Revision as of 21:37, 11 October 2021

Crabbit Grymkin Lesser Warbeast

"Click and clack, bound and leap, these nightmares will their harvest reap!"

These grotesque little nightmares may act ridiculous, but they ravenously defend their masters and devour the enemies of the Wicked Harvest. Able to bound in great leaps to land upon their prey, or to spring into harm’s way to protect their otherworldly patrons, crabbits gleefully rend any flesh in reach. If you spy a Defier, you can be sure that a colony of crabbits is near.

Contents 1 Basic Info 1.1 Abilities 1.2 Weapons 1.3 Animus 1.4 Theme Forces 2 Thoughts on the Crabbit 2.1 Crabbit in a nutshell 2.2 Combos & Synergies 2.3 Drawbacks & Downsides 2.4 Tricks & Tips 3 Other 3.1 Trivia 3.2 Other Grymkin models 3.3 Rules Clarifications

Tip ! Crabbit can be added to your army list in groups of 2 models. They are 2 separate warbeasts, not a unit.

Basic Info

Crabbit
Missing Info
	COST {{{cacost}}} UNIT SIZE {{{casize}}} FA {{{cafa}}} Warcaster 0 BASE Small SPD 6 STR 5 MAT 5 RAT N/A M.A. N/A DEF 13 ARM 12 CMD N/A ESSENCE {{{essence}}} FOCUS N/A FURY 2 THRS 6 HP 13 F. Field N/A WJP {{{wjp}}} WBP {{{wbp}}} IHP {{{ihp}}} FA U UNIT SIZE N/A COST 7 points for 2 crabbits N/A N/A N/A Warcaster 1 COST N/A N/A Understanding the Statblock

Abilities

• Warbeast - All warbeasts share a huge stack of special rules. The short version is they're big, furious, and beat stuff up pretty good. Click here for a newbie-friendly recap, or click here for the full rules.
• Bounding Leap - Once per activation, after making a full advance as its Normal Movement but before performing its Combat Action, this model can be forced to be placed completely within 5" of its current location.
• Shield Guard - Once per round, when a friendly model is directly hit by a non-spray ranged attack during your opponent's turn while within 3" of this model, you can choose to have this model directly hit instead. This model is automatically hit and suffers all damage and effects. This model cannot use Shield Guard while it is incorporeal, knocked down, or stationary. The Shield Guard special rule can only trigger once per attack roll.

Weapons

• Bite - 0.5" reach, POW 3, P+S 8 melee weapon

Animus

Theme Forces

• Bump in the Night
• Dark Menagerie

Thoughts on the Crabbit

Crabbit in a nutshell

Two shield guards for seven points that occasionally bounding leap to chomp solos or block charge lanes. Crabbits exist to protect your more expensive models, and are a key tool for Grymkin when dealing with opponents with large ranged output. It's rare for a Grymkin pair to not include Crabbits somewhere.

Combos & Synergies

Warlocks

• The Heretic likes to have a Crabbit or two in his army, mostly to protect himself from ranged fire. Additionally, Elusive is an especially useful Arcana for a melee warlock who intends to spend the final couple of turns engaged.
• The Child loves a couple of Crabbits as they provide you with a number of tricky options.
  • You can use them to trigger Arcana. If your opponent damages a Crabbit in her battlegroup, you can trigger Wrath and give The Child and all her warbeasts 1 additional FURY the next round.
  • A Crabbit with its leap is a fantastic Discord Delivery Dork (DDD, patent pending). You can usually engineer a situation the turn of or just after initial contact in which a Crabbit with Discord can force your opponent to spend critical resources on what is ultimately a 3.5point throwaway model.
  • Like with the Heretic, Elusive is a great arcana for a bruiser warlock that wants to get in a charge or two.
• The Wanderer is perhaps the least likely to take Crabbits of the Grymkin warlocks. The Wanderer already has a good defensive toolkit for himself, and has powerful spells that protect his army. However a Shield Guard is a Shield Guard, and thus it is always important to consider what kind of opponent into which you will use your Wanderer list, and ask yourself if a Shield Guard has the capacity to swing the matchup in your favour.
• The King of Nothing likes a cheap warbeast for fuel. He also critically needs a Shield Guard, due to minimal defensive options past clouds.
• The Dreamer tends to prefer beast bricks, which means she tends to prefer Dark Menagerie, a theme in which Crabbits can be taken for free. A Crabbit and a Cage Rager are a great pair of bodyguards for your most critical models and can make it very difficult for your opponent to push through damage at range.
• Zevanna Agha is on a huge base and thus is effectively always targetable. She typically solves this via Windstorm, but having a Shield Guarding dork is a great backup plan. Additionally, being on such a huge base Old Witch 3 is vulnerable to being charged down. Planting a Crabbit in front of OW to block a charge lane is an effective & timeless tactic.

Other Models

• The Deathknell basically needs an attendant Crabbit.
• A Cage Rager can provide magic protection while a Crabbit guards against ranged attacks. With just these two models, many an assassination can be avoided.
• Glimmer Imps & Grave Ghouls are quite squishy if your opponent can solve for their ranged defences. Having a Shield Guard nearby at minimum doubles the resources they need to invest to get work done.
• The Slaughterhouse is quite expensive, always targetable thanks to its huge base, and somewhat squishy for its cost. A Crabbit is the minimum this model needs to get across the table, two is better.
• Isiah the Dread Harvester is yet another critically powerful model that is vulnerable at range.

Drawbacks & Downsides

• Fragile - they may have a lot of damage boxes, but that's a low ARM.
• Little combat potential

Tricks & Tips

• Crappy Offensive stats or no, this is a warbeast and you CAN boost it. Do not underestimate a chomp in a pinch, and in the end, with bounding leap you shouldn't have to really worry about a frenzy check.
• For Steamroller tie-breakers, your opponent has to kill 2 Crabbits to score points. But it doesn't matter which "group" they came from, or even if they were put in your army list before the game or put into play during the game.

Other

Trivia

Released with the Faction release (2017.06)

Other Grymkin models

Grymkin Index       (Edit)
Battlegroup
Warlocks	The Child - The Dreamer - The Heretic - The King of Nothing - The Wanderer - Old Witch 3 Arcana Warlock Attachment: Baron Tonguelick
Warbeasts	Lesser: Crabbit	Light: Frightmare - Gorehound - Rattler
	Heavy: Cage Rager - Clockatrice - Skin & Moans	Gargantuan: Slaughterhouse
Units, Solos, & Battle Engines
Units	Dread Rots - Hollowmen - Mad Caps - Malady Man - Murder Crows - Neigh Slayers - Piggybacks - Twilight Sisters
Solos	Baron Tonguelick, Lord of Warts - Cask Imp - Defiled Archon - The Four Horseymans - Glimmer Imp - Grave Ghoul - Gremlin Swarm - Isiah, Dread Harvester - Lady Karianna Rose - Lord Longfellow - Trapperkin - Weird Wendell - Witchwood
Battle Engines	Death Knell
Theme Forces		Minions
Dark Menagerie - Bump in the Night		Refer to Category: Grymkin Minion
This index was last updated: 2021.08

Rules Clarifications

Rules Clarification:  : Warbeast      (Edit) (Click Expand to read)

See also the Warbeast page for a recap of the core warbeast rules. Forcing If an ability doesn't specify how much it costs to force, it costs 1. (Infernal Ruling) Animi A single Animus can be on several models at the same time. (Infernal Ruling) Unlike in Mk2, in Mk3 if a model has an animus on it from any source and then another animus is cast on that model, it will lose the first instance of an animus and will be replaced by the second. It does not matter if either the first animus or the second animus is from a warlock or warbeast. (Infernal Ruling) An animi cast by a warlock is an animi and a spell. (Infernal Ruling) Transferring Damage If both the warlock and the warbeast are damaged by the same attack (such as an AOE), then you need to apply the 'normal' damage to the warbeast before the transferred damage. This distinction can be important when you're working out who/what actually destroyed the beast. (Infernal Ruling) Frenzy (Edit) You cannot trigger optional abilities (such as Cleave or Sprint). (Infernal Ruling) You must trigger compulsory abilities (such as Consume) ... except for compulsory abilities that also generate an extra attack (such as Berserk). In that case, you don't get the Berserk attack. (Infernal Ruling) A warbeast may not make an Assault shot as part of a Frenzy activation. If the closest target to a warbeast resolving a Frenzy cannot be charged, then the warbeast will forfeit movement and action (as per the rules of having to charge and not being able to). (Infernal Ruling) If a frenzying warbeast can't reach its charge target (because the charge lane is blocked by terrain, etc) then it will make a failed charge and end its activation. (Locked thread) If a frenzying warbeast has two melee weapons with the same POW, it can choose which one to use. (Infernal Ruling)

Rules Clarification : Bounding Leap and/or Jump and/or Leap     (Edit) You cannot use this ability if you forfeit your movement, because "After making a full advance" is a conditional requirement. (Infernal Ruling) You can only use this ability after a full advance, which means you can't do it after a Slam, Trample, or Charge. You can use "At any time" abilities between completing your move and doing the Jump/Leap. (Infernal Ruling) Jumps & Leaps are a "placement". They do not trigger free strikes, and you can even jump over solid buildings of infinite height. If you cannot advance more than 0" (for example suffering from Shadow Bind) then you can Jump/Leap. Making an advance of 0" is sufficient to trigger Jump/Leap. Jump only You cannot use Jump if you are suffering "any effect which prevents charging". So... If you forfeit your Normal Movement, you cannot Jump. (For the same reason as given above.) If you forfeit your Combat Action, you cannot Jump. (Infernal Ruling) If you "cannot make attacks" (such as with Morvahna1's feat), you cannot charge, therefore cannot Jump. (Locked Thread) Unit with Jump Complete all the models' Normal Movement before starting any Jumps. Then do all Jumps (that you can do and/or want to do) before starting any Combat Actions. (Infernal Ruling) Models in a unit can Jump even if they don't receive a Press Forward order (failing to be told to charge is not the same as being prevented from charging). (Infernal Ruling)

Rules Clarification : Shield Guard and/or Shadow Guardian     (Edit) You can't use this ability vs spells. You shift all effects onto the new model, including stuff that triggers on "when this attack hits". When you use this ability vs an AOE attack, the template moves too. Because, with reference to Apdx A, the hit 'moves' at Step 6 and the template placement is determined at Step 7. This ability doesn't work vs Point Blank attacks. Because Point Blank attacks are melee attacks that are made using a ranged weapon. On the other hand, it will work vs Gunfighter attacks. Shield Guard only Since Shield Guard specifies "opponent's turn", it can't be used against stuff that shoots in your own turn (such as Watcher or Counterblast). The Shield Guard does not necessarily need to be in the attacker's LOS or range. The Shield Guarder is always hit even if they have an ability that makes them automatically get missed, such as Stealth. (Automatically missing is determined earlier in the timing sequence than the Shield Guard moving the hit.) (Infernal Ruling)

Rules Clarification : Elusive      (Edit) Rules Clarification : Dodge      (Edit) Dodge triggers after any missed attack - melee, ranged, or magic. An enemy model with 2" melee range that is B2B with you before you Dodge, will be exactly 2" away afterwards, and thus will be able to attempt a 2nd melee attack. If you're missed by an AOE attack, but it doesn't deviate very far and still hits you then: Dodge still triggers, but the AOE does damage before you get the Dodge movement. (Infernal Ruling) If an enemy can attack you when you advance and then stop moving (such as Countercharge or Defensive Strike) and they miss you, then you can trigger Dodge (because you're no longer advancing). Dodge plus Riposte (Edit) If a model has both Dodge and Riposte, you can choose whether to dodge or riposte first. Appendix A Step 13 applies here, because the controller of the model being attacked is not the active player.