[ano]

I like Machaka and think they are quite good. Their regular spiders combined with hoplites do wonders. They can start mass producing fetishes early (you may freely equip them on black sorcerers who don't die from them) for 3N3F with hammer. They are cheap and in the late game fire gems have a lot of uses.
And who said that they lack magic diversity? They have 4 open schools of magic which are all quite good.
They fear neither sacreds nor early sc's because spiders kill both so they can choose a good sleeping pretender.
One of the main problems of Machaka is upkeep. It is a big problem and should be thought about if you plan to play them.