Warhammer: Age of Sigmar Warcry Corvus Cabal Guide

WarCry takes the huge-scale wargames of Warhammer: Age of Sigmar and turns it into a small scale skirmishing game. While this is a great adaptation of the IP, it's also a bit jarring to wargames who aren't used to it. That's why we're proud to present our WarCry Corvus Cabal guide to help you come to terms with the game's many playable factions and their differences. 

If you enjoy this guide, we've covered several other elements of WarCry, from a guide to the game itself to guides on other factions like the Untamed Beasts or even the Iron Golems. 

You can buy all the Warcry Products from our Tabletop Sponsor, Firestorm Games.

Who are the Corvus Cabal?

The Corvus Cabal worships the Great Gatherer by taking treasures from the victims of their ambushes and assassinations. They believe the Archaon is an avatar of their god and as such, seek to gain his favor.

The Corvus Cabal isn’t tough or well armored, but they are fast, extremely fast and they throw lots of dice when attacking if you’ve played WarCry enough, you know that movement and attack dice are the 2 most important characteristics in the game.

Corvus Cabal Fighter Types

The Corvus Cabal have access to the following fighters:

• Shadow Piercer - The Shadow Piercer is an average leader in terms of stats. They do what the rest of the Cabal do, only slightly better. Move 5, 4 attacks with 5 Crit damage, 20 Wounds, 4 Toughness, and 4 Weapon Strength. They make up for their points with a couple of decent rune abilities. Grisly Trophy gives an additional attack to every visible friendly fighter within 6 inches, which takes the average Cabalist to 5 attacks, so having an entourage of low point fighters around them is handy if you ever have a spare triple. Their other ability is Harrying Raven, which is very underrated. For a double, you can stop an enemy fighter within 20 inches making a disengage action, keeping them locked in with your fighter. This is great for stopping an enemy who’s trying to withdraw so that you don’t take out their fighter, or withdraw in order to grab an objective or engage another fighter. The WarCry battle-board is played on a 22x30 inch board, so if your Shadow Piercer is in the middle of the board, it can target any fighter on the board. Even if your Shadow Piercer is in a corner, there are only 10 inches at the other end of the board that’s safe from this ability.
• Shrike Talon - The Shrike is an incredible fighter with either the same or better stats than the Shadow Piercer. The stats that are better, are those that count. A move of 8 and 5 attacks with 4 crit damage means that they are insane for threat range and their Swooping Attack rune is one of the best in the game. For a triple, they get a bonus move action and if they end the move 3 inches lower than their starting position, they get a bonus attack. If positioned well, this can mean a move and then 3 attacks, or if you have to use the first action to move in order to get to high ground, 2 moves then 2 attacks. With 3 attacks, that’s 15 dice against your opponent.
• Spire Stalker - Spire Stalkers are hardy fighters. Move 5 and 4 attacks and access to the Swift Climb rune which means they don’t count vertical distance for movement. But for 45 more points, you can get a Shrike Talon, which has more wounds, another attack, and the insane Swooping Attack rune, or you can get 2 Cabalists, who are weaker and slightly more fragile but still have move 5 and 4 attacks for ganging up on your opponent. With those as alternative options, the Spire Stalkers aren’t worth the points unless you have a specific battle plan that needs them.
• Cabalist - The basic Cabalist is 65 points and while they only have 8 wounds and 3 toughness, they do have move 5 and 4 attacks. They are great for swarming an opponent and bringing them down under attacks, or for grabbing objectives quickly.
• Cabalist with Spear - For an extra 10 points on the basic Cabalist, you get a 2 inch ranged attack and an extra crit damage. If you can afford it, take these over any other Cabalist. 4 attacks with crit 4 damage, and forcing your opponents with 1-inch attacks to move before they can fight back is extremely handy and as with any of the Cabalists, 5 move allows them to position fairly easily for optimum attacks.
• Cabalist with Familiar - This Cabalist has 1 less attack than the standard and is 5 fewer points. They do get the Harrying Raven ability, which while it is a very useful ability, the Shadow Piercer already has it, and as it has a 20-inch range, having it again isn’t all that handy. They are cheap, but losing that attack just isn’t worth saving the 5 points for, unless you only have 60 points left for your roster.

How to build out of the box

The Corvus Cabal are available in their own boxed set, which is available to purchase here.

The Corvus Cabal only have 4 fighters types, with 3 armament options for 1 of them. Each box lets you build at least one of each fighter type (and armament type).

The sprues let you build.

Set miniatures

• 1x Shadow Piercer
• 1x Shrike Talon
• 2x Spire Stalker
• 1x Cabalist with Spear
• 2x Cabalist

Optional Armaments

• 1x Cabalist or 1x Cabalist with Spear
• 1x Cabalist with Familiar or 1x Cabalist with Spear

If building out of the box, the points values for the set miniatures are 855, which means that if you build the Cabalist with Spear and standard Cabalist out of the options, then you’ll have a nice 995 points. 

If you’re looking to buy a second box, and you really should in order to get a second Shrike Talon, then build as many with spears as you can would be our advice. But if you’re only planning on getting one box, then building all the spears (of which there are 3) will take you over points.

General Tactics

The Corvus Cabal are fast, insanely so. Everyone has at least move 5, so dominating the board early game is easy.

Having the Shadow Piercer and an entourage of Cabalists is great for hitting the enemy with lots of attacks. Having a mix of Cabalists with spears and standard Cabalists is also very handy for locking opponent’s into fights.

The Cabalists only have 8 wounds, so expect them to go down, but if you can attack in a swarm first, you can be surprised at the damage they can cause.

The Shrike Talon is a guided missile, and taking 2 to the table can give your opponent a lot of problems. They can move the length of the entire board in 2 turns, so no enemy warrior is safe. Always keep a triple for Swooping Attack, and make sure to try and end the turn positioned on terrain so that you can use it again the following turn.

Deployment Tactics

For this section, we're only looking at the balanced options for each of the decks. Using all the cards is harder to predict and plan for, but great for open friendly games.

Using only the balanced deployment cards, Shield is deployed 15 times out of 18 on the table. Your shield really depends on how you’re planning to play. Having most of your Cabalists with the Shadow Piercer can get your attacking and objecting grabbing game off early, but having the Shrike Talon on the table to start decimating the enemy ranks is equally important.

Hammer appears in Round 2 onwards 10 out of 18 times and Dagger 8 out of 18 times. If you have a second Shrike Talon, then having them in Hammer or Dagger to come on late game to take out any problematic enemies or specific targets is very handy. Any Spire Stalkers you have can also be placed here as they can be great for holding objectives with a Cabalist or 2. Try to judge the level of board presence you’ll need early against your opponent’s warband.

Mission Tactics

Out of the 18 balanced missions, 6 are combat based, requiring removing either the leader or different deployment groups. 9 are objective-based and 3 are mixed, movement/survival-based.

Grabbing objectives early and taking out specific fighters is where the Corvus Cabal shine. They can reach objectives quickly and the Shrike Talon can take out a specific fighter very easily with Swooping Attack. Having a sustained battle where larger amounts of the enemy need to be removed, whilst protecting your own can be troublesome, but if you have a good mix of spear Cabalists, they can be used to control the battles and keep opposing fighters from getting to close to where you don’t want them.

Their high movement and high attacks make the Cabal a very forgiving faction and they can be played very aggressively, or moved away defensively equally well.

The copies of the WarCry products used to produce this article were provided by Goblin Gaming