Spiders vs Tanks (Ogre+Emissary beats them all?)

You weren't as aggressive with your early fleas and venoms as you should have been, so the tank player got their share of the map experiencing minimal pressure. The tank player managed to build two stingers covering the midpoints with zero opposition, which shouldn't be happening. This is despite the map heavily favoring spiders and heavily unfavoring tanks.

You definitely should have been more active with your fleas at certain times. At 2:25 you have four fleas idling southeast against an incoming kodachi instead of applying any sort of pressure on the tank player's base.

If your venoms were meant to be defensive, then you might as well have built redbacks instead. Redbacks, being a DPS riot rather an AOE riot, should be able to handle sparse tanks and lotus expansions much more effectively. Early on, tanks have nothing to answer against redbacks + recluse, regardless of widow, but the tank player's unthreatened economy lends well to building emissary.

At 11:15, you amass 1.5k in hermit in your base instead of a crab, before you see your first emissary. Hermits have next to no value against tanks due to their low range and low DPS, so they're a bit of a waste. At 13:40 your engineer commander runs into a stinger, tanking for hermits. It should be the other way around.

Crabs are okay. Spired crabs against tanks are great. At 20:00 you lose your unspired crab and many recluses in a very avoidable situation.

Widows can make great cost as a consequence of removing key targets, so you can build widows against units as light as ogres or even stingers. Teams example: In https://zero-k.info/Battles/Detail/1648668 , aioeieoiao uses his widow to stun a felon at 4:50, allowing us to easily remove the felon + another felon. He does it again at 9:05, enabling us to remove another felon + an aspis.

This is really good advice re: timing. I'm going to work on my spider openings and flea raiding more. Still don't have the hang of that.

While it's true that hermit has higher range than ogre, this matters less on a hilly map like Ravaged where taking the wrong walk uphill can be met with ogre volleys, especially given that hermits require a direct line of fire. Hermits are also too specialized compared to redbacks, as they aren't able to handle the kodachis that were often partnered with ogres, and they definitely wouldn't be able to threaten any minotaurs if the tank player decided to build any.

Range matters more in the case of crab which is ideally paired with a spire, in which Ravaged's hills become much less meaningful. Abuse spirejank well enough and most tanks can't even reliably target the crab, ogre being the most realistic exception, but good luck to any ogres trying to get in range. Range also matters more in the case of recluse as it is not a frontlining unit and can fire beyond walls.

Thus, I have doubts that 1.6k in hermit would achieve more than one crab or equivalent cost in redback + recluse, at least in this particular map and matchup.

quote: Hermits can definitely threaten Minotaurs. It's just the issue of finishing them due to speed

That's what I mean. If you let the tank player accumulate minotaurs, you're in for a bad time.

An example of spider vs. tank that I can think is the team game of https://zero-k.info/Battles/Detail/1764068 , in which I play spiders vs. (coincidentally) Charmedmage's tanks. There are a few troublesome ogres and minotaurs early on. Once the spider player accumulates a few redbacks + recluses + some terra, the tank player is no longer able to threaten the spider player for cost, unless they decide to build emissary or cyclops. Some minotaurs were sent into this spiderball, but the redback DPS is too overwhelming for a lot of them to be able to escape in time. Hermits wouldn't have nearly the same results. (Ultimately, the spiderball loses to thunderbird.)