 25%. The advanced attack, Perennial Problem, unlocks at level 40 for 6 Sun (43 native / 43 invasive) and mends the plant as it strikes. Most of your blue wood aster sit below level 40, where only the starter is unlocked. None of its moves carry an initiative rider. See Moves.
Blue wood aster keeps one always-on trait, Resprout, which arrives at half strength on the level 10 riser and matures on the level 68 riser — a real difference for most of the card's life, since it spends far longer as the weaker version. When it works it lets the aster survive one otherwise-lethal hit at roughly a quarter of its health, but it fires only about 60% of the time, so treat it as a lucky reprieve rather than a guarantee. See Abilities.
It is non-toxic, so striking it carries no contact recoil and it lays no poison on the attacker. Its habit is terrestrial, so it is not eligible for a Moss Pole. As a native, defensive field gear — a Cloche, or a calcium/magnesium amendment for a little DEF — offsets its thin armor; as an invasive, offensive gear pushes its aggression. See statuses.
At level 40 blue wood aster reads 103 HP native and 89 invasive, with ATK of 25 native versus 27 invasive — the invasive form hits harder, though neither number is high. DEF is just 1, at the soft floor of the perennial-herb band, so it takes hits with almost no armor and relies on its healing instead. Its tempo is uneven: turn 1 runs on its low initiative (22) and every turn after on its faster SPD (37), so it is out-paced off the mark but relentless once a fight settles. Retreat costs 12 Sun. As a native it gains a +15% HP cushion and projects an HP overshield onto your active while benched; as an invasive it pays Faustian self-damage to its own bench on each damaging attack and concedes 2 prizes when knocked out. See Stats.
Matured to level 100, blue wood aster swells to 190 HP native / 165 invasive and 46 / 50 ATK, but its DEF only reaches 2 — as a soft herb it buys bulk in health and almost none in armor, so it stays exposed to any real hitter. Retreat rises to 23 Sun, and its tempo has sunk to about 1% of cap, so a mature aster acts last against almost anything younger.
As a perennial herb, blue wood aster sits in the Competitor succession group. It hits Ruderal plants (annual forbs, grasses, aquatics, bulbs) for ×1.5 and takes only ×0.667 from them; it is weak to Specialist plants (succulents, conifers, ferns, epiphytes), which strike it for ×1.5 while resisting its blows. Against other Competitors and the off-wheel Weird group the matchup is neutral. See Weaknesses & Resistances.
Play blue wood aster as a healing attritionist: as a native it is a fine buffer whose cushion and overshield support your active, and as an invasive its higher ATK lets it grind an opponent down while it mends through the exchange. The Resprout reprieve helps once it matures, but at half strength for most of its life it is a soft, slow-starting card that wins by outlasting rather than out-hitting. On economy, it is inedible, so any nutrient you feed it banks ×1.25 XP toward faster growth rather than coins. It plays as a slow-opening, faster-cruising skirmisher leaning harder on its bulk as it levels, crossing over around level 18 as a native and 22 as an invasive — but it is always stronger at higher levels, 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.