Fall of Cadia: Detachments & Characters

With the story we get some new goodies, and at first I glossed over them, but there actually a few good things.  Both of the detachments are solid, and a few of the formations are ok.  All the Characters are solid and there is something for every Imperial player here.


There are three new characters, the first is Belisarius Cawl for the AdMech, Celestine, and Inquisitor Greyfax.  I really won't go into much detail for Celestine, but she is much improved and quite good and can be taken as an HQ for any Army of the Imperium, which goes the same for all these characters.  She has a orbital barrage now (one use) and her stats have been improved, as well as having a 2+, 4++ and her bodyguard are quite good and they follow her into any unit she joins.  The Ardent blade is quite good, and has a ranged flamer attack.  With Hit and Run and pretty solid stats, she gives good options for Imperial armies that lack mobile and beefy assault units.  200pts, but not a terrible choice for a lot of imperial armies.  Her blessings are good, if not game breakingly great.  She is a solid choice for an IG army looking for a second HQ choice that can bring some needed CC and has quite a bit of leadership buffs.

Cawl is very good for Admech armies, though not terrible for other imperial armies, really he shines best with his fellow martians.  He is also 200 pts but damn is he beefy.  He has a MC statline with lots of 5s and 6s, being T6, WS/BS 5, S5, a 2+ save and 5 wounds!  He is I 5 which is very nice and Ld 10.  He has 3 Attacks base, but with his wargear he is better than he seems in CC. He has an Arc scourge, master crafted power axe, mechadendrite hive, scryersckull, refractor field, and a solar atomiser.  The scourge is melee +1 S, AP4, Haywire, and can reroll his haywire results and is Master crafted.  The mechadendrites give him an additional 2D6 attacks at S4 no ap and a dataspike attack at initiative step 10.  So average 7 attacks at I10 and then 3/4 more with either the scourge or axe (depending what you are facing.  The Atomiser is 12" S10 AP1 Assault D3, Master crafted, melta, a pretty nice little gun!

If you were thinking that having only a 5++ means he might be weak, well fear not, while he doesn't have a great invul save he makes up for it with Feel no pain, which he can re-roll, and he can recover D3 wounds at the start of each of your turns.  So if he is not killed outright, and with T6, its going to have to be a really power weapon or a lot of High strength AP 2 weapons to kill him, he is going to be gaining wounds back a lot.  He also has Canticles of the Omnissiah and special ones just for him call Canticles of the Archmagos.  This work exactly like Canticles of the Omnissiah, with the exception that all friendly army of the imperium vehicles are affected (but do not count to the total units) that are within 12" of Cawl.  Harmony of Metallurgy grants It will not die at the first level(1-3 units).  4-7 gives an extra roll for It will not die, and if you have more than 7, roll one more.  Utterance of Neutralisation grants +1,+2, and +3 BS respectively depending on the number of units.  War Hymnal of Fortitude grants a 6+, 5+, 4+ invul save.

In short, he is pretty fucking awesome for an Admech army, especially if you want both Cult and Skitarii in a single army.  Which brings us to the formations and detachments he is apart of.  The Conclave aquisitorius is the formation and its not bad, its just BIG, so yeah your not going to get a chance to use this a whole lot.  Its Cawl, 1-2 battle maniples or 1 war cohort (skitarii), 1 Holy Requisitioner, 0-1 Cohort cybernetica, 0-1 numinous conclave, and 1-2 Knights.  Thats well over 2000pts at its smallest.  The whole formation has Canticles of the Omni, all characters can upgrade a weapon to Master crafted, and if you somehow max this formation out with all units everyone also gets doctrina imperatives.  Your probably never going to be able to get this last benefit simply due to the amount of pts this will cost.

The Detachment is more reasonable.  The Grand Convocation requires 2 Hq and 4 troops, and all Admech units, including techpriests, are included in the army list.  Hq has Cawl, Tech priest dominus, and enginseers from AM.  Troops are Both skitarii troops and Kataphrons.  This continues for each force org section.  The detachment can take as many troops as it wants, 2-4 HQ, 0-6 of the rest, and 0-3 Lords of War (knights only).  The detachment must have units with two different factions, but this is pretty much guaranteed  to happen.  For command benefits it has Agents of Admech, granting It will not die to all vehicles and they also have Power of the Machine spirit if within 6" of an HQ at the start of the turn.  If its your primary detachment, you can reroll warlord.  Noospheric Choir grants canticles to all units, but only if you max out the detachment, excluding troops.  This seems to include lords of war, so having to take 3 knights on top of everything else means this is going to rarely be in affect.  But this allows you to field an Admech army as a single detachment without having to worry about allies or other such things.  This is a solid detachment, though I do with the last benefit was a bit more reasonable and excluded Lords of War as well, oh well though.

Inquisitor Greyfax is the last character and the cheapest at 150pts.  She is a ML2 psyker and has a standard inquisitor statline.  She has power armor, MC Condemnor boltgun, MC powersword, frag/krak/ psyk-out grenades, and a psyocculum.  She has preferred enemy psykers, stubborn, and indomitable will: which means she always counts as one ML higher than the opposing psyker for deny the witch.  Her warlord trait prevents any enemy infiltrators being set up within 24" of her.  She always knows Aura of Oppression psychic power which has two modes warp charge 1 and 3.  At one she targets one non vehicle unit within 12", that unit takes a pinning test, and even if it passes the test, that unit cannot run, turbo-boost, do sweeping advances, or overwatch.  The warp charge three version affects all non vehicle units within 12".  She also generates two powers from Telepathy, giving her three total powers.  To be honest, I think she is being underestimated as her basic power can really help your unit out, especially given the shooting heavy meta.  This power is extremely effective against tau, neutralizing their biggest defense against charging, and even basic guardsmen can kick Tau ass in CC.  She also brings a lot of anti psyker hitting power to the table.  To me, she is fulfilling a similar role as a Culexus assassin.  The assassin is better at straight up killing psykers, but greyfax brings a lot of support to your units and can join them so she doesn't have to stay out in the open like assassins do.  She should be given strong consideration for most imperial guard armies that are looking for support abilities and strong anti-psyker abilities.

The next formation is the Wrathful Crusade, which while fluffy, is not really something I would consider, unless you are a Black Templar palyer.  You have to take Celestine, Greyfax, a SM Captain, 0-1 Sternguard, 2-4 Crusader squads, 1-2 assault squads, and 1 Temptestus platoon from AM.  You have the usual, max this formation out and you get a rule, but this is one of the few that you could actually do that and still play it in a normal game, but it only grants zealot, which is good though.  Everyone has crusader and gets to reroll charge distances and if it rolls a 10 for a charge, all models in the unit have furious charge.  Its not bad, just not for me.

Now the Castellans of the Imperium detachment is the one that I like, especially for a few armies.  Basically it has the same force org as the Admech one (2-4 HQ, 4+ Troops, 0-6 Hvy, Elite, Fast, 0-3 LoW).  The detachment gets to reroll its warlord trait, unless its one a SC already has, has hatred unless you somehow max it out and then you get Zealot.  But the really nice one is Flock to the front lines, in which whenever a troop choice is destroyed, roll a dice and on a 5+ it returns and is placed in ongoing reserve.  You can continue to do this until you fail, and all units will count for victory points.  So if a unit is killed three times, thats three kills.

Now It would take me pages to list all available units, but every choice from AM, MT, Inq, Assassins, Space marines, Sisters is here.  Note that is only the standard marine codex, so none of the unique ones.  But wow can you have whatever flavor you want.

And there is one army in particular that really gets a benefit here and that is the Militarum Tempestus, for a couple of reasons.  The first is that you can now easily add units to help this army out with out having to take an ally detachment or formation, so you can take exactly what you need with no wasted points!  The main boon is that you can take more than two Hqs for more orders and you can take vendettas to give some much needed anti air firepower.  Inquisitors and assassins can also be taken, and especially for assassins this is nice in that you can take more than one assassin but don't have to take all four.  So if there were two you really wanted to take but haven't been able too, now you can.

I really expect to see this detachment catch on over time, as it has a lot of utility and a lot of ways to play this army.  Is it broken?  Not really as once pts get involved any army here wouldn't be much different than some of the ally shenanigans that has already been seen and since its only imperium armies and not even all, its not the worst of it.

I'll prob go over this detachment in greater detail for Tempestus and IG later, but there is so much you can do, its hard to nail it down to the one way you would take this.

Cadia Stands!
GG