Flashpoint: Octarius

This month’s White Dwarf has got the start of a new Flashpoint, this time moving to the Octarius Sector, ready to tie in to the new Kill Team box that is coming next month! I thought it might be good to have a proper catch up with this one, anyway, and keep updated as it seems to be a fairly major development going forward, with the next in the series of Warzone books also focusing on the Sector.

This particular flashpoint seems to be involving the Tyranids and the Orks, as a Waaagh! was manoeuvred into the path of a tendril of Hive Fleet Leviathan by the Imperium, thinking that they would wipe each other out. But no! The Tyranids gained more biomass to enjoy, and were able to adapt in yet more interesting ways, while the Orks grew huge on the prospect of even more brutal carnage. The Sector was then declared the planets at the heart of this conflict to be lost to the Imperium, with those worlds bordering the battlegrounds reinforced to contain the xenos menace. Reinforcements of space marines from the Deathwatch as well as the Dark Krakens (a Salamanders successor chapter) answered the call for aid along the newly established Cordon Impenetra.

The Dark Krakens began an unusual mission on the planet Death of Bianzeer; to protect a pack of ursun-wolves, to ensure the Tyranids weren’t able to assimilate the creatures into the hive mind and gain a potentially lethal advantage in the subsector. There is a lot of information about this campaign against the Tyranids, and it all sounds wonderfully atmospheric, with the space marines wading through snowdrifts while the Tyranids send Hormagaunts to burst up through the snow, or Gargoyles hanging still and silent from trees, waiting to attack from above.

I don’t think the Dark Krakens are about to become another Tome Keepers, with a whole Index Astartes article on them, but we get a lot of information about their librarian, chaplain and chapter master, with some datasheets as well. Just the one mission is included in the article, one of which replicates the Dark Krakens’ defence of the ursun-wolves. Additionally, though, there is one Theatre of War, which seems to be a set of additional rules for any scenario of your choosing. This one is set underwater, Beneath the Mirror Sea, the site of a skirmish with the Tyranids prior to the ursun-wolves stuff.

This doesn’t feel as loaded with additional rules and stuff as the first White Dwarf Flashpoint articles, somehow, though maybe they’re going to either draw this out or else have learned to balance the magazine content away from giving too many optional rules. Of course, it’s still fantastic that we get this kind of game content in the magazine! I think it’ll be interesting to see the contents of the Kill Team and Warzone books that come out, and how they link in with this content.