The Sun Sets on Seasons: Basking Reptiles, Lifecycle Insects and the First Den Hunters

Deck science · monarch butterfly, lobster moth, african wild dog, chimpanzee, bottlenose dolphin, eastern cottontail, saltwater crocodile, narwhal

Wilder's field guide keeps growing, and this patch is about two things: making the game easier to read, and making more cards feel like the animals they are. Seasons are gone, cold-blooded creatures get a brand-new keyword, and 19 mammals and insects get new abilities, new stats or a new life cycle.

As always, the goal is not to nerf the cards you love. It is to give every card a reason to be in your deck.

Seasons are gone

Seasons rotated every round and gave one or two elements +1 Attack. In practice, that meant a card's strength changed for reasons you couldn't plan around, and new players had one more thing to track before they had learned the basics.

So seasons are removed entirely:

No more season rotation and no season bar on the board.
No more element empowerment. A creature's Attack is the number printed on it.
The Trail season relics (Sunspill, Verdant Wake, Harvest Moon, Frostbite Charm, Aligned Season) and the Blood Moon hazard are gone. Old Trail runs still load. The removed relics are simply dropped.

Your decks and saved games are not affected.

ColdBlooded becomes Basking

ColdBlooded used to make a card cheaper in Summer and pricier in Winter. With seasons gone, we rebuilt it around what reptiles and amphibians actually do: warm up in the sun before they act.

Basking: At the end of your turn, if this creature didn't attack, it permanently gets +1 Attack (max +2).

Every Basking creature asks you a question: strike now, or wait one more turn and hit harder? It is strongest on the patient walls of the cold-blooded world, like crocodiles, iguanas and giant salamanders.

Basking replaces ColdBlooded on these 20 cards:

Amazon Várzea Frog
Central Bearded Dragon
Chinese Giant Salamander
Common Chameleon
Common Garter Snake
Desert Horned Lizard
Eastern Brown Snake
Green Iguana
Inland Taipan
Japanese Giant Salamander
King Cobra
Komodo Dragon
Olm
Phawngpui Toad
Saltwater Crocodile
South China Giant Salamander
Thorny Devil
Tomato Frog
Western Banded Gecko
Western Diamondback Rattlesnake

Great Barracuda loses ColdBlooded and does not get Basking. It is a fish, and a fast hunter that never sits still.

Mammal changes

African Wild Dog: Endurance Chase (3 Energy). Deal 2 damage to the enemy Den. Wild dogs win by running prey to exhaustion, not by being the biggest hunter.

Bottlenose Dolphin: Echolocation (3 Energy). Expose an enemy creature. Dolphins find hidden fish with clicks of sound, even when the fish are buried in sand.

Chimpanzee: Grooming (2 Energy). Restore 2 Life to your Den. Chimp troops are held together by hours of grooming every day.

Giant Panda: now Resilient, and gains Bamboo Munch (2 Energy). Heal 3 damage from this. A panda spends most of its day eating bamboo to fuel a big body on a poor diet.

Hippopotamus: gains Thorns. Hippos are among the most dangerous animals to bump into. Attacking one comes at a cost.

Narwhal: moves from Water to Tundra, and gains Tusk Strike (3 Energy). Deal 2 damage to an enemy creature. Narwhals live year-round in the icy High Arctic, so they belong with the Tundra.

Red Fox: gains Feast (+1/+1). Foxes are expert hunters of rabbits and mice, and they grow stronger with every catch.

Ring-tailed Lemur: Stink Fight (3 Energy). Pacify an enemy creature. Male lemurs really do fight by wafting scent from their tails at rivals.

White-tailed Deer: Tail Flag (2 Energy). Give another friendly creature Camouflage. A raised white tail warns the rest of the herd to run and hide.

Eastern Cottontail: When this dies, shuffle an Eastern Cottontail into your deck. Breeds like, well, a rabbit. There is always another one.

Eastern Gray Squirrel: now 1/1 (was 1/2), and draws a card when played. Squirrels bury thousands of nuts to dig up later.

Insect changes

Argentine Harvester Ant: now 2/2 (was 1/2). Its sting is one of the most painful on Schmidt's sting scale, and it used to be strictly worse than the Florida Harvester Ant.

Black Carpenter Ant: now 2 Energy, 1/2, with Swarm 1 (was 1 Energy, 1/1). It brings a Drone with it. Never works alone. One carpenter ant means a colony nearby.

Maricopa Harvester Ant: Seed Harvest (3 Energy). Draw a card. Harvester ants stockpile seeds in underground granaries.

Megapolistes Paper Wasp: now 3 Energy, with Venom and Ambush (was 2 Energy, Venom). A stinger fast enough to make Schmidt reach for Poseidon's trident. It is no longer a copy of Red Paper Wasp.

Red Paper Wasp: gains Herd. Paper wasps build shared nests and defend them together.

Monarch Butterfly: gains Lifecycle. New flavor: "Egg, caterpillar, then thousands of kilometres on paper wings." The most famous metamorphosis on Earth.

Lobster Moth: now 2 Energy, 2/2, with Camouflage and Lifecycle (was 1 Energy, 1/2, Camouflage). It is named after its caterpillar, which rears up with lobster-like claws. Now you get to play it.

Small Emperor Moth: now 2 Energy, 2/3, with Resilient and Lifecycle (was 1 Energy, 1/2, Resilient). Its fat green caterpillar spins a tough cocoon that can last through winter.

New ways to play

Lifecycle insects. Monarch Butterfly, Lobster Moth and Small Emperor Moth now play out their real metamorphosis. Each one enters as a 0/1 Egg with Guardian. When the Egg dies it becomes a 1/1 Larva, and when the Larva dies the adult emerges with its full stats. That is three bodies from one card, and your opponent has to chew through all of them. Lifecycle cards can only be played in Insecta decks.

The first Den hunters. African Wild Dog is the first creature that can hit the enemy Den directly with an ability, and Chimpanzee is the first that can heal your own. Both cost Energy every time, so they reward long games rather than single bursts.

More Expose. The Bottlenose Dolphin joins the Aye-aye and the Andean Condor. Water decks finally have an answer to Camouflage, Guardian and Resilient walls.

Decks to try:

Ant Colony: Black Carpenter Ant, the harvester ants, Bullet Ant and Red Paper Wasp. Go wide, switch on Herd, and let Venom do the rest.
Metamorphosis: the three Lifecycle insects with Glasswing Butterfly and the Meadow habitat. Creatures that keep coming back.
Endless Warren: Eastern Cottontail, Tilcayo Tiger Cat and Eastern Gray Squirrel. A deck that never runs out of cards.
Hidden Forest: White-tailed Deer handing out Camouflage to Red Panda, Koala, Snow Leopard and Tiger.
Arctic: Narwhal joins Polar Bear, Snow Leopard and Wolverine in Tundra.

What's next

Next up are featured decks: ready-made decks from the Wilder team that show off fun combinations like the ones above. We'll keep going family by family, so reptiles, amphibians, birds, fish and arachnids are on the list.

Every change in this patch is versioned, so we can measure how the wild shifts and keep tuning. See you out there.