Ten ink is a real number. You are not playing this on turn one, and you are probably not hard-playing it at all. The whole point of The Vine - Towering Stalk is that you are not paying ten.
Shift 7 changes the maths entirely. The card text reads: "You may pay 7 ⬡ to play this on top of one of your Floodborn characters." Seven ink on an existing Floodborn body is a reasonable ask by the late game.
It brings you a 10 strength, 10 willpower, 3 lore Steel character that reshapes every combat decision your opponent makes. The cost is the boring part. The two abilities are why this card exists.
- Shift 7 is the real cost. You are landing this on an existing Floodborn body, not paying ten ink from scratch.
- SATURATE turns your exerted characters into a screen. Every other exerted Floodborn you control gains Bodyguard while The Vine is in play.
- HOSTILE SWARM punishes your opponent for trading. Banish one of your Floodborn on their turn and every opposing character takes one damage.
- Effects that banish outright, or put a character into the inkwell, ignore both abilities. Goofy - Klutzy Skier and Let It Go are the answers you should fear most.
SATURATE does something most players miss
Read it again: "Your other exerted Floodborn characters gain Bodyguard." Rule 8.3.1 is blunt. Opponents must challenge a Bodyguard character before they can challenge anything else you have in play. The Vine is turning your exerted Floodborn into the wall.
An opponent who wants to reach anything you have exerted has to go through those Bodyguards first. And every Floodborn they banish on their own turn triggers HOSTILE SWARM on the way down.
This is not a passive bonus. It is an active deterrent that changes what your opponent can legally do on their turn (rule 8.3.1).
The key word is "exerted." A ready character needs no protection in the first place. A challenge can only ever target an exerted character (rule 4.6.4.2). The vulnerable moment is the turn you quest. That is exactly the moment SATURATE covers.
Quest your whole board and Shift The Vine in the same turn. Those freshly exerted Floodborn become the only legal challenges your opponent can declare, on stats you picked for the job.
What HOSTILE SWARM actually costs your opponent
Here is the other half. "During an opponent's turn, whenever one of your Floodborn characters is banished, deal 1 damage to each opposing character." That is one damage everywhere, every time. A board of four opposing characters takes four damage. All your opponent has to do is win one exchange with a Floodborn you control.
Against a board full of small willpower characters, that one damage per banish can tip them into range for your own challenges next turn. Against a single large threat, it stacks. Lose three Floodborn in one turn and their big character has taken three damage without ever being challenged.
HOSTILE SWARM does not save your characters. It taxes the opponent for taking them. The tax lands in a direction they often cannot prevent.
The damage is dealt, not put (rule 1.9.2.1). That distinction matters. Any character with Resist is still protected from it.
Where it stops working
Ten willpower means damage effects will not touch this card. That whole bracket of removal is off the table. But an effect that simply banishes a character does not care how much willpower The Vine has. Goofy - Klutzy Skier banishes it for three ink, no questions asked. Dragon Fire does the same at five ink.
World's Greatest Criminal Mind and Ranger Plane only banish characters under a strength limit, and The Vine's 10 strength is far above it, so neither one reaches him.
Gaston - Superior Archer does it from a body instead of an action. Play him for five ink and he banishes a chosen character with strength five or higher on the spot. No challenge needed. The Vine's 10 strength qualifies from across the table.
That is the brief: strong and tough enough to ignore small removal, but sitting squarely in range for anything big enough to matter.
The answer that hurts most is the inkwell. Let It Go puts chosen character straight into its player's inkwell, and neither stat on The Vine's card counts for anything against it.
Here is the thing: The Vine is a Shift. There are cards underneath it. Rule 1.9.6 tells us damage ceases when a card leaves play. But every card stacked beneath The Vine follows it into the inkwell too (rules 5.1.1.7 and 1.9.6).
That is two ink for your opponent on a single-shift stack. Shift more than once and the haul grows. You are not just losing The Vine, you are building their resources.
The conditional banish effects, like Firefly Swarm at three ink, apply depending on board state and how they are worded. They can reach The Vine in the right circumstances. Keep them on your radar even though they are not guaranteed answers.
The only card in its bracket for this slot
The Leviathan - Guardian of Atlantis also costs ten ink, also has 10 strength and 10 willpower, and also quests for 3 lore. It is Ruby rather than Steel. It is uninkable where The Vine is not.
These two are not the same card, and they are not in the same deck. If you are asking which ten-drop to build around, ask what your deck actually does. A Floodborn engine wants The Vine. Ruby synergies want The Leviathan.
The Vine needs Floodborn already in play to deliver SATURATE and to trigger HOSTILE SWARM consistently. Without them, it is a large body questing for three lore and not much else.
SATURATE is not a passive bonus. It is an active deterrent that changes what your opponent can legally do on their turn.
What to actually build around it
Speculation here, clearly: The Vine belongs at the top end of a Floodborn-dense Steel shell. The shell needs enough cheap shifted bodies to make both abilities punishing from the moment it lands.
You want to quest with Floodborn, then hide them behind The Vine's Bodyguard umbrella. Every trade your opponent makes then costs them HOSTILE SWARM damage. The more Floodborn you field, the more every exchange taxes them.
When you are building the list, count how many Floodborn you can realistically keep in play by turn seven or eight. SATURATE needs bodies to protect. HOSTILE SWARM needs bodies to sacrifice.
One Floodborn on board when The Vine arrives is a big body and a lore engine. Four Floodborn on board is a problem your opponent cannot easily solve without paying for it every step of the way.
Want to test the shell before you spend anything? Sketch your Floodborn list in our deck builder. It prices every card as you add it and checks the rules while you build.
So run the count before you sleeve anything. Play The Vine when you can quest two other Floodborn the same turn it lands. If your list cannot manage that, cut the card and keep the ink.
Prices update daily. Price any list as you build it in the deck builder, which reads the same feed as this page, and every card above links to its own page in the card library.
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