Age of Sigmar: Craventhrone Guard Bring The ‘Crossboos’ To The Tabletop
We know their actual unit name. But we’ve been calling them “Crossboos” and now we know how scary they are on the tabletop.
When Arena of Shades was first announced we got excited about the fact that Death was finally getting a shooting unit. As a faction, Death doesn’t really do the whole “ranged” thing very well. There’s a few standouts and they do have some units with ranged attacks. But the Crossboos are the first infantry unit with anything close to a gun or bow — in this case crossbows.
Anyhow, today we’re excited to finally get a look at their weapon stats! We’ve all been wondering how those will fair on the tabletop. Now we know:
“Cruelly, it matters not where these enemies hide. In a castle, in a thicket, behind their bodyguards, cowering in a well, or even obscured behind the bulky stone throne of Valentian himself as he attempts to kill someone for himself just once – the spectral bolts of the Craventhrone Guard always hit their mark.”
Craventhrone Guard Crossboos
Based on the lore teasers, I was expecting a tad bit more from these guys. A 4+ to hit doesn’t exactly scream “always hit their mark” to me. Then again, maybe they will have some other interaction with Kudross we’re not aware of yet. Regardless, let’s take a closer look at those stats.
12″ Range is a little shorter than I was expecting for these shots. We’ll have to see how fast they actually move to determine their real threat range. The one thing we can say is that a 12″ range shot does mean that the unit is now committed to either killing their target or they are about to get counter-charged at that range.
They have a respectable 2 shots as well. That’s more than I was expecting because they are still based on Crossbows. But I’ll take that as a plus for these weapons. Unfortunately they have a rather average to-hit and to-wound with a 4+/4+. That’s not amazing but there are worse attacks out there. They also pack a -1 rend which is nice. Only 1 damage but these are shooting attacks so…okay, fine I suppose.
The final thing to note is the special rule which is going to be rather useful. Spectral Bolts means they straight up ignore Line-of-sight rules for shooting and also ignore cover modifiers to the save rolls. That could come in SUPER handy for picking off characters or even supporting friendly units by firing volleys from behind.
I’m only counting 5 models in the set as well. Now I’m very curious as to how many points this unit will be. I’m also wondering if what the actual unit size will be once we get the new Nighthaunt Battletome. To go from 5 to 10 models is going to eat up valuable reinforcement slots. And that’s “only” 20 shots at a 12″ range. I just hope their points costs doesn’t make them unappealing.
You’re first crack at these crack shots will be Arena of Shades!
Crossboos: Not terrible. But also not as “scary” as I was hoping.
