How to beat Heart of the Wildfire in the online game?

[Keith Hays]

I'm relatively new to the game (and haven't played the TT version), but I can't figure out a way to win this game before the blight pool runs out. Anybody have a good strategy for dealing with the blights that its own presences eventually throw down? Thanks.

[Songbird]

You can either play Wildfire by going with a conservative bottom track build that gets at least 3 plays before uncovering a second fire element, or you can uncover the second fire on turn 2 and then play a very tight control game that aims to ideally never let the invaders place a blight, or at least not let a land get overrun early. (This often means never letting them build so they'll have a Town and City in the same land unless you draft a Defend card and you can get Dahan there to clear it on the ravage.) On turn 3 onwards, you should be able to remove a blight most turns.

In a solo game, it is pretty common to hit Blighted Island early, and the game can be fine or rough from there depending on what that effect is.

Wildfire is so destructive and high-tempo early with double fire turn 2 that I've beaten Habsburg 6 on turn 4 at Terror Level 1 with it, and I didn't even play a card on turn 2 that game. But it's also volatile this way and struggles to grow into lands with blight. On the flip side, if it goes bottom track without the second fire, it can really struggle with keeping pace with the Invaders, because its innate powers just outright don't function in unblighted lands, and it lacks the damage to deal with adversaries that have more resilient build chains than just "kill one Explorer to stop it" or starting buildings. As for going top track without a second fire... it doesn't work. Full stop. Don't even try it; the spirit doesn't function without at least 2 plays.

Your drafts should prioritize plant a bit more than fire, because you get so much fire off your tracks and have an easy time playing 2 fire cards to get your innates working, but really want 2 plant to heal more blight than just the double in your starting land, and 3 to do a lot more damage with with your left innate. Plant cards also tend to have useful utility effects for you anyway, like defense and blight removal. Also, getting 0 cost minors is a huge priority. You have 0 initial energy income and need to make your first G3 last several turns, so you can continuously G2 and gain the cards to put off your reclaim turn. 0 energy cards are absolutely instrumental in succeeding in this.

It can sometimes be okay to play zero cards if those cards will just not do anything useful, because reclaiming is very costly on this spirit--not only do you not move towards more card plays, energy income, and track elements, but you also don't get to clear a land by placing presence.

Also, don't play Wildfire into England 5+. It is one of the worst matchups in the entire game (including Jagged Earth), possibly even worse than River into England 6.

[Feral Yoda]

As Songbird says, usually Wildfire cleans up at least some of its mess... or I pair/group the spirit with others that can help it do so. There are quite a few who can really help Wildfire out if things get a bit out of hand (Keeper, Green, and Earth are all good options).

[Keith Hays]

And just like that, a victory! (I'm now a gobsmacking 1-23 with this spirit. Chased the invaders down into the bottom left land and had a Winds of Atrophy that was just enough to block a fatal ravage. Thank you so much for the helpful advice!

[Feral Yoda]

congrats!