Crabbit

"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.

Basic Info

Abilities

• Template:Warbeast
• Template:Bounding Leap
• Template:Shield Guard

Weapons

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

Animus

{{Category: Template:Elusive }}[[Category: Template:Elusive ]]

Theme Forces

• Template:Bump in the Night
• Template:Dark Menagerie

Thoughts on the Crabbit

Crabbit in a nutshell

One shield guard for three 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. Beyond mobility and shield guard they don't have much else going for them a single Dread Rot will deal more damage than they can and despite 13 hp they won't survive more than a few hits

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 point 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.
• Isaiah, 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. Don't expect a Crabbit to survive more than one shot worth Shield Guarding.
• Minimal combat potential.

Tricks & Tips

• Crappy Offensive stats or no, the Crabbit is a warbeast.
  • It can boost. MAT/POW 5/8 is a whole lot less bad when boosting to an effective 8/11.
  • Crabbits are great fury generators. At 3 points for a FURY stat of 2, that's the cheapest source of fury in faction besides Baron Tonguelick
  • Crabbits can score rectangular zones & contest flags. With Bounding Leap, contesting backline flags is particularly relevant.
• Dodge, as granted by the Crabbit's animus, can be used to push deeper into enemy territory. This is especially relevant when trying to contest.

Other

Trivia

Released with the Faction release (2017.06)