Watcher in the Web

The number on the second line is the whole pitch: a single body that can declare itself a blocker against eight attackers at once. Combat math usually assumes one blocker per attacker, which is why a wide board tilts the alpha strike in favor of whoever has more creatures; a wall that intercepts eight of them at once breaks that assumption and can fizzle a lethal swing into nothing. The 2/5 frame matters here. This is not a brawler that eats a team: it splits two damage among whichever attacker it chooses and soaks the rest, so against a real swarm it dies, but it dies having stopped the whole attack cold rather than trading one-for-one. Reach widens the net to cover fliers, so the spider catches the air as readily as the ground, and most of the evasion that goes over the top of a normal blocker simply runs into it. Its narrowness is baked into the design: against a lone fat threat it blocks exactly once, like any other creature, and against direct damage that never touches the battlefield it does nothing at all. It is a lopsided defensive specialist whose value swings entirely on what is across the table, a brick wall against the swarm and a vanilla body against everything else. The fantasy is clean: a spider in its web, snaring everything that flies into it in a single moment.