Fully Grounded #16: Silk Nest (Patreon)

This is part of the terrain series, other entries can be found at the contents page here.

3D Terrain can be ordered from Emporium Miniatures (Not this exact print).

Link: https://www.etsy.com/shop/EmporiumMiniatures

• Number: 1
• Size: 2x2
• Passive: Obstacle, Impassable
• Activate: 20% Gain a Spiderling on the board, 50% get Knocked down and suffer 2 brain damage, 20% +1 population, 10% Gain a skull resource (Limit once per survivor, per showdown)
• Obstacle: Yes
• Classification: Resource

The Silk Nest is a prime example of how to do something that has mostly negative results correctly. You only get something beneficial a meagre 30% of the time, but because 20% of those results; that  juicy 8-9 roll, gives you +1 population this is something you're going to be hitting with every single survivor during the showdown. 

The worst situation is a spiderling or a temporary knock down + brain damage, both of which are things that can be managed by other survivors either attacking the Spiderling or encouraging the knocked down survivor. So all you need to do when interacting with this is ensure that you have one or more survivors available to deal with the worst results and then rotate to the next survivor. Having a showdown give potentially +4 population is amazing because more population = more endeavors (as long as you're on Collective Toil, which these days I think is the slightly better choice due to how important endeavors are).

This terrain can also appear during any showdown, so it makes for one of the only ways that Spiderlings can appear alongside non-Spidicules monsters and that's an interesting diversion. But the main place you encounter it is when fighting the Spidicules herself and that is a slightly more challenging prospect, because she is already spawning multiple spiderlings in a showdown that is action intensive already and she also buffs the spiderlings with her mood cards. You are still going to absolutely want to interact with this in the showdown, but be mindful of the consequences.

There is little strategy to placing this tile, it is always going to be in the middle of the board, but you want to pay attention to it because you need to get the fight close to the nest while also avoiding the monster standing next to it because that can create an awkward block. One that may make it difficult to navigate to the monster's blind spot. (This is not so much of a problem vs the Spidicules due to how she works, instead she often hides her blind spot by standing over the Silk Nest).

Great terrain, always love to see it, A+