Cactus Game Design Message Boards

So, I've played with ideas for an animal defense of some sort in pretty much every set so far, and Lineage is no different. LoC actually adds quite a few cards for the theme, a lot of which are powerful, and not all of which are animals. Esau, the Hunter (Who returns in Lineage as a Legacy Rare) is by far one of an animal defense's best characters, and Lineage not only gave us a new Esau, it gave us two characters that pair well with him, Basemath and Judith. Basemith is a bounce, storehouse punish, and a band, all with a conditional cbn if you opponent searched. Judith is harder to guarantee the protection on, as there's often something your opponent will be willing to banish, but early enough she can be a tough card to deal with. Between Esau and his two wives, the old-style menagerie got a good buff. Add a Worship of Edom for battle extension with the three of them, and you already have a good defense plan thrown into the old build.

The only other two cards I really want to talk about here are Beasts of the Earth and Covenant with Philistia. Beasts of the Earth is an insanely good card here, as the downside (shuffle this card after battle) is mitigated by Leviathan's search when an animal blocks. Covenant with Philistia is good for speed, as taking an animal from reserve to draw 2 is good speed every turn. We also have the option to reserve some animals (Scapegoat, Behemoth, Great Fish) with Storehouse and then grab them back to hand to draw every turn. Both of these cards seem like they will be powerful additions to the animal defence.

A proposed list, though far from comprehensive (and possibly not good):

Evil Characters: 8
Leviathan (FoM)
The Serpent
Lions (CoW)
Basemath
Judith
Esau, the Hunter
Wayward Sheep
Beasts of the Earth

Evil Enhancements: 7
Anthropophobia
The Wages of Sin
Betrayal
Scattered
Dream
Belshazzar's Banquet
Seized by Babylon

Reserve: 4
Worship of Edom
Scapegoat
The Great Fish
Behemoth

What do you think? Is there anything I've overlooked? Any cards you think would be good in here, or any that aren't worth running?

Add Stolen Blessing and Regrets to the Reserve.

Hungry Lion's * ability pulls an animal from reserve so I was thinking that would help set you up for future turns.  When banding to Lion you also could potentially negate a card that is protecting a human you want to target for discard with Lion's SA.

I'm not really sure what you'd take out.  Mostly because I'm not really familiar with this defense but also because there is another half of the deck that could potentially be removed that I don't see.  I always liked to play with more evil characters so I probably would have added it in exchange for a card that isn't shown to increase the overall size of the defense.

No Nebuchadnezzar?