@@dragonlord4898 thank you. I dont care if ytber puts ads in their video but if they dont put skip thingy i have zero respect for them. My L buttom have feelings!!!
I'm pretty sure they aren't supposed to put in a skip themselves and the only way youtubers that make vids like this make anything is with ads so just listen to the 60-120 seconds if you support them.
How about no? I will never play any game they ad just because theres ad of that game in every fricking youtube video i watch so whats the point of watching the ad? I dont care if is to "support" the creator.
The use of Waterflame's "Glorious Morning" at 28:47 made me so happy. Literally clapping my hands together like I'm autistic or something. Which I might be, it is half past 11 XD
I think Death Runners are like, alright at what they do? It's just, 'what they do' is 'provide a vehicle to apply Weeping Blades to the enemy for other units to exploit'. You throw like, one unit of them into the melee mosh to tag enemies with the debuff, and then your Actually Good Fighters exploit the armour reduction.
they are the fastest rats that are not wolfrats and they each have small aoe attacks so they shred ranged units and are very good at chasing routing units, and have stalk
yup, they run death (themselves or their opponents') they're like shit cav, but given that empire knights are the same price and they can't eviscerate the entire dwarven roster, I'd say it's fair. Use stalk, vanguard, and concealment bombs wisely. NEVER do it from the front (not like that, slaneesh). That's what slaves are for, yes-yes
That clipping noise around 13:20 is from SteelSeries GG, to turn it off just go to "Moments" and set "Capture" to Disabled, otherwise if you wanna stop the random clipping, go into Setting then under the "Moments" section turn off "Allow Voice Clipping". As a side note, that "Voice Clipping" feature made moments clip 22 times in an hour, without me even speaking, with each clip being 30 minutes long.
Only effective way I've found to use deathrunners is to have them either set up ready to flank or pass through an active battle line and into a flank with smokescreen. But you would need to have fodder taking up aggro first in both cases. Gutters are too valuable as a ranged unit and triads are expensive, compared to clanrats or skavenslaves which you're not using. But if you can use deathrunners exclusively in flanks, they can become your best unit.
Yeah, that's how death runners and all dual weapon infantry are supposed to be used, even the ones with heavier armour. If you use them as a front line, nevermind going off to fight cavalry, don't be surprised when they die.
@@ARTEMISXIX SFO makes elite units ELITE, to the point where they can wipe out half the armies of tier 1 units and break autoresolve. It's absurd, I remember Orion's starting Wild Riders getting 500+ kills and solo winning every autoresolve. It's so annoying when you are on receiving end though, when minor faction recruits RoR and it just solo your garrisons.
Man I coulda swore the pirate guy was gonna come back and backdoor u when u were busy somewhere else lol, especially with the little foreshadowing message.
You mean to tell me I didn't have to go to the garage, go through my bins, find the right one with the blu-rays, come back in the house, turn on the PS5, turn on the TV, put the disc in, and hit play to see Return of the King because we have new BrilliantStupidity? Marvelous.
The bulk of belakor's unit roster is locked behind gifts. In any normal belakor campaign you'll have multiple invincible aspiring champion stacks running around long before you even unlock any of the tier 4 gifted units. The whole marauder, chaos warrior mark system is also pretty homogeneous. While they are all technically different units, they really aren't different units.
My man, you *really* slept on the shuriken runners lol. Unlike the slings they've got fire-on-the-move and 360-degree shooting, meaning that anything that can't catch up to them is gonna get a face-full of metal shards before you dive on them. They're, like, one of the few times it's useful in this game to have "skirmish mode" on.
Man you hit me with the Water flame glorious morning at the end man that unlocked memories i got a +50 leadership bonus just for that man now i can't play this game without playing that (age of war memories unlocked)
Something I’ve always found odd, is that the Eshin sorcerer does not have the weeping blade effect on his weapon, despite his weapon glowing with it. I think it would add a bit more utility and flavor to an underutilized character type, but what do I know?
Very good point actually. Especially since he has 2-3 skills that boost his combat power as well. Plus, the eshin vortex spell really is a bit weak and expensive for its dmg. The hero could use a buff.
The reason i think Deathrunners take so much damage is because they have comparitively low unit health to basically any other unit? Like even compared to units that fill a similar role in other rosters, deathrunners just have so little health that unless youre fighting artillery crews or ranged units, they just take massive damage
I feel like the editing has continued to grow and get better, and the videos overall are higher quality. It's almost day and night from the first few videos to now, great content!
"Man, this fight has been going great. Nothing could draw this out or cause us to take drastically more losses than normal." The humble goblin shieldbearer:
Just a reminder, take your units off of Guard Mode if you want them to keep running down fleeing units. Also, Vilitch uses his factions abilities to make three random units in a faction army turn into Chaos spawn.
I like these videos. A suggestion for a future one. As Tretch, you cant attack enemy lords, only be attacked. This includes lords that are in a settlement. So if you want the settlement, it has to be you v garrison if you decide to attack a city. Truly the Tretch Craventail way.
I am both amazed and disapointed of the ratio between the runners with slings and the one's with out but I guess that's what happens when you don't want to go through the micro hell.
"The department of ethics and biological warfare has requested that we begin spying on the ministry of healthcare. In return they will offer us 5 lukewarm buffalo wings..." That got me man. That was a great laugh.
i think the deathrunners melted because they got traded charges with orcs that just... bowled them over. basically the same thing that was happening to the triads, they didnt get a chance to do anything before getting chopped to bits. that or they just suck lmao.
The difference is the Triads took half as much damage and did 4 times as much lol. Also tried charging death runners into the rear of some goblin archers and I am not joking when I say that they are skavenslave-tier in that situation. Not even sure how it's possible. Hoping to upload that to my new clips channel in a couple days
@@BrilliantStupiditydeath runners have great melee stats but are still very lightly armored, something orcs are tailor made to stomp into dust, especially savage orc biguns, whom the Weeping Blades armor halving effect is useless
Yeah deathrunners are a real quirky unit, they're a hammer and you use them to run down/backstab slow, bulky enemies. Orcs would absolutely rock them in a frontal fight because no armour = no loss on weapon strength, and orcs have higher general stats across the board for the most part.
Gutter runners is all you need, specifically poison gutter runners. Normally better with catapults and warlock buff but you don't need them they are are that powerful (for eshin)
Thanks for the video i needed this. Well i needed it like 6 hours ago but didnt check the channel for videos which resulted in me not knowing it existed until just now. Turns out youtube is still doing that unsub thing it was so loved for some years ago. Man i love that youtube has unsubbed me from channels i actually watch resulting in the most wonderful thing ever. Me not knowing they uploaded i have bookmarks now for all the channels i really care about. Yours included bookmarks dont get deleted on me randomly just because someone felt like it. (YET)
Using only Esshin units as clan Esshin is not only viable, but arguably meta. I dominated with an army of mostly Gutter Runners in my campaign (Though that was a couple years ago and I did bring some artillery and weapons team support).
Hii, just to tell u that I really love your videos, for real, I enjoy all your strategies and I'm completely impressed by how much u actually know about all the game mechanics. In reference to that, I'm kind of a noob myself, I just finished northern provinces in realm of chaos and now I started a Tyrion campaign, because ppl really recommended it for first immortal empires campaign. Its not that I'm having any problems, like I try to learn bit by bit, but it just occurred to me that a video showing some tricks or game mechanics that could help us newbies would be amazing. A part from that, keep rolling mate, I really love your content.
S P E E D. By building up my second army super early I was able to kill all of southern Cathay (except Zhao Ming who did surprisingly badly before I even got to him. Also declared war on me late which was super lucky) without them recruiting any full stack armies (excluding maybe 1 of pure peasant trash). I literally just rushed my full army to kill their armies before they could even finish recruitment haha. 1 or 2 turns early on can make a *massive* difference to the trajectory of the campaign
Deathrunners are Gutter Runners who forgot the only tool that makes them valuable at home. Its the same difference between skavenslaves and skavenslave slingers. One is virtual bantha poodoo and the other one of the most cost-efficient unit in the game.
If Deathmaster Snikch has a million Gutter Runners(Poison), I'm one of them If Deathmaster Snikch has 5 Gutter Runners(Poison), I'm one of them If Deathmaster Snikch has 1 Gutter Runners(Poison), that one is me If Deathmaster Snikch has no units, I'm no longer alive If every skaven is against Deathmaster Snikch I'm against every skaven Till my last point of health (50 per model), I'll support Deathmaster Snikch
I'd love to see you beat TW3 using the power of arachnophobia (aka spiders). Skarsnik, goblin shamans (and the tech tree lord), gobbo spider riders and archer riders, and eventually arachnaroks. Quick tip for the opening painful turns is to replace your useless recruiting buildings with a growth booster to speed up getting that tier 3 settlement. You do get to keep your starting arachnarok, so that's not super painful to make things work in the opening turns. It's also good to remember that any global bonus to "goblins" boosts your goblins spider riders too, so that can make them pretty solid units in the later game.
Don't forget to Try Warhammer 40,000: Tacticus today to murder every orc in existence! play.tacticusgame.com/BrilliantStupidity
Promotion Skip Button: 8:18
@@dragonlord4898 thank you. I dont care if ytber puts ads in their video but if they dont put skip thingy i have zero respect for them. My L buttom have feelings!!!
I'm pretty sure they aren't supposed to put in a skip themselves and the only way youtubers that make vids like this make anything is with ads so just listen to the 60-120 seconds if you support them.
How about no?
I will never play any game they ad just because theres ad of that game in every fricking youtube video i watch so whats the point of watching the ad? I dont care if is to "support" the creator.
The use of Waterflame's "Glorious Morning" at 28:47 made me so happy. Literally clapping my hands together like I'm autistic or something.
Which I might be, it is half past 11 XD
I love how confused you were by Vilitch giving you a bunch of chaos spawn. Very on brand for Tzeench.
"What did I miss here?!" [scrolls by the Spawnified notification]
@@Tachii31haha, the eyes only see what they want sometimes
All part of the plan
Time stamp please?
@@MartialArtsForY 14:57
5:40 ah yes, captain crack sparrow, from the pirates of the catalytic converter
Black Pearl was a special smelling salt. Change my mind
He sails the seas on a ship adorned with spare copper pipes.
And stripped copper wires @@moviebad109
I think Death Runners are like, alright at what they do? It's just, 'what they do' is 'provide a vehicle to apply Weeping Blades to the enemy for other units to exploit'. You throw like, one unit of them into the melee mosh to tag enemies with the debuff, and then your Actually Good Fighters exploit the armour reduction.
Death runners stab em in the back so slingers can shoot them in the front
They're like cavalry but worse lol
Maybe if they got 1 use of a skill to teleport a short distance, they might be better??
I thought it was because you can easily apply warp bombs with them.
they are the fastest rats that are not wolfrats and they each have small aoe attacks so they shred ranged units and are very good at chasing routing units, and have stalk
yup, they run death (themselves or their opponents')
they're like shit cav, but given that empire knights are the same price and they can't eviscerate the entire dwarven roster, I'd say it's fair.
Use stalk, vanguard, and concealment bombs wisely. NEVER do it from the front (not like that, slaneesh). That's what slaves are for, yes-yes
I'm da giant rat that makes all the rules
Let’s see what kind of trouble we can get ourselves into!
@@Felix-ii2mg that one rat about to fall off :
We pray at night. We stalk at night. We're the rats!
*sprays pesticide*
That sound notification is the SteelSeries gg client clipping your gameplay because you laughed. You can turn it off in the moments tab.
See's a couple of instances of leveled up Skaven lords without Ancient Cunning:
*HERESY.*
They were almost exclusively taking settlements haha - probably still should have gotten it just in case tho
@@BrilliantStupidity It’s more of a just in case thing so your ambush chance is always 100%. Who wants to fight fair battles? Gross.
That clipping noise around 13:20 is from SteelSeries GG, to turn it off just go to "Moments" and set "Capture" to Disabled, otherwise if you wanna stop the random clipping, go into Setting then under the "Moments" section turn off "Allow Voice Clipping".
As a side note, that "Voice Clipping" feature made moments clip 22 times in an hour, without me even speaking, with each clip being 30 minutes long.
Finally! Finally i can eat and listen to thousand rats wiping the humanity, while i'am busy with my instant noodles
Army of ages nostalgia unlocked again
brought me to my knees
Reject humanity embrace rat (and deadly amounts of warpstone)
Yes yes you bring more more now now😅
28:47 my god the nostalgia hit was so powerfull
Only effective way I've found to use deathrunners is to have them either set up ready to flank or pass through an active battle line and into a flank with smokescreen. But you would need to have fodder taking up aggro first in both cases. Gutters are too valuable as a ranged unit and triads are expensive, compared to clanrats or skavenslaves which you're not using. But if you can use deathrunners exclusively in flanks, they can become your best unit.
Yeah, that's how death runners and all dual weapon infantry are supposed to be used, even the ones with heavier armour. If you use them as a front line, nevermind going off to fight cavalry, don't be surprised when they die.
Meanwhile in SFO they're goddamn terminators for some odd reason.
@@ARTEMISXIX Probably because in real fencing dual wielding is extremely hard to counter
Wolf Rats are equally good, if not better, at the exact same job IMO. tier 1 unit with around a third the upkeep cost lol
@@ARTEMISXIX SFO makes elite units ELITE, to the point where they can wipe out half the armies of tier 1 units and break autoresolve. It's absurd, I remember Orion's starting Wild Riders getting 500+ kills and solo winning every autoresolve.
It's so annoying when you are on receiving end though, when minor faction recruits RoR and it just solo your garrisons.
Spawn of Tzeentch in your army is Vilitches trickery.
I love how this dude got Teclis to show up in this Skaven video at 19:47
28:48 man suddenly had flash backs to my childhood
28:47
My childhood just flashed before my eyes....that song...i havent heard that song since flash was still around
[28:48] aand he did it again.
Thanks man.
15:00 i think the changeling can put tzeentch spawn into other factions' armies, i had to fight a kislev army with tzeentch spawn once
I am pretty sure that that should represent mutating random sh*t in your army.
Don't know why they obey you tho
Vilitch not the changeling.
Man I coulda swore the pirate guy was gonna come back and backdoor u when u were busy somewhere else lol, especially with the little foreshadowing message.
He probably would have if I didn't murder him lol
0:11 You can’t insult Clan Esin like that, if they wanted Castro dead he would be dead. 😅
I dunno, some of the CIA's Castro fails sound exactly like something the Skaven would try
I remember an Eshin Doomstack where the gutter runners could move at 96 speed. it was a legend video from awhile back
1:34 Thankfully the animal orphanage was left unharmed !
For now.
You mean to tell me I didn't have to go to the garage, go through my bins, find the right one with the blu-rays, come back in the house, turn on the PS5, turn on the TV, put the disc in, and hit play to see Return of the King because we have new BrilliantStupidity? Marvelous.
“Largest unit roster”
*laughs in Belakor*
The bulk of belakor's unit roster is locked behind gifts. In any normal belakor campaign you'll have multiple invincible aspiring champion stacks running around long before you even unlock any of the tier 4 gifted units. The whole marauder, chaos warrior mark system is also pretty homogeneous. While they are all technically different units, they really aren't different units.
My man, you *really* slept on the shuriken runners lol. Unlike the slings they've got fire-on-the-move and 360-degree shooting, meaning that anything that can't catch up to them is gonna get a face-full of metal shards before you dive on them. They're, like, one of the few times it's useful in this game to have "skirmish mode" on.
Man you hit me with the Water flame glorious morning at the end man that unlocked memories i got a +50 leadership bonus just for that man now i can't play this game without playing that
(age of war memories unlocked)
That Age of War Glorious Morning tickled my brain in the memories department
27:48
Coolest boyz ever. Can they end a elf faction?
Something I’ve always found odd, is that the Eshin sorcerer does not have the weeping blade effect on his weapon, despite his weapon glowing with it. I think it would add a bit more utility and flavor to an underutilized character type, but what do I know?
Very good point actually. Especially since he has 2-3 skills that boost his combat power as well.
Plus, the eshin vortex spell really is a bit weak and expensive for its dmg. The hero could use a buff.
Man its been a while since I’ve seen you turn rats into super soldiers, good to see you again 👌🏻
15:16 Welcome to how Tzeentch operates
The reason i think Deathrunners take so much damage is because they have comparitively low unit health to basically any other unit? Like even compared to units that fill a similar role in other rosters, deathrunners just have so little health that unless youre fighting artillery crews or ranged units, they just take massive damage
the Age of War music really hits
I feel like the editing has continued to grow and get better, and the videos overall are higher quality. It's almost day and night from the first few videos to now, great content!
the age of war flashbacks everytime i hear the soundtrack are real
"Man, this fight has been going great. Nothing could draw this out or cause us to take drastically more losses than normal."
The humble goblin shieldbearer:
That Age of War soundtrack part was damn beautiful! Sorry not sorry but I am definitely stealing it for my possible or impossible future videos!
So many memories with age of war xD cant believe you put that on but i LOVE IT!
I thought I'd like the ratling Gunners, but it didn't do enough to satisfy me. It felt weak. But the fire. The fire satisfied me
I just realised the satellite laser fired into England, very lore accurate.
Unite Norsca in the old world under one banner. While killing all the warriors of chaos you can.
SCM's Norsca mod and Chaos Robbie's the old world mod
the half sword soundtrack in the background tells me this brilliantly stupid man is one of culture
Legit love the vibe it gives the skaven too
Legit love the vibe it gives the skaven for the rest of the video.
Just a reminder, take your units off of Guard Mode if you want them to keep running down fleeing units. Also, Vilitch uses his factions abilities to make three random units in a faction army turn into Chaos spawn.
Random, unprovoked use of Waterflame's "Glorious Morning," aka the main theme for the Age of War flash game, at 28:47.
And I'm fucking HERE FOR IT
I would love to see you do an Dark Land Orkz playthrough they are so fun and really powerful
13:40 A snake owning rats, who would have ever expected this unlikely outcome
I watch these to add culture to my life
I like these videos. A suggestion for a future one.
As Tretch, you cant attack enemy lords, only be attacked. This includes lords that are in a settlement. So if you want the settlement, it has to be you v garrison if you decide to attack a city.
Truly the Tretch Craventail way.
'warpstoned'
bruh
...I'm stealing this.
>pats brain
14:54 tzeentch moment
I am both amazed and disapointed of the ratio between the runners with slings and the one's with out but I guess that's what happens when you don't want to go through the micro hell.
Bros the rat king
Less disgusting than one in real life tho lol
"The department of ethics and biological warfare has requested that we begin spying on the ministry of healthcare. In return they will offer us 5 lukewarm buffalo wings..." That got me man. That was a great laugh.
holy fuck 28:47 i didnt expect this banger
i think the deathrunners melted because they got traded charges with orcs that just... bowled them over. basically the same thing that was happening to the triads, they didnt get a chance to do anything before getting chopped to bits. that or they just suck lmao.
The difference is the Triads took half as much damage and did 4 times as much lol. Also tried charging death runners into the rear of some goblin archers and I am not joking when I say that they are skavenslave-tier in that situation. Not even sure how it's possible. Hoping to upload that to my new clips channel in a couple days
@@BrilliantStupiditydeath runners have great melee stats but are still very lightly armored, something orcs are tailor made to stomp into dust, especially savage orc biguns, whom the Weeping Blades armor halving effect is useless
Yeah deathrunners are a real quirky unit, they're a hammer and you use them to run down/backstab slow, bulky enemies. Orcs would absolutely rock them in a frontal fight because no armour = no loss on weapon strength, and orcs have higher general stats across the board for the most part.
Gutter runners is all you need, specifically poison gutter runners. Normally better with catapults and warlock buff but you don't need them they are are that powerful (for eshin)
That clipping software is SteelSeries GG. Default clip bind is ALT+S. Scares me at least twice daily when it decides to decimate my ears.
Kenji the rat.. the editing was funny.. love it. .
Getting pyrrhic victories as Skaven is how you know that you are indeed playing Skaven correctly.
Thanks for the video i needed this. Well i needed it like 6 hours ago but didnt check the channel for videos which resulted in me not knowing it existed until just now. Turns out youtube is still doing that unsub thing it was so loved for some years ago. Man i love that youtube has unsubbed me from channels i actually watch resulting in the most wonderful thing ever. Me not knowing they uploaded i have bookmarks now for all the channels i really care about. Yours included bookmarks dont get deleted on me randomly just because someone felt like it. (YET)
One of the only vids out there that I can find only using Eshin units. Thanks for the content
dude posted this right before my own campaign finally logout of it and see this what the heck man.
“Eshin units always get overshadowed, and that’s how they like it” made me chuckle.
9.25/10 ninja joke
2:31 hold the hell on, did you send your rodents to the freaking assassin school from Wanted? What's up with those ork-seeking curving arrows? xD
I literally sit around just rewatching your videos day after day until a new one comes out 😂Love your work sir!
Using only Esshin units as clan Esshin is not only viable, but arguably meta. I dominated with an army of mostly Gutter Runners in my campaign (Though that was a couple years ago and I did bring some artillery and weapons team support).
29:00 wow, that music I did not expect. Thanks for reminding me of my childhood, now can you please remind me the name of the game that's from?
Age of War
@@BrilliantStupidity Hey yes, thanks. I should have started with reading description.. but who ever does that right?
Hii, just to tell u that I really love your videos, for real, I enjoy all your strategies and I'm completely impressed by how much u actually know about all the game mechanics. In reference to that, I'm kind of a noob myself, I just finished northern provinces in realm of chaos and now I started a Tyrion campaign, because ppl really recommended it for first immortal empires campaign.
Its not that I'm having any problems, like I try to learn bit by bit, but it just occurred to me that a video showing some tricks or game mechanics that could help us newbies would be amazing.
A part from that, keep rolling mate, I really love your content.
Yes yes another video for the horned rat
clan moulder:”Oh my god… It’s…. Beautiful….”
That misclick against lokhir was actually good because you have the stalk stance and might've ambushed them.
This vid was beautiful. I’ve tried this myself, and got buried under the Cathayan tied, my warp stone to you sir.
S P E E D.
By building up my second army super early I was able to kill all of southern Cathay (except Zhao Ming who did surprisingly badly before I even got to him. Also declared war on me late which was super lucky) without them recruiting any full stack armies (excluding maybe 1 of pure peasant trash). I literally just rushed my full army to kill their armies before they could even finish recruitment haha. 1 or 2 turns early on can make a *massive* difference to the trajectory of the campaign
How rats see themselves committing a health violations to some restaurants.
That thumbnail will feature in my nightmares now, so... thanks for that.
Bro Eshin Sorcerer is actually GOAT! We have been lied to our entire life!
Truly beautiful rat carnage. Let’s not kid ourselves though, the main characters here were the howitzer toting Orks
An army of gutter runners that don't use skirmish mode is the ultimate sign of self hate
6:01 love how he shows Clan Moulder as pestilence asks for information on Mors.
yo , at 12:55 its steelseries clips Brillant
guess we know someone has never played vilitch properly and filled the norscan allies armies with chaos spawn so they push in cathay even harder
Admiral kanuovael didn't want war, he just wanted to vibe
you should have used the spawn since they used to be eshin units until they were horribly mutated by a crazy birdman worshipper
13:11 its the Steele Seris moments if you any gear from them it will install it alongside the stuff to run your gear but you can turn it off
Fun fact, Poison Wind Mortars count as Eshin units
Wasn't expecting The Toxic Avenger
Death runners are really good when used as assassins. They kill artillery really quick, they are just really bad as line infantry
"Sorry. Pause. Hold up. WHAT?"
This shit got me good lmao
Awsome video as usual 🙌
Spreading warpstone in a orc neighborhood with this one
19:45
I'm willing to bet The Spiffing Brit will be that person
Deathrunners are Gutter Runners who forgot the only tool that makes them valuable at home. Its the same difference between skavenslaves and skavenslave slingers. One is virtual bantha poodoo and the other one of the most cost-efficient unit in the game.
you read my mind... like how'd you know my DND / RPG game strat of "I dont know what this does, but it sounds badass."?
If Deathmaster Snikch has a million Gutter Runners(Poison), I'm one of them
If Deathmaster Snikch has 5 Gutter Runners(Poison), I'm one of them
If Deathmaster Snikch has 1 Gutter Runners(Poison), that one is me
If Deathmaster Snikch has no units, I'm no longer alive
If every skaven is against Deathmaster Snikch I'm against every skaven
Till my last point of health (50 per model), I'll support Deathmaster Snikch
Dwarf gun powder units only when? LOL
Someone is gonna make a mod to give all the skaven runners sunglasses now.
A mod list you use for the video would be sick, since you mentioned the darkland ork mod
I'd love to see you beat TW3 using the power of arachnophobia (aka spiders). Skarsnik, goblin shamans (and the tech tree lord), gobbo spider riders and archer riders, and eventually arachnaroks. Quick tip for the opening painful turns is to replace your useless recruiting buildings with a growth booster to speed up getting that tier 3 settlement. You do get to keep your starting arachnarok, so that's not super painful to make things work in the opening turns.
It's also good to remember that any global bonus to "goblins" boosts your goblins spider riders too, so that can make them pretty solid units in the later game.
As for the troops not cheasing a retreating enemy, you have to disable guard mode
respect the use of the age of war theme at the end there