Tanacetum audibertii
A native-only Perennial herb card with almost no armour that only reaches its real attack power from the third turn onward.
Tanacetum audibertii is a Perennial herb card, native to Europe and listed as invasive nowhere, which makes it native-only. It always plays the buffer role: a +15% health cushion and an overshield bar projected onto your active plant from the bench. There is no attacker version. See nativity and categories.
The starter attack, Taproot Anchor, unlocks at level 1 for 2 Sun and hits for 26. Anchors deep and holds the foe with it.
The free once-per-battle ability, Stabilization, unlocks at level 25 and costs no Sun. Pins the ground down — the foe stalls, and can't break away.
The advanced attack, Deep-Seated Grudge, unlocks at level 40 for 6 Sun and lands for 34. Roots in deep and refuses to let go. It is a clear step up from the starter, so the extra Sun is worth paying once the slot is open. See moves.
Basal Rosette arrives on the first riser at level 10 at full strength, adding a small amount of armour. Rosettes resist grazing and mowing, and on a card whose base armour is close to zero even a small flat addition is a meaningful proportion of its defence.
Vernalization Memory stacks on at level 68 and adds attack power — but only from the third turn onward. That condition is the whole character of the trait: for the first two turns of any battle it contributes nothing at all, and it only pays in fights that actually last. A cold requirement, then a bolt. Do not count it in your opening maths.
The species record lists no toxicity and no trait keywords, so no poison rider applies. For field gear, armour is the obvious gap — anything that prevents or absorbs damage outright is worth more here than a marginal reduction. Its growth habit is not vine, epiphyte or hemiepiphyte, so a Moss Pole does not apply.
At level 40 the native side reads 103 HP and 16 ATK. Armour is 1 — effectively nothing before Basal Rosette is counted. Retreat is a cheap 12 Sun, which is genuinely useful on a fragile card: you can rotate it out without wrecking your Sun curve. Opening tempo is 40 and sustained tempo is 41, both healthy, so it tends to act early. See stats.
By level 100 health reaches 190 and attack 28, while armour only manages 1. This is the soft-herb divergence: biomass grows a great deal, plating barely leaves its band, and the card stays easy to damage no matter how far you take it. Retreat rises to 23 Sun, so the cheap escape that helps it at level 40 is gone, and the inverted tempo has sunk to its floor. What maturing genuinely buys is the turn-3 attack bonus applying to a much larger attack stat.
Perennial herb is in the Competitor succession group. Competitor crowds out Ruderal, so this card hits annual forbs, grasses, aquatics and bulbs harder, and it loses to Specialist — succulents, conifers, ferns and epiphytes. See weaknesses and resistances.
This is a modest card and it is worth saying so plainly. Its attack stat is low, its armour is near zero, and its best trait is switched off for the first two turns of every fight. What it does offer is a cheap retreat, decent tempo, and a genuine payoff in long battles once Vernalization Memory is online — so it is a card for grinding matchups, not for racing ones.
Against Ruderal-group opponents the type advantage helps. Against anything that hits hard early, it will simply die before its trait matters.
It is not edible, so a soil amendment earns no matching fertiliser coins from it and instead banks the ×1.25 XP that feeding an inedible plant pays. Treat it as an experience sink and a family-tree entry more than a battle card. See the battle lab.
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.