Warband Guide: The Corvus Cabal

This Corvus Cabal warband guide is the fifth in the series of articles providing all the advice you need to make the most of your Warcry warbands. You can check out the rest of the Warcry warband guides here:

• Iron Golems
• Untamed Beasts
• Cypher Lords
• The Splintered Fang

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Corvus Cabal: Pick Clean the Corpse!

Barely audible strides bounding from roof to roof and spire to steeple are all that herald the coming of the Corvus Cabal. Worshiping Chaos as a great avian being known as the Great Gatherer, they honor their god with rare treasures taken from those they slay.

Among the more “pedestrian” of the forces vying for control in the Eightpoints, the Corvus Cabal value the favorable terrain that dense cities like Carngrand offer and tend to make their roosts in the high points of such places.

Cabal members are scattered throughout the dirty dealings of cities both within and beyond the Eightpoints, and it is a very rare thing that someone being murdered or an infiltration of an establishment took place without the ever-watching skulls of crows present.

Pros

• Strike from the Skies! – The Corvus Cabal don’t just make a habit of throwing themselves from great heights, they actively benefit from it. No warband cares more about terrain, heights and elevation than them.
• Premium Mobility – The fastest warband of the Eightpoints Eight, the Corvus Cabal combine larger than average movement speeds with abilities that enable and encourage scaling elevation. 
• Fighting Fair is Overrated – Making use of hiding on top of buildings and wielding weapons with a 2” range ensures the enemy will have to expend maximum resources just to touch you.

Cons

• Two Heads Aren’t Better than One – The warband’s leadership is almost “split” between two very effective and equally costed models, but losing one means a BIG blow to your force.
• Grounded – While striking from above is a Pro on some maps, on others it’s a serious con. If the battlefield is sparse on terrain, look forward to getting little use from your abilities.
• Low Diversity – The warband may have a few options for it’s chaff’s equipment, but beyond that the Corvus Cabal have little flexibility in picking and choosing units in the same manner as the Iron Golems or Splintered Fang.

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Mustering your Corvus Cabal Warband

Objectively, the Corvus Cabal are the best of the original warbands if you only want to buy one box. Building the 5 Cabalists as 3 with spear, 1 with Familiar and 1 with knives results is dead-on 1000pts.

This build DOES require some sneaky building. As you want 3 Cablists with Spear, 1 with Familiar and 1 with Daggers, but the Familiar option builds from a Spear model, you will need to carefully attach the Familiar arm to the second Cabalist with Daggers.

You can purchase the Slaves to Darkness Double Box if you’re looking to expand and experiment, but this is a fantastic jumping off point.

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Painting your Corvus Cabal

The Corvus Cabal, unsurprising for a group of treasure hunters that horde wealth as an expression of religion, are utterly covered in detail. They are a challenge, but a highly rewarding challenge that look fantastic when they’re finished. You can check out the excellent guide on The Mini Junkie, linked below.

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Corvus Cabal Unit Breakdown

For the purposes of breaking down the units and categorizing them effectively, these reviews will list units as being one of the following:

• Leader – A leader choice for the warband. A Warcry warband must include one of these, and cannot include more than one.
• (Elite) Threat Unit – A higher-price unit that either dishes out heavy damage. Also comes in the Elite variety, which a warband will usually only be able to afford a single one.
• Support Unit – A model who’s use is tethered to an ability, usually a Triple, that boosts the effectiveness of themselves and those around them.
• Infantry Unit – Middle of the road, these units are reasonably affordable in exchange for a baseline unit that can hold it’s own passably.
• Chaff Unit – Cheap, spammable and here to either screen or hold objectives. Can usually be buffed, usually is not cost effective to do so.

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Shadow Piercer (Leader) – 185pts

The leader choice for the Corvus Cabal. He’s the absolute baseline as far as combat and durability goes, but his strength is stashed in his access to two very cool abilities.

On top of the warband’s Double and Quad, the Shadow Piercer can unleash his Familiar to harrass an enemy fighter and prevent it disengaging from a fight this turn with Harrying Raven, and after killing an enemy he can tear their head free with Grisly Trophy to buff nearby fighters in combat and inspire them to follow his example. 

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Shrike Talon (Elite Threat) – 185pts

This thing’s stats beyond it’s 8” move are not impressive. The selling point of the Shrike Talon is that it’s very cheap for what you get, basically the Shadow Piercer but faster and with 1 more attack (though 1 less critical damage).

While he lacks the Grisly Trophy and Harrying Raven, he has Swooping Attack. This ability is effectively Rampage from the generic abilities provided the model using it vaults off a building to do it. You have to fall 3” to get the bonus, so be sure to jump off the building as you head towards your victim.

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Spire Stalker (Infantry Threat Unit) – 140pts

Wow, these guys are solid. They’re 20pts more than the similar elite unit in the Cypher Lords, the Mirrorblades, but for that extra cost you get an excellent 15 wounds and access to the Swift Climb ability, a strictly-better Acrobatic Leap as it isn’t limited to 3” or less.

These are highly mobile units that at first you would assume are best hitting-and-running, but their 4 toughness and 15 wounds actually makes them more survivable than most other infantry.

Lacking access to a 2” weapon isn’t necessarily a setback here as their higher durability and killing potential means being tied up is not the end for them.

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Cabalist with Spear (Caff Unit) – 75pts

Cabalists come in three flavors, and this is the most expensive. Access to a spear on chaff is already fantastic, being able to fit 3 of them (which the box actually COMES with) and stay under 1000pts is phenomenal.

These will do exactly what you want, sprint towards objectives and prod at the enemy from 2” out forcing them to close in on them just to try to strike them. Yeah they will go down easy, but that’s the burden of being Chaff.

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Cabalist with Daggers (Chaff Unit) – 65pts

10pts less than the version with the spear, he’s weaker than the spear wielding option in every sense that matters combat-wise, but he’s still Chaff. This should be the first model you are willing to lose to the enemy as a necessary casualty, as he is the only model in the warband that doesn’t do anything else.

Set him up and have another Cabalist with a spear support him from behind. Have him block a doorway or a stairwell. He has a job, make sure he does it.

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Cabalist with Familiar (Chaff Unit) – 60pts

Alternate Build for Cabalist with Spear

Lowest of the low. The stated purpose of this model is he has access to Harrying Raven, same as the Shadow Piercer. This can come in handy if there is a situation where you want to use Grisly Trophy and Harrying Raven in the same turn.

The REAL purpose of this guy is if you give him twin daggers, the warband costs 1005pts. Taking a bird and taking one for the team, this little Chaff soldier exists purely so you can have the luxury of 3 Cabalists armed with spears. Treat him like the above Cabalist, use him as a body blocker and try not to expect too much from him.

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Corvus Cabal Ability Breakdown

Time to take a look at the six abilities specific to the Corvus Cabal.

Raven Dart

Raven Dart (Double) – Select a visible enemy fighter within 8″ of this fighter and roll a dice. On a 3-5, allocate 1 damage point to that fighter. On a 6, allocate a number of damage points to that fighter equal to the value of this ability.

A longer range throwing ability that deals damage slightly more reliably. Look, the same thing as always applies here: There will almost always be a better ability spend. Only use this as an absolute last ditch resort. Chancing a double on a 6 just is not it chief. 

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Swift Climb

Swift Climb (Double, Spire Stalker Only) – Until the end of this fighter’s activation, do not count the vertical distance moved when this fighter is climbing.

As stated above, it’s very similar to Acrobatic Leap from the Cypher Lords but it’s functionally better as the height is not capped. The catch is that unlike the Cypher Lords, only one unit in the warband can make use of this.

Not a gamebreaker as really only they SHOULD be sprinting directly at the enemy over buildings, and the warband is more interested in jumping off of things than they are jumping over them anyway.

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Harrying Raven

Harrying Raven (Double, Shadow Piercer and Cabalist with Familiar Only) – Pick an enemy fighter within 20″ of this fighter. Until the end of the battle round, that fighter cannot make disengage actions.

It’s thematically interesting and well designed, but functionally it’s very situational. The issue with this ability is you cannot use it reactively, you have to predict.

Can work in objective-based scenarios that involve carrying treasure, where admittedly it excels, but that’s about it. Use if you have a double spare and there’s an obvious situation to use it.

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Swooping Attack

Swooping Attack (Triple, Shrike Talon Only) – This fighter makes a bonus move action. In addition, if the fighter finishes that move action 3″ or more vertically lower than their starting position, they can make a bonus attack action.

Cry havoc, and let slip the bird of war. This ability is Rampage for one less dice, which alone is wild. This ability is AMAZING given the thing using it can move a whole 8”. In the Iron Golems and Mawtribes, we call that a “double move”. In the Corvus Cabal we call it “a prelude to a horrifying and grisly murder”.

Sometimes you might take a wound or two jumping off a church bell to get to the enemy for this, but in times like that remember two important things. You’re about to absolutely ruin some enemy fighter’s day, and you look AWESOME doing it.

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Grisly Trophy

Grisly Trophy (Triple, Shadow Piercer Only) – Until the end of the battle round, add 1 to the Attacks characteristic of attack actions that have a Range characteristic of 3” or less made by visible friendly fighters while they are within 6″ of this fighter.

Always nice when a warband doesn’t have their Leader ability tied to the value of the ability. This is similar to many abilities out there in the game, but the fact it’s attached to a hero that can comfortably kill any Chaff or Infantry it so much as blinks at, not bad at all. The fact that everything in this warband that likes to fight is also highly mobile makes it very easy to make use of this ability.

Good for rushing to the defense of the Leader, and turning an enemy killstroke into a carrion field for the crows.

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Death From Above

Death From Above (Quad) – This fighter makes a bonus move action. Then, they can make a bonus attack action Add 1 to the Strength characteristic of that attack action if the fighter finished the move action 3″ or more vertically lower than their starting position.

This is another Rampage-esque effect, but instead of being “Rampage but cheaper” we get “Rampage but on steroids”. The +1 to strength this grants means that the user, most likely a Shrike Talon or Spire Stalker, is now strength 5 and about to punch a hole through the enemy leader after throwing themselves off a building and taking them down like an Assassin from THAT game series.

This is an excellent Quad not just for the value it provides but because when it happens both players be like “huh, that was impressive”. Wow-Factor is very important in a Quad.

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Corvus Cabal Strategy & Tactics

The best way to sum up the Corvus Cabal is that of the Eightpoints Eight, they are the “fun” warband. They’re fast (everyone likes going fast), they’re mobile (it’s a scenery based game so this matters), and all their abilities are flashy as hell (you NEED that Wow-Factor). There isn’t actually a catch to picking up the Corvus Cabal, they don’t suffer in any standout way and are very good at both fighting and playing the objectives.

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Corvus Cabal Roster Building

Roster building isn’t particularly challenging with the Corvus Cabal given the sheer amount of chaff their lists run. Personally i didn’t feel the need to branch out from the base warband box. The biggest choice i made when constructing this list was deciding how much chaff i felt my Shrike Talon and Shadow Peircer needed to stay safe, and opted to put the Spire Stalkers alone in their own battle group.

Aiden’s Corvus Cabal – Flock of Neophron

Shield

• Shadow Piercer (Leader)
• Cabalist with Spear
• Cabalist with Spear
• Cablist with Daggers

Hammer

• Shrike Talon
• Cabalist with Spear
• Cabalist with Familiar

Dagger

• Spire Stalker 
• Spire Stalker 

The key to my army list is that all three of the battle groups pack mobility and a threat. None of these three groups could ever be considered to be “caught out” by an unfortunate deployment table, if the enemy comes in hard they’re in for a fight and they’re going to be losing models for every model they take. Everything here is fast enough to make it to objectives on turn one, as Rush makes these fighters cross at least 12” in the blink of an eye.

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Deployment

Don’t hesitate to be aggressive, if the enemy knows even a whit about your warband they will not be putting themselves within arm’s reach. You’re not the least durable warband in the game, but you aren’t exactly the Mawtribes or Nighthaunt though so don’t deploy into a situation where the enemy can force an outnumbered fight.

You want to be fighting two on one as often as possibly obviously, so exploit the spear range to make sure picking a fight with a Shadow Piercer means picking a fight with a close combat monster AND his two backup dancers.

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The Game

Time to spread your wings, Cabalist. You’re fast, so your key matchups are warbands that are not. Iron Golems and the like are very easy for the Corvus Cabal to take on. Against forces that will fight you and actually win like the Cypher Lords however you’re better off staying away and playing objectives, only fighting in one on one or more favorable engagements.

• Distraction Carnifex… err, Shrike Talon! The enemy sees the big winged predator and go for it every time. Keep him separate from the Shadow Piercer and they won’t know what to do with themselves.
• A murder of murderers is more effective. Make sure the Shadow Piercer always has units nearby to benefit from a spontaneous Grisly Trophy. Cablists with a spear and an extra attack will prod Elite units to death, and a Spire Stalker or two with an extra attack will destroy any target.
• Exploit your spears. Don’t go within an inch of the enemy if you can avoid it with your 2” weapons, force them to waste an activation moving into you. This halves the chances of them killing the fighter in the activation.
• Chaff hard, chaff often. The Cabalists might seem like they can be useful in combat but they’re just fooling you to live a little longer, throw these things at objectives and the enemy threats without hesitation to stop them coming for the Shrike Talon. They’re cheap, and big bird is not.

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Conclusion

Darting from building to building, outpacing the enemy before dropping down and taking their head as a gift for the Great Gatherer is probably the best rush I experienced in my early days testing out warbands.

The Corvus Cabal are my first recommendation when my more competitive friends are looking at Warcry as they reward everything competitive play cares about. They fight well, chaff well, and play objectives well.

Don’t hesitate to strap on some ramshackle wings, grab some metallic stilts and throw yourself at worthy foes, take their heads and Pick Clean the Corpse!