Following Foote's apparent mastery of the rest of the game but difficulty with Wildfire, I played a couple solo (one-spirit) games with it. My adversary was Brandenburg-Prussia Level 6, because that's how I roll. I lost the first game and won the second. (This is normal--my win rate at that difficulty is about 50%. This is not easy.)
First, I just want to make sure there are two rules points that are clear:
The initial 2 Blight on the island in your starting Sands comes from the box, not from the Blight card. This is a significant advantage: it gives you Blight you can eventually heal, especially with the first level of The Burned Land Regrows, without making the island closer to Blighting.
Your own presence doesn't get destroyed by Blight you place, including cascades.
General strategies, that you probably know:
The extra damage from placement is essentially a free minor power each turn.
I made sure to trigger Firestorm every turn. It's not hard to do, and gives you a bunch of free damage, provided you have suitable targets.
As in any game, I think carefully about what all the upcoming threats are, and how to deal with each (including deciding to let it alone).
The Brandeburg-Prussia flag effect is actually kind of helpful for Wildfire, like it is for Ocean: you can quickly burn out your own lands with blight, and the flag effect lets you add Towns right back in those areas so that you can destroy them again at your leisure.
Now, on to the games!
The first game developed a land I just couldn't (or didn't) deal with quickly enough. I was playing on Board D, with a coastal Wetlands that started with an extra town, and the first three cards were Mountains+Wetlands; Coastal lands; and Wetlands+Flag. So that land triggered every time. On the first turn I chose to gain energy and take care of the Mountains near my starting location, figuring that I would be able to deal with that nest in the corner later, possibly after they built a City and added a Blight. I came reasonably close to doing it, but couldn't quite manage it before running out of Blight on the Blight card. I tried to use Sky Reaches to Shore for the +3 Range to Coastal Lands (so I could Firestorm there without having presence), but it just wasn't effective enough without the +Fire. In retrospect that was probably a bad choice.
The second game was way more effective, and I stomped the Prussians pretty effectively. I was so effective shutting down Builds that I didn't end up gaining much Fear, and came quite close to a victory at Terror Level 1: There was a grand total of 1 Explorer on the board when I got to Terror Level 2 (and won). I ended up revealing the two fires on the first two turns so that I could actually use Firestorm; the island predictably blighted soon after. I did manage to get a couple of very helpful powers: Fire in the Sky and Elusive Ambushes were both great. (Elusive Ambushes was helped by my ability to push the Dahan around with Presence placement.) I also earned Blazing Renewal, which in principle is a great power for Wildfire, and played it on the last round for elements. But in a great show of self-restraint, Wildfire did not use it, since there weren't enough targets around. (That last round did trigger the second level of Firestorm, with 3 card plays.)
I don't know if this helps give any ideas for strategies.
The first game I got Downward Spiral, and indeed had to sacrifice a Presence each turn. It wasn't honestly a huge deal, because I already had a lot of Presence on the board by that point. Games against Brandenburg-Prussia are always short and brutal; it might have been a different matter against a different Adversary. (I lost anyway due to Blight, but losing Presence was not a big contributing factor.)
The second game I got A Pall Upon the Land, which was moderately helpful. I could lose one Presence with no issue (from the initial stack of 3), and I was able to get rid of a Town in an annoying place. Of course I then had to very carefully monitor the Blight level, and try to make sure to use The Burned Land Regrows every turn. Fortunately I had enough card plays to make that possible. In a longer game I would also be on the lookout for other blight-removal powers.
Do you think that Wildfire should really just focus on denying build phases over trying to prevent ravage blight since that spirit is just going to blight the land up anyway?
I'll be honest, the games I'v played both solo and with others it seems our focus is squared upon preventing bad ravages/cascades each turn and dealing with future builds as a distant 2nd in priority. I have no doubt that this is a perfectly viable, if lengthy, strategy in most cases, but is it overly faulty to think this strategy is best with all spirits?
Could this be a major reason I have such trouble finding ways to make Wildfire, Shadows, even River and Nightmares to a lesser extent, feel as useful/powerful as some other spirits I'm gravitating towards like Keeper, Oceans, Green, Thunder, and Lightning?
Edit: You would mind, in your next game with wildfire, doing a detail accoutning of just your first two turns? Growth Option, presence track taken from, energy gained, card or cards played, ect.
This is a natural strategy to gravitate towards, but to do very well, you need to think past the immediate ravage. It is generally cheaper to stop a Build than a Ravage, and cheaper to stop an Explore than a Build; the earlier you stop the invaders, the easier it will be. (The downside is that you also earn less Fear if you stop them early.)
This is an important advanced strategy that I always use, but I hadn't thought about Wildfire as being particularly reliant on that. Interesting. Keeper defiintely does this (preventing Explorers), but does that kind of passively and you may not be noticing?
oh I definitivly notice Keeper and his Wild spread. Having token generation in both innate powers and initial power card hand, the Growth+Sacred Site creep is what I thought was considered his "wall" thats talked about in his description. Keeper though has another potential damage bomb in his first innate power once your card plays are high enough and a huge incentive to gather 2-3 major powers ealier than most due to the sheer volume of energy he generates. This has lead me to a playstyle of just bombing high populated areas to generate fear and clear out those pesky cities that crop up due to a rather slow early game.
cheaper to stop an Explore than a Build
It's cheaper sure, but it sure is harder to do unless you are Keeper. Without Keeper, Wild tokens don't just grow on trees, so to speak, and at best you have a 50/50. Outside of that, you need to clear out all builds from the innermost part of the island first to prevent explores which can be difficult for a lot of spirits. Even strong early game spirits like Fang would need to sacrifice early presence and board reach to do this. Maybe that tradeoff is favorable? It's possible my gameing sensibilities and playstyle lend it self to the hyper control oriented spirits. Like I said, Im loving Keeper, I think Ocean is boarderline OP, and Green is crazy good for something that won't touch a major power during the game.
In fact I took detailed notes during those games, I just didn't want to dump it all.
Here's the successful (second) game from the first post:
Initial Explore was Sands+Mountains.
Turn 1: Growth: Gain a power (because I needed the range to snipe an explorer), take from the Plays track. Earn Razor-Sharp Undergrowth (out of a bad draw), play Threatening Flames (since I had 0 energy, and wanted to hang on to Flame's Fury). End up preventing both builds in the sands, leaving the two mountain spaces. Explore is Jungle (+ a town in a Wetlands).
Turn 2: Growth: Gain energy, take from the Energy track, switching to the "causing blight" mode. Play Razor-Sharp Undergrowth. Use Presence placement+Firestorm to clear out one of the Jungles, and Razor-Sharp Undergrowth to protect one of the Mountains. Get slightly lucky in the other Mountains with Events/Fear. Explore is Wetlands.
Turn 3: Growth: Gain a power card, take from the plays track, so that I can finally activate The Burned Land Regrows. Unfortunately the island gets Blighted before I can start healing.
I'll stop the detail there. Looking at this, it seems like one key decision was in Turn 2, when I made an aggressive placement. As it happened, there were Towns in both Jungles before the Explore, and I knew that I needed to shut one of them down quickly, before the Build, so that I could deal with the other one before it Ravaged.
It's not showing up in the games I annotated (because games against high-level Brandeburg-Prussia are so short), but Wildfire also builds up to be a real damage beast, if you can trigger that second level of Firestorm. Of course you need to survive to that point.
I'd second the thought that focusing on preventing Builds in particular, rather than Ravages, is the dominant strategy once you figure out how the game works.
I will try and get in a few more games this weekend and see if I can't alter my thought proccess with being overly ravaged focused. (But seeing as I turn 30, I may be far too drunk to play this)
Hopefully that will help not only play wildfire, but Shadow, Fang, and Nightmare in particular.
I always find Nightmare fun, but when the game's win conditions for the majority of the game include destroying all buildings, well, Nightmare doesn't do that at all. And any game with Nightmare takes sooooo long to finish for me.
Hopefully this change in strategy will aid me here! You know I'll check in to tell you how I fair.
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