[thejeff]

The MR weakness is compounded by the lack of native Astral, so there's no easy access to AntiMagic. Eventually they'll be able to do Army of Lead, but that's a long time after other players have been slaughtering the poor spiders with magic.

It's also hard to balance what they need before the riders die and after. E9 doesn't do much for the spiders. It's great for the riders, though. W9 or F9 help both. The lesser MR bless makes the riders really hard to affect and brings the spiders up to almost tolerable.

Though the mages aren't sacred, the spiders that the Black Sorcerers turn into are. It's worth considering if you plan on using them as thugs. It is really hard to arrange to have them blessed though, since you can't control when they shift. I've never been able to pull it off with any consistency.