Broodmother vs Phantom Lancer

How this matchup plays

Attacking Broodmother's spiders is exactly what Phantom Lancer wants to do. Each spiderling is a target that can trigger Juxtapose, allowing him to create a full army of illusions in seconds. Where most heroes are overwhelmed by the swarm, Phantom Lancer uses it as fuel. His illusions will naturally spread out and clear the very spiderlings Broodmother needs to deal damage and farm. Spirit Lance provides a decent nuke to find the real Broodmother in the chaos, but the fundamental problem is that her greatest strength—creating a massive number of units—directly enables his.

This matchup gets progressively worse for Broodmother as the game goes on. She might have a small window to apply pressure early, but once Phantom Lancer gets his core items, he can comfortably fight inside her webs. He's not afraid to push into her territory because he can turn her own army against her. Broodmother is forced to either avoid him entirely, which limits her split-pushing impact, or hope her team has enough area-of-effect control to deal with the inevitable illusion army he creates by fighting her. He effectively neutralizes her ability to control sections of the map by herself.