Field guide

The incident

Protect structures first, then contain the fire by round 12. Losing 6 homes means defeat after the fire phase. Fire still uncontained at the end of round 12 yields a partial community result with a lower containment score. Destruction of Community Hospital also ends the mission. Its first ignition gives one planning turn to cool or protect it. A burning hospital blocks an early ending. If it is burning after round12, the team gets one final command turn using its remaining resources. A hospital still burning after that response means withdrawal, even if the perimeter is held; no further turns are granted. A connected tier-five front persisting through two Fire results forces withdrawal; the first result gives an escape warning. The ending still shows the places you saved. Actual containment can finish the mission earlier.

New incidents begin with 216 burning triangles for two deployed crews, 240 for three and 288 for four. Support crews count toward that size. Larger footprints stretch along their seeded fire runs; crew responsibility and travel matter alongside burning area. Saved incidents from the original size retain their existing fire. Every crew has four commands per round in two-, three- and four-crew incidents. Positions, water and the shared budget still matter. The incident starts with $2,100 for two or three crews, or $2,800 for four. Commands still reserve and spend the listed costs. Commands resolve together when everyone locks or the three-minute timer expires. Crew actions play for four seconds, Fire for eight, then a five-second report arrives before planning resumes. Unused commands hold. Allow approximately 40 minutes for twelve full planning windows, based on the game timers and including the nine-second opening. Entry time, pauses or network delays can add time; a final hospital response can add 3 minutes 17 seconds. Early locks and mission closure can shorten this.

Use Radio to discuss a plan. Shared command badges show what crews have actually queued. A crew’s sector is a starting responsibility, not a movement boundary. Paused and support-assisted runs are unranked.

Read the map

House icons mark homes. Clustered settlements form compact neighborhoods; scattered settlements form smaller separated hamlets or frontages. Shared home names identify a neighborhood when you inspect a house or review the result. Protect shields one building; clearing an approach or cooling its source can reduce risk to several homes. The blue building is the East Water Pump; blue water-drop markers are supply points. Green outlined ground marks Cedar Grove. White edges are built lines; pale ground has cleared fuel. Rock, grass and cleared lines are walkable. Water and active fire block travel. Small chevrons show uphill slope. Dots mark the ground included in your result.

Orange fire tiles show heat from 1 to 4. Animated arrows show wind direction. Wind, heat, terrain, fuel and slope change spread. With Spread forecast enabled, one dashed route shows the strongest announced ember or gust warning.

Select a tile: its heat and fuel condition stay at the top of Commands. Tap that inspection strip for its place, terrain, shield expiry and current forecast estimate. Sustained, Waning or Nearly spent describes fuel phases remaining. Grass has 2–3 active fire phases; forest has 8–10. Each active phase consumes one: with two left heat is at most 2, with one left at most 1, and exhausted fuel burns out. Current heat can still spread before that phase’s fading.

During announced hot, dry weather, an aligned downwind or uphill source at heat 2 or higher can ignite fresh forest at heat 3; a downwind source at heat 3 or higher can ignite it at heat 4. Otherwise new forest begins at heat 2. Remaining fuel always caps ignition heat. Thus a new edge can burn intensely while the older interior fades. Existing active heat never rebounds. Suppression lowers current heat without restoring fuel. An extinguished tile stops consuming fuel; later external ignition uses what remains. These are game abstractions, not field-calibrated durations or wildfire predictions.

The forecast overlay includes saved shared commands. High risk is 70–100%, moderate 30–69%, low below 30%; blue means the current plan holds ignition at 0%. Inspect a tile for its exact current estimate.

Give commands

Opening funds are shared: $2,100 for two or three deployed crews, $2,800 for four. Each crew starts with four water. There are no recurring cash grants. Queued paid commands reserve funds; red receipts show actual charges during crew actions. A teammate may make a command unnecessary before it executes, so a reservation is not always a charge.

Weather outlook

Rounds 1–3 have moderate spread pressure; prepare for the working edge without assuming structures are invulnerable. Rounds 4–9 are hot and dry. Rounds 10–12 ease, but do not extinguish fire automatically. The announced schedule is fixed at deployment.

Shifting weather gusts in rounds 2, 4, 6, 8 and 9, with east → southeast → west or northwest headings. Steady direction stays east, with announced gusts in rounds 2, 6, 8 and 9. Containment also accounts for the disclosed holding outlook after the final playable round: a round-13 gust under shifting weather and moderate round-14 conditions. Those are exposure checks, not extra playable turns.

Water, access and time

Radio shows each crew’s current water and water after all accepted queued commands. Cash is shared: every queued paid command reserves its full fee, even when duplicate work may later cost nothing. Refill fees left in unreserved funds measure affordability, not safe access. Map routes use currently safe ground from your planned position. Radio’s paid route also accounts for shared Crew work; its free Draw route requires a point that is nonburning now. The next Fire can change access. Coordinate coverage and a return trip before leaving your sector.

Choose speed or save money. Resupply costs $150 and one command to fill your tank to four from within one step of a blue supply point. Draw water is free and adds one water per command, up to four, while standing on the blue point itself. You may repeat Draw within the same four-command queue. Move there first if needed; a burning or closed point cannot supply Draw even if you plan to cool it. Both buttons queue at your position after earlier Moves. Water recovery uses time that could otherwise defend the community, and a return trip still takes time.

The East Water Pump keeps its associated east supply point online. If the pump is lost, that point closes at fire-phase end. Other crew supply points remain. The engine is away in rounds 5–6 and returns in round 7; suppression removes only 1 heat per water while it is away, 2 while available.

Fully extinguish a tile with earlier Suppress commands, then queue Build line on it in the same round. Cooling that leaves active heat cannot unlock the line. Hand line uses one command to clear one cold open triangle within one step, once per crew each round, without cash or water. Adjacent heat 3–4 makes this work unsafe; earlier cooling by your own crew can open that approach. Build line buys greater reach and up to two triangles per command. Hold line wets up to three cleared triangles for one water through this round and the next, blocking short crossings over those triangles. It does not stop long-range embers. Lines hold ordinary surface spread. During gusts or hot weather, heat 3–4 can carry fire beyond cleared strips. Announced embers can land farther away. Cooling the source below heat 3 cancels its announced ember threat. Protect buys a building this fire phase and the next round; it does not permanently contain fire.

Playing with support crews

Support can protect a threatened building or suppress fire. A spare command can also do useful Hand line work on safe ground within reach, under the same one-triangle, once-per-round rules as your crew. It adds no money or water, and support may leave commands unused when safe useful work is unavailable. Low-water crews may use a spare command to prepare for refill while keeping nearby home defense reachable. When paid service is unaffordable, a dry support crew may use spare Moves to reach its own active, cold supply point and Draw one water per command. A longer trip can start this turn and continue next turn. It keeps committed work and current access to threatened structures and its local fire front; future Fire can change that access. These trips cost normal commands and must leave a later turn to use the water.

At the start of a planning round, support may cancel optional paid Line work so a dry, unlocked teammate can afford a $150 refill reachable within their remaining commands. Current building defense takes priority. No money or water is granted: you still choose the trip and pay. Shared funds can cover fewer crews than need water. A final-turn refill trip must leave a command for water use; that does not guarantee useful follow-up work. A cancelled line may cost later land or containment, and stays cancelled if you choose something else.

Read their saved commands on the map and in Radio. They plan from current conditions when the round begins; your later choices can make their work overlap. They may leave the pump exposed or change an earlier travel plan as the fire develops. Your team still decides what to cover.

Controls

Choose a command, then a highlighted tile. Drag to pan. Pinch, scroll, or use + / − to zoom. Use Q / E or the rotation buttons for Build line. Hand line targets one triangle and does not rotate. Map buttons focus your crew, the fire or another crew’s position. In Radio, select a saved command to inspect its target on the map. This keeps Radio and your message draft open and clears your active command tool.

With keyboard focus on a map tile, arrow keys move to connected neighbors; Enter or Space selects it. Tab reaches the command controls, tile inspection and bottom file tabs. The host’s Pause freezes all crews; map inspection and Radio remain available.

If a command’s confirmation is interrupted, use Recover command before changing your plan. Reloading this tab preserves that recovery request when browser storage is available. Recovery tells you whether the command saved or was closed without applying. The shared turn can continue while you reconnect; review the current map before issuing another command. Keep each player in their own browser tab and crew. Refresh after a game update if the desk asks you to.

The team result

A saved home earns 10,000 points. A standing pump adds 5,000. The extinguished, standing hospital adds 20,000. A burning hospital is unsecured and earns no preservation bonus. Land bands are fixed at deployment: two triangle steps per tier from the initial fire. Newly scorched nonstructure land costs 100 points in tier 1, 200 in tier 2, up to 500 in tier 5. Cooling fire cannot undo that damage. Each percent of surface perimeter held adds 400 bonus points. Building lines and spending resources earn no points by themselves. Cedar Grove contributes as part of that land, without a separate bonus. The initial fire footprint is excluded, and distant safe land earns no automatic bonus.

Containment while fewer than 6 homes are lost means success. Six lost homes means withdrawal. At round 12, unfinished containment becomes a partial community result once the hospital is secure. A final hospital response ends after one additional turn. Points still show what a defeated team preserved, but defeat is unranked.

Fully or partially contained human-only, unpaused, nondebug incidents enter the board for their player count, exact engine version and original or crew-scaled fire edition. Earlier builds keep separate results. The result lists specific places saved and lost; leaderboards show their top five teams.