Description

this expansion includes the Steampunk Arachnid Swarm, a Minion for the Arcanists.

From the Malifaux Tactica wiki site:

The Steampunk Arachnid Swarm is the primary workhorse for crews led by Ramos, but you can utilize them with any Arcanist crews, and even in crews led by C. Hoffman or Leveticus. This model is typically well worth the 9 SS cost, and overall has good survivability, a good attack, and consistent damage output.

Overall, the Arachnids are pretty straight forward, and are basic melee attack units.

On the other hand Scatter uses a Summon technique, so if you plan to do the Scatter action, always be sure to use 1 general AP for something else first, and use your (+2) Melee Master and probably Self Repair or Disruption Field as well. Then when you Scatter, if you activated Disruption Field, it will automatically pass onto each of your newly summoned individual Arachnids. When they come into play, since they are Summoned, they are treated as new models, each with their own activation, but they will be Slow during that turn which they were summoned. The Scatter action is also different from Swarm Together, in that the individual Arachnids do not activate immediately, as in the Swarm Together scenario.

Against models with high Df, as mentioned above, Latch On is typically a good approach. One thing that works well is to move a Swarm up to the opponent, as long as it's less than 4" total, attack twice with (+2) Melee Master, activate (0) Disruption Field, and then use the Swarm's last (1) to Scatter. Since you have to put the individual Arachnids in base contact with the Swarm, you should be able to place at least two of the new Arachnids in base contact with your target. Then, when those individual ones get to activate (thus, good to do this at the end of your turn, after your opponent has activated all their models, if possible), you start out with the one not in base contact to move into base contact and (0) Latch On. Then your two Arachnids in base contact can (0) Latch On and attack vs -4 and -6 Df. If you can manage to set this up where your Steamborg Executioner or another Arachnid Swarm still need to activate after all of this, then you should be able to really do some damage. This is one of the best ways to handle high Df opponents like Lilith, Perdita Ortega, or the Coryphee Duet (if you can get them to stand still, that is).

Lastly, the Overwhelm trigger, as mentioned above is one of the most dangerous things about the Arachnid Swarm, and it is worth learning how to utilize it well, both in the game itself, and as a psychological tactic. If your opponent knows that you have not yet activated a Swarm or two in range of some of his better pieces, he may be cautious about playing higher cards from his hand earlier in the turn, because he wants to keep those for cheating up his Df against the potential Swarm attacks. So there are some good mind-games that can be utilized with the Swarm.