Lizard Cult

Thrive in the chaos others create — let their discards build your temples and fuel your fanatics.

Moderate

Background

The Lizard Cult are an outcast religious order, exiled to the margins of the Woodland and quietly growing in power. You start the game with a handful of warriors, no buildings, and a hand of cards — but an abundance of patience. Your strength is borrowed from everyone else at the table.

Every card any player discards goes to the Lost Souls pile rather than a normal discard pile. Those accumulated cards determine your Outcast suit — the suit most present in Lost Souls becomes Outcast, unlocking cheaper and more powerful actions in clearings of that type. When a suit stays Outcast two turns in a row it becomes Hated, reducing your conspiracy costs even further.

Your buildings are Gardens, and you construct them one suit at a time — fox, rabbit, mouse, or bird. A Garden marks religious territory and is the key to scoring. Unlike other factions, you score on demand rather than automatically each Evening: you choose when to cash in a card to claim the points your Gardens have earned.

How you win

You score victory points by performing Rituals during Daylight. When you reveal a card of a garden suit and then spend that card to score, you earn VP based on how many Gardens of that suit you have on the board — the more Gardens, the more points per scoring action.

Building Gardens across multiple suits gives you more opportunities to score each turn, while concentrating Gardens in one suit maximizes points per card spent. You can score each suit at most once per turn, so a spread strategy benefits from a full hand while a focused strategy rewards grinding a single suit deep.

You also benefit from Sanctify conspiracies, which let you convert enemy buildings directly into Gardens — a way to score and deny your opponents at the same time. The path to 30 points is planting Gardens, keeping a hand stocked with matching cards, and cashing in when the suit and garden count align.

How they play

Your turn follows three distinct phases, each feeding into the next:

Birdsong: First, tally the Lost Souls pile and set your Outcast suit — the most common suit present. If the same suit was already Outcast last turn, it flips to Hated, which cuts the acolyte cost of conspiracies by one. Then discard the Lost Souls pile. Finally, spend acolytes to perform Conspiracies in Outcast (or Hated) clearings: Crusade (move warriors then battle, costs 2 acolytes), Convert (replace an enemy warrior with one of yours, costs 1 acolyte), or Sanctify (replace an enemy building with a Garden, costs 3 acolytes).
Daylight: Reveal any number of cards from your hand to perform Rituals — one action per card revealed, each matching the card's suit. Rituals let you Build a Garden in a clearing you rule of that suit, Recruit a warrior into any clearing of that suit, Score by spending a revealed card to earn VP from your Gardens of that suit (once per suit per turn), or Sacrifice a bird card to convert warriors from your supply into acolytes. At the end of Daylight, unrevealed cards stay in your hand; revealed cards return to your hand.
Evening: Craft using your Gardens in the Outcast suit only. Then draw cards and discard down to a maximum of 5.

Acolytes are warriors who died defending you. When your warriors are killed while defending in battle, they become acolytes rather than returning to your supply — the more you're attacked, the more fuel you accumulate for Conspiracies. A faction that ignores you risks watching your acolyte supply swell to threatening levels.

Strengths

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Unlike almost every other faction, the Cult actively benefits when opponents focus on each other. High discard rates swell the Lost Souls pile, locking in your preferred Outcast suit and accelerating your conspiracy engine. The more chaos at the table, the better.
✓
When your warriors are killed while defending, they become acolytes rather than going to your supply. Aggressive factions effectively donate the fuel for your Conspiracies every time they attack you — making the Cult unusually resilient to pressure once your acolyte pool starts filling.
✓
You choose when to score, not the game clock. You can bank progress across multiple turns and then cash in several suits at once, making your VP output harder for opponents to predict and disrupt.

Weaknesses

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Building your first Gardens and establishing a scoring suite of matching hand cards takes several turns. While other factions are already generating points, you're still assembling the foundation of an engine that won't pay off immediately.
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Your Outcast suit — and therefore your conspiracy discount — depends entirely on what other players discard. If opponents hold cards rather than discarding, or if the discard distribution shifts, your preferred suit can vanish and your conspiracy costs spike.
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You can only build Gardens in clearings you rule, which requires having more pieces there than any single opponent. With a limited warrior supply and no automatic recruitment, maintaining rule in multiple clearings while also holding matching hand cards is a constant balancing act.

Tips & tricks

Tip
Watch what suits are flowing into Lost Souls from the very first turn. The pattern of discards — especially from card-hungry factions like the Eyrie and Marquise — tells you which suit is most likely to stabilize as Outcast, so you can plant Gardens in those clearings before your Birdsong arrives.
Tip
It's tempting to hold back and wait for more Gardens before scoring, but VP you don't claim is VP you might never get. Score at least one suit every Daylight, even for a modest return — consistent small gains beat gambling on a big payday that might not come.
Tip
Sanctify is the Cult's most powerful conspiracy: it removes an opponent's building and replaces it with one of your Gardens in one stroke. Prioritize using it on high-value enemy buildings in clearings where you already have warriors — you deny their scoring while boosting your own.
Tip
Spreading Gardens across two or three suits gives you more scoring flexibility each turn, but stacking Gardens in a single suit maximizes VP per card spent when you score that suit. Match your strategy to your hand: if you keep drawing one dominant suit, go deep; if your draws are varied, go wide.

Walk through a turn →

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