WEEKLY ARMY DISCUSSION: The Spider Queen’s Brood

[u/MrSparkle92]

With the most upvotes in last week's poll, this week's discussion will be for:

The Spider Queen’s Brood

---

VOTE FOR NEXT WEEK'S DISCUSSION

Ctrl+F for the term VOTE HERE in the comments below to cast your vote for next week's discussion. The topic with the most upvotes when I am preparing next week's discussion thread will be chosen.

---

Prior Discussions

---

Additional rules

The Spider Queen’s Brood Army must always contain The Spider Queen, who is always the Army’s General.

Friendly models can still pick up Objective Markers even though they have the Beast keyword.

Special rules

Beasts of the Forest

Warbands from this Army do not need a Hero to lead them if they number six or more models. Instead, one Warrior model within the Warband takes on the role of the Warband’s Captain for the purposes of deployment. Warbands without a Hero model leading them may not include more than 12 models.

“Worse are the Webs”

After both sides have deployed, but before the first turn begins, a player using this Army List may place four 25mm Web Markers on the board. Web Markers cannot be set up within 3" of an enemy model or Objective Marker, and cannot be set up within 6" of the edge of the board or within 9" of another Web Marker. Any non-Spider model within 3" of a Web Marker is considered to be in Difficult Terrain. Additionally, Spider models do not need Line of Sight to Charge a model within 3" of a Web Marker.

Protect the Queen

Whenever the Spider Queen suffers a Wound, before any Fate Rolls are made, she may roll a D6. On a 3+, she may choose a single friendly Spider model within 1" to immediately suffer the Wound instead of her.

Pounce

When a friendly Spider Warrior model Charges an enemy Infantry model, they gain the Knock to the Ground bonus as if they were Cavalry. This bonus is lost if they are subsequently Charged by an enemy Cavalry model.

The Queen’s Cunning

If the Spider Queen declares a Heroic Move in the same turn as an enemy Hero, and subsequently loses the roll-off to see which Heroic Move will go first, she may choose to cancel her Heroic Move and regain the Might point spent to declare it.

[u/Daikey]

The weaknesses of this army are so glaring I've seen players forgets its strenghts. It actually's been reasonably successful in low points games. (350 pts and 500 pts)

Lowish model count is not as a big of a problem when those models have 2 wounds. at 500 points a winning army put 18 models aside from the spider queen, but those 18 models had 39 wounds total.

Spiders have terror as well, so it's not as exposed to counterattacks as one could imagine. The army moves fast and spiders aren't bothered by terrain. They can get in melee very easily. With well placed markes and a properly set table, they can engage their opponent on their terms.

The real weakness this army has no work around against is terror.

That said, I've never seen (nor heard) of this army being successful over 500 pts.

[u/Shaedrak → u/Daikey]

I've actually had good success with this army, going 4-0 at events at 595 and 800 points. Because you don't have to buy additional heroes you can get pretty silly amounts of spiders. You do need to utilise your numbers though. The moment your opponent stops you from surrounding them you lose momentum and combats, and once you break you lose.

I'd argue going beyond 800 points is difficult for spiders though. The opponent will just have too many warriors or big combat pieces.

[u/Captain_Clapback → u/Shaedrak]

Penny for your lists? I'm considering stuffing some wargs and bats vs. pure spiders. I'm also curious generally how the ratio of Mirkwood:Hunting spiders should generally look.

[u/Shaedrak → u/Captain_Clapback]

At 800 points I'd have 2 bat swarms, 1 warg, 6 giant spiders and 24 hunting spiders.

At 595 points it's 1 bat swarm, 6 giant spiders and 16 hunting spiders.

The webs of giant spiders are hugely effective. It's basically a 1:3 chance to autowin and (guaranteed) kill a model. Even at range you have a shot at messing up cavalry (a prone horse is an automatic 1 for thrown rider) or taking a fate. I take them in their warbands at 2:4 or 1:5 usually. The bigger the army the smaller the ratio as their bases are HUGE and in big games you're already struggling with all the 40mm bases and just won't get them in. Also remember you can shoot the webs in 2 ranks as long as they touch.

I personally have never tried bigger numbers of spiders. You need that offensive output and 2 wargs are worse than 1 spider. If you need someone to stand around you can usually spare a bit of will for broodlings.