Vitis girdiana
The Desert wild grape (Vitis girdiana) is a Vine that plays as a defensive buffer.
The Desert wild grape is a vigorous Southwestern climbing vine with small edible grapes. In battle it plays as a Vine. It is native to Western North America and listed as invasive nowhere, so it fills the defensive buffer role only.
Its kit unlocks in three stages. The starter attack, Creeping Smother, is available from Level 1 and costs 2 Sun, dealing 24 as a native and 24 as an invasive. Its effect: Creeps over and smothers — the foe weakens.
The free ability, Structural Parasite (Level 25), costs no Sun because it is once per battle: Rides the foe down and takes its place — it's driven out, withering.
The advanced attack, Thigmo-Trap (Level 40, 6 Sun), deals 21 native and 21 invasive: Coils the instant it touches, before the foe can pull away. Most cards you meet are well below the Level 40 snapshot these numbers are read at, and unlock their kit slot by slot as they level.
This card actually keeps two always-on traits, drawn from its category pool with the rest discarded. From Level 10 it carries Allelopathy, a wilt aura that saps the enemy active's ATK every checkup, on both single-player and player-versus-player boards. From Level 68 a second, different trait stacks on top: Apical Dominance, extra ATK while it is at full health. Both are working traits — there are no inert abilities in the game — and each arrives at full strength on the riser shown, so for much of the card's life it plays with only the earlier of the two.
It carries no Toxin or Thorns trait, so it inflicts no contact recoil on an attacker. As a vine its growth habit resolves to a climber, so isClimber returns true and it can equip a Moss Pole — a natural fit that suits its clinging style. Because its body is soft, a Cloche is a valuable ward against the damage-over-time Poison that bypasses its overshield, and a Cal-Mag amendment shores up its thin armor. Its edible fruit means the matching Phosphorus (P) fertilizer pays bonus coins (see Gameplay uses). See field gear for the full item list and nativity for how region sets its role.
Read at the Level 40 snapshot, its DEF is 7 — a modest band with a hard cap on its own attack damage — a vine wears a foe down rather than hitting through it. It retreats for 14 Sun. Turn 1 is ordered by its initiative (18) and every turn after by its SPD (31). It is slow off the mark but relentless after — outpaced on the opening exchange, then pulling ahead as the fight settles. No region lists it as invasive, so it plays purely as a buffer: a +15% HP cushion (103 HP) and, from the bench, an HP overshield onto your active. It has no attacker stance. The overshield is a bench-built extra ring: up to four green HP bars from benched natives (drained by direct damage first, but bypassed by poison, recoil and splash) and up to two gold Sun bars from benched Network trees.
By Level 100 its DEF has risen to 14 and HP toward 190, but its damage stays capped and its once-quick tempo has sunk to roughly 1% of cap. Retreat climbs to 27 Sun. Late, it is a clinging attritional body, not a finisher.
It is a Competitor on the succession wheel: it crowds out Ruderals (annual forbs, grasses, aquatics and bulbs), hitting them for 1.5× and resisting their blows, but is outlasted by Specialists (succulents, conifers, ferns and epiphytes), which turn its 1.5× disadvantage 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.
A native-only Competitor vine with Allelopathy wilt, a parasitic displacement ability, and edible fruit. Frail and damage-capped, but earns coins and disrupts; take the Moss Pole. Because its edible part is a resolved fruit, feeding it Phosphorus pays ×1.25 coins; any other nutrient banks ×1.25 XP instead. On the total-power curve its native crossover falls around Level 14: below it the card leans on its turn-order edge, above it on raw bulk and attack — it is monotonically stronger as it levels, so keep growing 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.