I would advice you to prophetise a Black hunter lord. If you have a small nature bless, you'll have a regen already there (give him a few normal spiders as body-guards, script Holy Avenger Attack rear). In fact, I would go as far as to try to get the rider killed... In friendly dominion the auto-blessed spider will have north of 100 HP and regenerates with a minor N bless (though just 5 HP per turn, but still good enough to prevent afflictions) and you still have two misc slots (for a ring of regen, or lucky amulet, or whatever you fancy).
With Machaka you can push out an expansion party each turn (indy leader (if you just get some indy leader who can shoot something, so much better) moves to capital to pick up 10 spiders, then goes hunting; 10 spiders will rip apart most infantry (avoid barbarians though)) or if you need to take something heavier (barbarians, knights, heavy cavalry) recruit spiders for a couple turns (30 spiders can take out most likely anything, just form them into three squads with orders Fire closest; when your riders start to die (to enemy arrows) the riderless spiders charge forwards and spit web, disrupting the enemy lines totally).
If you face elephants (or other tramplers) or giants (or Hydras for that matter), you need to recruit the black spiders. The black spiders are not really worth it IMO, but they laugh themselves silly at elephants and giants, who get webbed up and poisoned to death by these humongous spiders.
After the initial expansion frenzy you should have a boatload of riderless spiders. They are upkeep free and excellent flankers.
If you play with CBM you should by now have Dragon Master (Ench 3, which also gives you skelly spam) and Summon Fire Drakes (Conj 3) researched, then go for evocations. Fire Drakes in center (they are tough as nails and the breath fire), riderless spiders on flanks, sorcerors bombarding evocations (keep a sizeable body guard of the heavy Machakan infantry around the mages, they repel any fliers easily). The ever loved skelly-spam is also an option, especially against nations who do not fear fire (Abysia for example; let your skellies exhaust the abysian infantry with their high fatigue, and rip them apart).
If you are playing vanilla Dominions, then you should go for Fire Fetishes as fast as possible, and then go for Flaming Arrows instead (while not forgetting skelly-spam, it is even more important in vanilla), and BURN everything in sight with your basic cheap archers, while your heavy infantry and skellies holds the center and the spiders attack on the flanks. Flaming arrows really is too powerful in vanilla (and totally useless in CBM, but that is just my personal opinion, others claim they still see it used under CBM; personally I hope so very much Flaming arrows would see some slight change in CBM to at least make it an option to consider), so take full advantage of that. While your Flaming Arrowed armies hold your neighbours in terror, take maximum advantage of the fire gems the fetishes bring; craft items, summon stuff, even alchemise them to bring in money for more castles etc. Fetishes are really the thing Machaka desperately needs.
However, Machaka is a one trick pony. When your opponent notices you are all about fire fire fire and some more fire wether it is CBM or vanilla, you are doomed (there are so many ways to make even full armies fire resistant); in CBM this happens quite a bit sooner though, in vanilla you might have a chance to stick around slightly longer. Machaka has no proper tools for endgame, sadly. You have to rush the map when you are at your strongest, in middle game, and hope the others fold over. Also, a lot depends on your pretender, as you have to choose your pretender to either boost your strengths (but you already are so very strong in fire, so it is hard to come up with something that would make it even more stronger) or to compensate your weaknesses (but there are so many weaknesses Machaka has, that it will be very difficult).
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