Playing Heart of the Wildfire

 Playing Heart of the Wildfire in GtG's "Spirit Island"

As I've stated elsewhere, my favorite board game of the past several years is Spirit Island, and it's not even close. So I thought I'd start digging into various strategies that can be used with each individual spirit. For anyone who has played Spirit Island before, you know that strategies have to be flexible to accommodate so, so many factors (other Spirits in play, progression of Invader actions, power cards made available to you, choice of adversary and/or scenario, etc.). In spite of that necessity for flexibility, there are still some sort of universals for the majority of Spirits in the game.

Let's start by throwing the Spirit up here:

Setup is fairly straightforward: place 3 of your presence and 2 blight (from the box, not from the Blight Card) in the highest-numbered Sands on your board. Unsurprisingly, this Spirit is almost all about offense. One of its innate powers is straight up damage that feeds off of how many Fire Elements you've got in any given turn. And as there are 4 Fire Elements on the spirit's board, there's obviously the potential for some nasty direct damage in every fast power phase. On top of that, whenever you place or move presence, you do damage for however many Fire Elements you've got exposed on your Presence Tracks. 

As I'm sure you've already noted, all of this damage has a condition and a cost: blight. You're gonna need to land that damage in lands that has blight on it, and if the land didn't have blight before, it will by the time you're done placing presence. In my opinion, you sort of need to employ two characteristics as a player in order to be successful with this spirit. The first is that you need to have enough experience with the game to not fear blight. Don't get me wrong: obviously, blight can steal a game out from under you really fast if you let it cascade and then can't control the next Ravage step or two. Or if you're so behind on blight that you spend every turn playing defense and not, you know, making progress toward a win condition. But this spirit needs blight in order to use one of its innate powers, as well as one of its starting powers. Keeping blight too limited or contained really minimizes your ability to leverage Firestorm, and if 50% of your innate powers aren't going to help you, then why not just use another Spirit? Secondly, you need to be willing to put your foot on the gas and then keep it there. Why? Well, let's move onto Heart's 4 starting powers, seen below:

Even split between fast and slow powers (though Flash-Fires can be made fast with the right Elements), as well as an even split between powers that cost two and powers that cost zero. 3 of these powers create fear. One pushes, one does damage, one straight-up destroys. I'll be the first to say that the slow powers can be a little frustrating. They feel pricey for what they do. But don't forget that they might be worth creating the fear that puts you over the edge for a new Fear Card, or that you tend to deal damage in packets rather than one big burst. You can hit the same target several times in a round to bring it down if needed. And you can tack Flame's Fury onto other damage-causing powers in order to do +1 damage for each damage-dealing power. What does this have to do with keeping your foot on the gas?

Well, it can be tempting to shy away from doing too much damage if you get caught with unexpected Blight or an Event turns against you. But I promise that you're not built for defense. So if you try and play that way, you won't be able to keep pace, plus, you won't be making any headway toward winning. You're going to be doing damage and spreading blight; don't shy away from either. You're going to do your part by burning everything to the ground and generating fear while you do.

Let's talk about your Growth options. 

1. Your Reclaim option nets you a new Power Card and +1 energy. It's not brilliant or anything, so keep an eye on your cards. If you don't need to max out your card plays each turn, try and avoid it if you can. Especially as you generally won't have a ton of energy to spare. Why do I say that? Well, it has to do with the fact that as you spread presence, you also spread blight. If you *have* to spread presence in order to be in a place and play offense or defense, but you *can't* spread presence because there's too much blight on the board, that's a problem. It's a problem because 2 of your 3 Growth options spread presence, and therefore, spread blight past the first spreading of presence. But more on that later.
2. Your second option nets you a new Power Card and lets you add 1 Presence up to 3 spaces away. This is probably my least favorite of the three choices. I say that because I earn so little energy as this Spirit that I'd much rather take the next choice (which I'll get to in a moment). So, why choose this option? I think it's a fairly last resort choice, in my experience. I take it when I desperately need some sort of power option that I don't have, and so I'm basically fishing (usually in the Major powers deck, if I'm bothering with this option). Or, I'm surrounded by lands I've already blighted, and so I need more reach in order to avoid a blight cascade. OR, one of the other Spirits needs help, and I need to travel a big distance to help them immediately (usually by burning an area to the ground as I come in for a landing). Otherwise, I tend to avoid this particular Growth option.
3. Your final option lets you add a presence up to one space away, and gives you 2 energy, plus another 1 energy per Fire Element showing on your board. It doesn't have the reach of your previous Growth option, but you get a buttload more energy, which allows you to play this game on your own terms instead of being forced to place Presence from a track you'd rather not tap just yet.

To that end, for me, the biggest choice you need to make as this Spirit is based on your player count. 

• If you've got 1-2 players, I think you pull all your Presence from the bottom track, counting on Growth options 1 and 3 while fishing for powers that are cheap or free. You keep playing Flame's Fury and Threatening Flames over and over while reclaiming cards more often than I'd normally like. Why? Because I need presence on the board in order to have reach, but also only start the game with 4 blight on the Blight Card.
• If you've got 3-6 players, then I'm all for pulling from both tracks as much as possible. I'll use The Burned Land Regrows as often as is convenient, but I also usually recruit someone to clean up after me as I move around the board.

But at any player count, I tend toward the Card Play (bottom) track over the Energy/Turn (top) track. Even in games where I'm trying to deal damage (via Blazing Presence) and add blight to the board, I make sure my bottom track is ahead of my top track. Why? Because I need options and I need Fire Elements. I can have all the energy in the world! But if I've only got one or two card plays, I'm real limited in what I can do. My Firestorm will only do 1 damage per 2 Fire Elements I have (unless I've nearly reached the end of my top track), and I'll have to work harder to use The Burned Land Regrows (sometimes playing inferior Powers simply because I need more Fire Elements).

I appreciate that this Spirit is fairly responsive, and it really shines in bigger games because there's plenty of blight to spare. I think the hardest thing to address is the balance of blight on the board: you don't want so much that the scales can be tipped against you, but you don't want so little that your area of influence is teeny-tiny. The keys are to remain aggressive, get your kills, and don't be afraid of flipping your blight card! It's not necessarily ideal, of course, but once it's flipped, you also have the luxury of putting even more blight on the board!

I think that's all I've got to say about this at the moment. As I write more strategy and tactics-oriented posts, I'll get more of a feel for what insight is useful and what isn't, what I missed and what I can afford to miss, etc. As always, I'm open to feedback and happy to answer any questions that the post didn't answer!