Last year had some killer Con Exclusive LE’s that I didn’t get a chance to talk about. For today’s team build, I’m featuring a certain six-armed super hero. Man-Spider, Man-Spider, eats whoever a Man-Spider wants.

2016 had some really neat Con LE’s like Ace the Bathound (who I’ve talked about multiple times), Rocket Raccoon and Groot (potentially the coolest ever made and will ever be made), and KC Red Robin. I might get to some of those pieces another time, but my absolute favorite of all of them was the sinister Man-Spider. This guy is an absolute beast and can really cause some havoc. I’ve only managed to play him once, but he absolutely destroyed when I did.

Coming in at 100 points, Man-Spider has 7 clicks of health, Indom, and the Animal, Monster, and Savage Land keywords. He ignores Elevated and Hindering terrain for movement purposes, as he should, and has two special powers. His numbers are pretty good; his movement starts at 9 and eventually drops down to a 6, he starts with an 11 attack and never goes under a 10, his defense is mostly 17 with two final clicks of 16, and his damage mirrors those clicks with 3 most of his dial and 2 on his last two clicks.

For his first five clicks, he’s got a special movement power:

A FLURRY OF LEGS AND MANDIBLES: Man-Spider can use Charge and Flurry. When he uses Flurry, after actions resolve if he hit the same target with both attacks, Man-Spider can use Exploit Weakness as a free action to target the same character.

That’s brutal, and gives Man-Spider an very sizable amount of damage he can dish out in a single turn. Charge and Flurry together is one of the deadliest power combinations to have on a single power, and combining that with a free Exploit Weakness is no joke. After those five clicks, he drops down to regular Flurry. That might seem a little poor since he has no move and attack, and something like Sidestep might help him to survive, however, having Flurry on every single click means there’s never a moment when he’s not going to be a threat.

His special attack power is present on his first three clicks, and again on his last two clicks:

SAVE THIS ONE FOR LATER: When Man-Spider hits with a close attack, after actions resolve you may attach the Web marker to a hit target, removing it from anywhere else. That character with the Web marker can’t move without breaking away and can’t automatically break away. Other characters don’t have to break away from that character. When that character breaks away, remove the Web marker.

This probably looks very familiar; it was the first power to use the Web Clix FX base and is almost the exact same as the web trait on most of the figures in the Superior Foes of Spider-Man set released last year. The big difference is that he has to hit with a close attack whereas the other spiders web traits activate on any hit. This power is pretty neat in that it forces pieces that Man-Spider hits to stick around and deal with him.

The rest of his dial is standard with Super Senses on his first three clicks, followed by Toughness on the final four. His damage is naked until click four when he picks up Battle Fury for the rest of his dial.

Man-Spider is a really deadly piece that can put out an incredible amount of damage if you play him correctly, so what do we need in order to accomplish this goal? It’s obvious that he’s going to be able to dish out a lot of damage, but with a natural 3 damage, we probably want to boost that number; a higher damage value means his output goes up exponentially. With a single Perplex or Empower raising his damage to 4, he’s going to deal 11 damage (4 Flurry + 4 Flurry + 3 Exploit thanks to damage depletion). With a 5 damage, he’s dealing 14 damage, and with a 6 he peaks at 17 damage. 17 freaking damage from one piece for 100 points. So we want to raise that damage value.

With a lack of any kind of reducer and no Shape Change to aid in his Super Senses role, he’s quite squishy for his point cost, especially with Precision Strike being handed out like freakin’ Pez. I want to focus on limited play, so possession is out. TK or a taxi would be great for him since he does have a fairly average movement value of 9. TK is better for surprise attacks whereas you can get more overall damage from a super taxi.

For the builds today, I’m going to build two 300 point limited teams; one will be an Animal theme team and the other will be a Monster theme team. Let’s see what we can do with Man-Spider.

300 Point Modern Limited Man-Spider Animal Theme Team

Since we’re focusing on limited, that means we can’t use resources, equipment during force construction (i.e. possessors), ID cards, or figures larger than a peanut-sized base (sorry Titano!).

With the Animal keyword in modern, there really aren’t a lot of great options in terms of taxi’s, so I went with one of the Space Turtles since they have really large movement and Flight traited. I ended up with Michelangelo for a few reasons. He’s got Prob which is always necessary and we can’t use it theme team Prob since Animal is a generic theme. He’s also tied for the largest movement and has Running Shot, so he’s got a chance to actually dish some damage even with his tiny 4 range. Mostly, I went with Mikey because of his trait We’re Ninjas, Brah! which lets him use Smoke Cloud as a free action and any of your friendly characters in that Smoke Cloud can use Sidestep. That gives us a nice little surprise 2 square increase on Man-Spider’s charge that people will probably forget about.

I knew I wanted Empower since Perplex is a little tough to get with Animals, so I went with the original Chase Raphael. When he’s next to any of his brothers (not just the other chases), he can use Impervious, and with the free Sidestep from his brother, he can pair up with Man-Spider to really crank out damage thanks to his Charge/Flurry/Penetrating damage combo. The Empower will help Man-Spider hit harder and Raph will act as his tag-team parter for maximum damage.

I knew I wanted the Hulkbuster Torso for Man-Spider, so for the last 40 points I had two options: TMNT 011 Splinter or KC Hawkman on his Isolated click along with two other special objects. I opted for Hawkman because I don’t think his isolated click gets enough credit. With a +4 to theme, you’ve got a decent chance at winning map roll, so you’ll want to pick something with LOTS of hindering terrain; most of our team ignores it for movement or can Sidestep out of it, and Hawkman punishes opponents for hiding and fighting or using Perplex/Outwit. Free damage is always good. If they manage to group on Hawkman, he’s got Empower, meaning you can Charge in adjacent to him and buff Man-Spider and Raph even further.

With the final points, I went with the Symbiote and Pym Partiles in a plug-and-play type team. The Symbiote would probably be best on Raph to help keep him extra safe. The Pym Particles can be used to make Mikey smaller and harder to hit but then we lose our taxi, or larger to let him carry with his full speed value.

Nice! How about groovy monsters?

300 Point Modern Limited Man-Spider Monster Theme Team

This team is a little more diabolical which makes sense as they’re monsters. I had said Empower is really great with Man-Spider, and there’s just no better monster for that job than Mini Shredder. With Plasticity and his free penetrating damage when he moves adjacent to opposing characters, along with his very nasty dial, he’s the perfect team member to all-in with Man-Spider. He’s also tiny, meaning that Man-Spider can carry him in himself and drop him behind so that Mini Shredder can do his free damage afterwards, or you can taxi both of them with a single flyer (actually both since you’ll need to close the gap with Man-Spider).

Bizarro Joker wrecked the other competition by going full-scale annoyance. When this guy parks next to the enemy team, they’re 100% going to have a bad day; if you stagger where he’s positioned and where Mini Shredder are positioned, there’s just no way for their team to escape your mobile kill box since they’ll run into someone wherever they go. With his Bizarro Poison ability, there’s just no killing this Joker either. Just make sure not to position Man-Spider next to him as his trait says that all adjacent characters get -1 to their attack value, not just opposing characters.

For the last bit of points, I went with a Parademon since they have a 10 movement with Charge and they have Flight, meaning he can carry both Man-Spider and Mini Shredder wherever they need to go. Why not have your taxi benefit from the the Empower too? Let’s face it, with a team as ‘all-in’ as this, you’re probably not going to need that flyer anymore, so you might as well risk him and get more damage in! He’s got 3 damage, so with the +1 from Empower, that’s a nice 4 damage swing you’re making for 45 points.

I ended up with the Symbiote yet again because it’s oh-so-silly on Bizarro Joker; he’s already incredibly annoying to hit and deal with, why not give him Shape Change too? Also, this lets him automatically break away meaning there’s no chance he’ll roll 1 on breakaway; he’ll always get a chance to hunt. In those absolutely necessary moments, you can roll for that +1 to combat values and get a 12 attack and 2 damage, and if you run Mini Shredder next to him, that’s another +1 to damage. Not bad when you turn a tie-up piece into big damage.

Both of these teams are high-end in the damage department and don’t require an awful lot of luck with rolls in order to do well. Their biggest weaknesses are ranged-heavy teams that can snipe them while they make their way to their targets. If they do make it though, it’s going to be a bad day for your opponent.

See you guys Thursday! As soon as the last few pieces from Deadpool & X-Force are spoiled, I’ll do a review.