[Baalz]

To be honest, there are two critical factors that makes Machaka the fever fetish king for me.

1) You can start cranking them out reliably early in year one. The amount of gems you get is cumulative, so making a dozen fetishes in year one lands you hundreds of extra gems, and they're flowing in during the early part of the game when gem incomes are much lower and thus gems are more valuable. Starting just 6 turns earlier really makes a significant difference.

2) To be honest, for me the real draw of the spider lords is the lack of micro. My number one goal of playing is not to win, it's to have fun. I won't play a strategy that's not fun even if (or especially because actually) it's guaranteed to win. I don't really care if units have recuperation or I can heal them - at the point I've get to look forward to shuffling dozens of fetishes around every turn I'm dreading my turn rather than looking forward to it, and the number of fetishes you're shuffling adds up real fast on 10 hp units if you're cranking out 3 fetishes per turn - basically every 8 or 9 turns you've got another 3 fetishes to juggle every turn. With spider lords - just stop juggling as soon as it gets to be a pain, the strategy is more than justified with no juggling at all.