Planet Apocalypse: Spider Mastermind Rulebook

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

• Contents
• Spider Mastermind

Contents

• Great Lord Spider Mastermind Add-on: 1 Lord (Spider Mastermind)

Spider Mastermind

When you enter Hell Time, the Spider Mastermind gets a Lord's Shadow Marker.

The Spider Mastermind's toughness is 3+3, one less than a Cacodemon, and its attack is 6d8. He has more health than any other lord, including even Geryon, and has 35 health in a 4-player game. So far it is not that impressive. Here are his two threats:

First, the Spider Mastermind attacks once per Lord's Shadow marker. Since it earns one every time you attack it, this can build up if you attack it too many times. But since it has a lot of health, you'll probably need to assault it several times over the course of the game, each time giving it another Lord's Shadow marker—which never go away.

Second, if at least one of the Spider Mastermind's attack dice misses (and with an attack of 6d8, it's not unlikely), then the targeted hero gets a choice. He must either automatically retreat, right then (after taking any remaining damage), or he must choose to allow the Mastermind to heal 1 per missed attack die. So if a lot of dice miss, it's bittersweet—you don't take much damage, but you may need to run away or let the Spider Lord heal a bunch.

Your reward is unusual—if you retreat voluntarily, then you get to immediately roll 1d4 and recruit. So this usually means you want to use up your patrol troopers in the battle, so you can take advantage of this bonus.

Battling the Spider Mastermind. Its doubled toughness means you can't attack it too early. Its ever-growing attack power means you need to make as few invasions of its area as possible. Its Panic power means you don't really want to have a lot of toughness against it—it's better for you to take damage than to let it heal.

Really, its threat isn't so much that it's going to kill the players—and in fact, it is not particularly lethal. The problem is that it is really hard to kill, and it keeps healing, and eventually it can kill you, or heal heaps. In the meantime, the invasion tokens keep growing and growing and scoring doom.

Unlike some lords, when you face the Spider Mastermind, usually you lose because of doom accumulated by the minions, not because the Lord wiped you out. This makes sense, because he is a Mastermind, after all.

Good luck. This is after all a four-crown demon.