Symphyotrichum laeve
A soft herb that opens with poison and heals itself, playable as either a native buffer or a wide-ranging invader.
Smooth aster is a low Perennial herb that fights as a self-healing skirmisher with a poison opener. It is native to Eastern and Western North America and invasive across Africa, Europe, Oceania, and South America, so the arena can cast it either way - as a native buffer or as an invasive attacker. It is a middling card: thin armor offset by poison chip and self-mending.
Its starter attack, Herbal Draught, unlocks at level 1 and costs 2 Sun, dealing about 30 damage native / 33 invasive and leaving poison on the target (see statuses). The free once-per-battle ability, Allelochemical Priming, comes in at level 25: Primes root chemistry — Poison the foe. The advanced attack, Crown Division, unlocks at level 40 for 6 Sun (42 native / 48 invasive) and mends the plant as it strikes. Most of your asters sit below level 40, where only the starter is available. None of its moves carry an initiative rider, so it never seizes a turn. See Moves.
Aster keeps a single always-on trait: Resprout. Because it draws only one eligible trait, Resprout arrives at half strength on the level 10 riser and matures on the level 68 one. When it fires it lets the plant survive one otherwise-lethal hit at roughly a quarter health, but it triggers only about 60% of the time - a coin-flip reprieve, not a guarantee. See Abilities.
Aster carries no special trait keywords - no thorns, no toxin, no spore chemistry - so nothing punishes an attacker for hitting it. It is non-toxic, showing no hazard ring. Its growth habit is terrestrial, so it is not eligible for a Moss Pole. As a native, defensive field gear suits its stalling game; as an invasive, lean into offense to make its aggression count.
At level 40 aster reads 103 HP native / 89 invasive, with ATK of 27 native versus 35 invasive - native ATK 27 rising to invasive ATK 35, a real gap that favors the invasive role. DEF is just 1, at the floor of the perennial-herb band, so it takes hits with essentially no armor. Its tempo is a slow starter and faster cruiser: turn 1 runs on its initiative (37), where it is out-paced, and every turn after on its SPD (40), where it grinds on. Retreat costs 12 Sun. As a native it gains a +15% HP cushion and a bench HP overshield; 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, aster reaches 190 HP native / 165 invasive and 49 / 70 ATK, but its DEF only reaches 2 - as a soft herb it banks bulk in health, almost none in armor, so it stays vulnerable to any real hitter. Retreat rises to 23 Sun, and its tempo has sunk to roughly 1% of cap, so a mature aster acts last against almost anything young. See Stats.
As a perennial herb, aster is in the Competitor succession group. It hits Ruderal plants (annual forbs, grasses, aquatics, bulbs) for x1.5 and is struck for only x0.667 by them; it is weak to Specialist plants (succulents, conifers, ferns, epiphytes), which hit it for x1.5 while resisting its blows. Against other Competitors and the off-wheel Weird group the matchup is neutral. See Weaknesses & Resistances.
Play aster as a cheap poison-and-heal skirmisher. As a native buffer its cushion and overshield support a fragile ally; as an invasive its higher ATK plus the poison make it a decent chip attacker, though its thin armor means it folds to a real hitter. It is inedible, so any nutrient banks x1.25 XP rather than coins - grow it for stats. It opens slow and leans on its bulk and healing as it climbs, crossing over around level 27 native and 28 invasive; higher levels always help, 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.