The Salivating Slug Squad

Since the beginning of the game, units have been made special in their own little ways.
Even the Carnidon, who is special in a Short Bus way.

Today I would like to speak of an interesting unit of the Lords of Cthul: The Spitter.
At first glance, it's a bit of a crap unit.
Short Range Blast with 1 A-die and 1 B-die, so they won't exactly be killing much except those with low Def scores and have managed to put themselves into range.
And they won't be securing much either, as with low Spd and Def scores they will be taken out before the have a chance to get into good positions unless your opponent is playing conservatively.
They also have a special action: Extinguish - Flip an adjacent hazard tile to a rubble tile.
This is cool. It saves your monsters from a lot of damage in the long run as hazards are a massive game motivator in the long term game.
To save your monster some health by destroying a building which you can get to, have one adjacent to it and when the building is destroyed, remove the hazard it creates. Completely eliminates a threat.

But these are the Grunts. The Elite is where it is at.
Adding to their list of abilties is Officer, a regular feature of most Elite figures. This gives an additional B-die to their version of Grunts within 2 spaces, sending Grunt Spitters to 2 B-die on their blast attacks making them rather formidable.
The Elite also has, and this is the kicker, Red Radar.
For those who are unaware, a Red ability gives the same ability to adjacent figures of the same Agenda.
Radar gives blast attacks an additional two spaces to their Range, turning those short range blasters to long range, and long range into extra long range.
This works well with the majority of figures across the board.

• Elite Spitters that have surged ahead on the board can't recieve many Spitter reinforcements. Squix, however, can easily fly ahead and catch up. With a semi decent blast attack on Squix, they can help eliminate units within their newly established Blast Range.
• Tanglix are slightly better at Blasting than Squix, however don't have the same maneuverability. But flaunt them if you have them. An extra A-die or two never hurt.
• Cthulubites recieve the best benefit from this. Not only are they as good at Blasting as Tanglix and have the same maneuverability as Squix, they also have Multishot which bases itself around the figures current range. With Cthulubites leading a combined attack with Spitters, enemy units within five spaces of said Cthulubite should be worried.
• The Tower of Corruption benefits easily by using its Summon Ability to bring an Elite Spitter into play for 1 and then Blasting off at a unit with a maximum of 4 A-die and 3 B-die only to turn the target into another unit!

But that's not all. Monsters can also take advantage of this nifty salivating slug!

• Ultra Ancient Osheroth and Ultra Ulgoth take advantage of Radar with their blast attacks. Since both of them have Annihilate their attacks will deal 2 points of damage, unless the target has an Immunity to Super Damage. If the target is on their last legs, there's little they can do to save themselves!
• Mega Mogroth adores the Radar. Given an extra long range he can Blast something from 7 Spaces, halfway across the board, to Beat-back them into a building!
• Cthugrosh likes Radar to really aggitate an enemy from 10 spaces away with his Blast trigger Fling. With Radar on Cthugrosh, he can blast up to Five spaces away. Fling triggers on a unit and tosses the figure into a monster another five spaces away! And with his Mega form, he can deal super damage against the target with the Overload ability!
• I'm using Exclamation marks much more than expected!!1ELEVENTY!!

Yasheth recieves the most aggitating benefit from Spitters, however. Before anyone picks up on it, I'll clarify that Yasheth does not have a Blast attack. The Blast is missing. He has a blank space where a Blast should be. So he cannot Blast someone with some Blasty eyebeam that can Blast something to Blastereens.
But he does have:

Leech - When a friendly faction unit hits a monster with an attack, restore 1 health to this monster.

If it wasn't bad enough that he heals from Meat Slaves and with his Vampirism Brawl Trigger, he heals from his units shooting a monster! A semi-prepared unit turn can restore 2 health to Yasheth during his turn. An Elite Spitter, two Grunts and a Meat Slave spends your entire unit turn frustrating your opponent, simply over two health, one of which was inadvertantly donated to Yasheth.
A little more preparation and you can double that, adding to more frustration.
The Throw into a nuclear hazard you performed last turn Deimos-9? Well you've lost all profit there.
The Smash into an Apartment building you were so proud of Gorghadra? Stop your little victory dance and turn around, Bucko, because I'm getting back up and feeling a little nasty.

So what are the downsides to Spitters? They do seem quite Superriffic.
Well to start, they have a Low Defence score. These guys die from a gentle breeze, so to speak. So they appreciate taking advantage of Defence increasing effects, such as cover from buildings or the Elite Squix Red Force Field. Unfortunately, this only affects blast attacks. If anything were to run into their face, they are in a bit of strife.
Another thing is Low Speed. It's not much of an immediate problem considering their range, but it is more of a long term problem. Moving costs dice. So if you want to move Spitters, you want to make it really worth the effort of moving, somewhere you suspect you can take advantage of later on in the game. Unfortunately, it's only a little bit of a problem because of their slow speed and lack fo maneuverability.
There are only a couple of things to counter this, to my knowledge. The first that comes to mind is securing an Oil Refinery. With a +1 Spd across the board, it's a great idea to start off your offensive with everything available.
The next is Taskmasters. Taskmasters have an ability called Motivator, where if a unit starts adjacent to him, they may advance an additional space. This combined with the Oil Refinery makes for good long term positioning. If you don't get shot down, mind you.

So whether to aggrivate your opponent with healing your monster, or simply supporting other units to annihilate their power base, Spitters are an interesting unit for the Lords of Cthul.