Fall of Cadia Review: Part 2- Belisarius Cawl

by | Jan 15, 2017

Part 2 of my Fall of Cadia review will take a look at the second character of the Triumvirate, Belisarius Cawl. 
Belisarius Cawl
Cawl is the Archmagos Dominus of the Mechanicus. As such, he can be taken in any existing Cult Mechanicus formation, replacing the Techpriest Dominus. Alternatively, he can be taken as an HQ choice in any Army of the Imperium.

Cawl is a character that seems designed for vehicles- boosting the vehicles in your own army and damaging enemy vehicles. He is also a quite a durable character and has some useful wargear for taking on larger horde units in combat. 

In terms of durability, Cawl has toughness 6 and 5 wounds. In addition, he has Feel no Pain and gets to re-roll failed Feel No Pain rolls, giving him roughly a 50% chance of passing the roll. On top of that, he gets to recover D3 wounds at the start of each of your turns. This combines to make him pretty tough to kill against a range of weapons. Grav will still give him problems with is 2+ save and he only has a 5+ invulerable save. Another downside is that he does not have Eternal Warrior. Thanks to his toughness of 6, only Instant Death or a 6 on the D table are going to cause him issues with this though. 


Belisarius Cawl is fairly decent in combat. He has WS5, S5 and 3 attacks on his profile. Pretty good, but not amazing. He is armed with a couple of Melee weapons that are of some use, particularly against vehicles. 
His Arc Scourge is a Master-Crafted weapon that has +1S and Haywire, and also allows him to re-roll the result for Haywire if he wishes. This makes him pretty good for potentially taking out an enemy vehicle. On top of that, he as a piece of wargear called the Mechadendrite Hive. This grants him 2D6 S4 attacks that hit at initiative 10. While it has no AP value, it may struggle to harm Marines and the like, but will the volume of attacks it could cause a fair amount of damage. It also gives him an additional Haywire attack. 

In combat, Cawl gets 4 attacks (3 base plus 1 for 2 Melee weapons) with Haywire (and a single re-roll to hit and re-rolls on his Haywire results). Based on this, he has a good chance of taking out an enemy vehicle with 3 hull points and no save in a single round of combat. He also has the potential to get a number of S4 attacks, making him useful for taking on horde units such as Guard or Orks. 

His ability to take on vehicles is also boosted in the shooting phase. He has an Assault D3 master-crafted Meltagun, which should be potent against a range of vehicular targets (or for killing Marines). Hitting on 2's, he should be pretty lethal to a number of enemy units. 

Belisarius Cawl also adds a lot of buffs to your army and the vehicles in it. He has Canticles of the Omnissiah from the Mechanicus codex. Anyone who has played against them knows that these provide a number of great bonuses to the Mechanicus army. 

In addition to that, he gets some special Canticles of the Archmagos. These work in the same way as Canticles, giving greater bonuses the more units with the Canticles of the Omnissiah special rule. The wording of the Canticles of the Archmagos says it works in the same way as Canticles of the Omnissiah, meaning that the effects increase for each unit with Canticles of the Omnissiah in the army. 
These effects range from giving all vehicle units and Canticles units within 12" It Will Not Die, allowing you to roll with 2 or 3 dice for having more units, increasing the Ballistic Skill of nearby units (up to +3) and giving vehicles an Invulnerable Save (up to 4+). 
Cawl obviously gives a big boost to vehicles in the army, but the best bonuses are only available if you have 8 or more Canticles units on the board. Cawl also has the Scryerskull wargear, allowing you to choose the result of Mysterious Objectives. A nice bonus if you suddenly need access to Skyfire. 

Overall, Cawl is a pretty decent addition to an army of the Imperium. He is probably better suited to a Mechanicus army or one with a large number of vehicles to benefit fully from his special rules. I don't think I would be including him in my armies, it simply doesn't suite the armies that I have, but I can see a lot of use for him in a variety of forces. 

I hope you have enjoyed the review, the next part will take a look at the third character, Inquisitor Greyfax.