I've been thinking about how to give the Lizard Cult a little boost, and I think increasing their card draw would be a great way to do it. Specifically, drawing cards during Birdsong could really help them out without changing their identity too much.

Action Economy

As it stands now, the Lizards are limited by how many cards they can draw. If you let them draw cards during Birdsong, you increase their action ceiling from 5 to potentially 8 or 9 actions per turn. That’s a huge difference! More actions means more flexibility and better execution of complex strategies.

More Acolytes

With increased card draw comes more opportunities to gain Acolytes. You can convert those pesky bird cards into free Acolytes instead of discarding them. This not only helps with recruitment but also accelerates the generation of Acolytes, making the faction even more powerful.

Resilience

One of the biggest advantages of this proposed change is improved resilience for the Lizards. Losing a Garden is tough on the Lizards because it means losing a hand card and therefore losing actions. With this new system, if they lose two Gardens it would mean going from 8 actions down to 6 instead of going from 5 down to 3. That’s a big difference!

Faster Recovery

Drawing more cards also allows for faster recovery after losses. Even if you temporarily lose your card draw capabilities, you can regain your full action economy much quicker. This ensures that setbacks don’t snowball into further losses.

Interactions with Other Factions

Having extra cards makes it less punishing for Lizards to interact with factions like the Woodland Alliance or Corvid Conspiracy. Outrage and bad Plot guesses take less of a toll on your action economy when you have more Acolytes available to battle tokens.

Balancing Considerations

Of course, we have to think about balance here. Every faction in Root has its own unique mechanics, and card draw is an essential part of that asymmetry. The Marquise de Cat focuses on building and military might; the Eyrie relies on its decree system; and so on. Increasing card draw wouldn’t make any faction dominant by itself since they all have their own powerful strategies.

Summary: New Strategies Await

So there you have it! Increasing card draw during Birdsong would really enhance the Lizard's ability to execute its strategies while still keeping things balanced in Root's asymmetrical ecosystem.