Arachnarok Spider, Counters?

Any suggestions on how to deal with this beast? I have played several games against O&G (usually around 2000pts), and it's an absolute terror in combat. It has poison (and a special attack) to deal with other monsters, and is equally good against normal rank and file.

Please don't say necrosphinx, as that would take a remarkable bit of luck. And DoE really isn't an option, since the spider can pretty much avoid any models on foot.

I've tried shooting, but strength 3 just doesn't do much to it. And I've always had terrible luck with catapults (both in general and in this specific case. I'm starting to doubt their value). Unless you happen to roll a hit (a feat I have yet to accomplish), the scatter will mean doing little to no damage.

The casket could possibly do some damage, but you have to get the spell off (which rarely happens. I get other stuff off, but he always saves dice/scroll for the casket), and then get past the leadership test when the general and BSB are generally nearby. Just throw 6 dice and hope for IF and a high 3D6?

So, any thoughts? I am sure there is some way we can deal with it, but the solution has evaded me thus far.

t6 with 8 wounds is pretty hard to deal with. have you tried hitting it with a block of chariots with at least one extra rank? I think 3 d6 s 5 hits should knock it down a couple of wounds. you could also try a necrolith collsus with a great weapon wounding on 2s or with a bow of the dessert, or you could try and use death magic and hit it with the signiture spell (both roll a dice add leaderhip lose wounds based on how much you fail by), this might also be a good place to try ushabti archers
other then that i would have recomended mass shooting catapults and ssc. i think the trick with it might be to focus alot of firepower at it and drag it down with shear mass of arrows.

im not sure what the spider's initiative is but none the less, i think stalkers might be the way to go here. if you can have 6 of them and have them all fire at it at once it could do some serious damage

although i think the only safe bet against this beastie is with a nice chunky block of TG with a prince and mabye a necrotect. if you can get 20 S5 hits at WS 5 and with hatred, it could do some pretty serious damage to it.

a good idea as well is using magic. is you cant get casket to work on it, dessication could work nicely as well..you could try to risk doing the D3 negation but i dont know it its worth it

i wouldnt go stalkers it has an initiative of 4 and 8 woulds which means statistically you would need to get 46 shoots at it with stalkers.
I think the big block of tomb guard would work ok but you would have to be prepared to take alot of wounds back.

Is this spider just the normal arachnarock or does it have a shaman riding it?

Just the normal spider, my opponent has never used it with the shaman.

And I agree, it would take a ton of stalker shots to kill the thing, not to mention it relies on the stalkers showing up early.

Tomb Guard with halberds would probably work, but the problem is that they are movement 4 with no marching. The spider is movement 7, so can avoid a big ranked up infantry block pretty easily. I guess I could go with a TG death star, play points denial, and force him to come to me, but that would be a completely different army list than I normally play, and we don't usually tailor our lists. It also means I would have to buy a lot more TG.

I think this is the best idea so far, but being completely reliant on one specific spell is pretty iffy. I usually only take a single Level 4, so there is no guarantee I will even get the spell. If I do, then I still have to get it off on the spider on a turn when I can do some damage.

I think this is really the only solution, and it might even work to kill the spider, but the problem with this is he still has the whole rest of his army. The spider is right around 300pts (not sure exactly), so if I focus everything on the spider, he still has lots of big beefy blocks of orcs and goblins and all his supporting units.

actually another thing that might work is just throw a big unit of skele warriors at it and then forget it ever exsisted. the spider can just have fun killing worthless skeles for the rest of the game and if he does manage to kill them all, its minimal VP and the spider wont pay for itself.

what you will need to do is wait for him to deploy the spider and then after that deploy the skittles right infront of him and just keep moving straight towards it. if you do this its pretty likely that he will still have to have the spider deal with you unless he wants to run his spider to his opposite flank...and even if he does that its ok because then he rendered his spider useless for a turn or two and then you can have that skittle block tie up something else nearby

This is really a problem for you? Not trying to be an ass, I bought one and it never lived through a battle. Never got it's points back either so it went back on the shelf Shooting does the trick as far as I've seen, even str 3 shots will do it. The idea is that throw enough crap on a wall and some of it will stick.

Hitting on 5s and wounding on 6s, and the fact that it has 8 wounds, you're looking at about 150 shots on average to kill the thing using bows. Given that it's usually in combat by turn 2, and I usually don't run a ton of bows in my armies (probably 30-40 shots per turn on average), I just don't see that as a viable solution for me. Especially since by shooting at the big guy, you're not shooting at the small, light supporting units that archers are actually halfway decent against.

The best way to deal with this thing is simply necroknights. The spider itself only has initiative 1 or 2, its the riders who have higher. So your necroknights will go before the spider and churning out possibly 12 s5 poison attacks will really help take it down. The riders won't get through your t4 and 3+ save and the spider itself only has a few attacks, only one of which does multiple wounds. Plus, it can't thunderstomp. So just swing away with your riders and hope for a few wounds and grind it down with the snakes and their poison that will negate most of its armour (I think it only has a 4+ or 5+).

I've faced one now several times and found a few things to work nicely. The casket was great (though it was out of BSB and general's Ld so it won't always work as well). I ran a unit of TG with king in there and they can definitely put a hurt on it but will take wounds back for sure. The cleanest way I did it was necroknights. Over two rounds of combat it only managed to get 2 wounds on my unit. Plus they have the speed to catch it.

the spidew has 8w 8a at a s5 and has an INITIATIVE OF 4. its the crew that are initiative 2.

That doesn't actually make a huge difference. 8A at s5 will only do roughly 2 wounds per phase...hardly combat-winning. Necroknights can easily outmatch a spider in combat. They should be getting 3-4 wounds back per combat phase and since a unit of necroknights has more than 8 wounds, you should win.

I play against it almost every week, most of the time I wound it enough with my SSC, Casket (just toss 6 dice to get a IF), Ushabti (bow) or Colossus with bow, and end it with Chariots (pref @S5 although @S4 it can get those last 2 wounds off aswell), before it reaches my lines.

It's alot of effort but if you don't kill it it'll rampage through almost everything.

Like people said Desiccation is good, but also the incantation of Vengeance will work pretty good, slowing it down and might just knock a wound off

Also what Blackthorne said, necro knights are your way to go when it hits your lines.

Good luck.

edit: A Colossus with GW won't work, will offcourse strike last.... spider will eat it for breakfast, Warsphinx could also work just never tried it (though the venom sting could hurt )

This post has been edited by Entreri on Jul 12 2011, 06:23 AM

I played against one in my last league match where I played DE, and only got 1 round of shooting against it with 16 repeater Crossbow & 2 bolt throwers. The 32 crossbow shots did a wound as did the bolt thrower that hit (but rolled a 1 for the number of hits). It ended up eating the crossbow and later one of the bolt throwers but that was it in the match as he avoided my Blackguards with the General & an Assassin & War Hydra.

However, with TK poison seems the logical answer by taking Khalida as general in a large bow block. Not only will more of your bow shots wound as a result but Khalida will go first in CC with a chance to inflict more wounds. Much like the Empire Steam Tank, if you can get some early wounds from shooting/magic, it becomes much less of a threat as your opponent has to worry more about a couple of lucky roles getting wounds through.

Have to say that the O&G players tend to take it as a fun unit as I haven't seen many matches where it dominated play.

Khalida is easiest, poisoned arrows will get it fast enough.

NK, TG, Casket, SSC can deal with it too.

What about a few swarms, they are cheap and have poison. The Idea of having your Arachnarok eaten by a few little bugs