New 40k rules are here in War Zone Octarius: Rising Tide for the Cadians, Inquisition, Tyranids, Deathwatch, and even terrain!
With the Warzone Octarius: Rising Tide supplement in hobbyists’ hands, we can get a better picture of what all the new rules are looking like for factions focussed on in the book.
These rules are collected from all the following reviews on YouTube, Imgur, and Warhammer Community alike, so be sure to watch your favorite presenters talk about their take on the book at the links below!
Get Your War Zone Octarius Here
Since this is a little different than a standard faction codex or supplement, we’ve included the introduction below in case you are curious about how exactly the rules are applied to each faction.
All the New War Zone Octarius: Rising Tide 40k Rules
Now let’s start checking out all the rules!
New Imperial Guard Cadians 40k Rules: War Zone Octarius
The first new rules we see for Cadia in Octarius are three new Warlord Trait options. In our opinion, there is one clear winner here and that’s Gifted Commander. This trait puts a ton of mind game power on your side, being able to teeter-totter match-ups in the early game can heavily sway the game into your favor early on.
If you can bait your opponent to over commit to one side of the board, then quickly redeploy your biggest threats to the other side (especially long-range threats) you dictate how they have to play their first few turns! The only tricky thing is if this is better than any of their traits available to the greater Astra Militarum forces.
40k Cadia Octarius Relic Rules:
Of the new 4 Relics, Dekker’s Auto Servo Skull and Tactica Pax Cadia both seem like decent options. Dekker’s allows you to greatly extend the range of orders, giving you much more flexibility on the board with how you position your officers and troops. while Pax Cadia allows you to get a -1CP discount to a stratagem (which can make it cost 0). This can only be used once a turn and once per stratagem in any given game. It also only works for Battle Tactic or Strategic Ploy Stratagems that have to select a Cadian unit.
Even with the restriction, this can be extremely powerful, getting you free stratagems every turn can be huge, and easily win the game with the extra power! In this book alone there’s potential to get 2 completely free stratagems over the course of two turns.
The sword itself is a keen weapon in the hands of skilled officers, and its glorious presence ensures the morale of your Whiteshields – often their Achilles heel – will be more resolute than ever. This sword is just one of several relics available to Cadian commanders, while there are also plenty of suitably obdurate Warlord Traits.
Ignoring any modifiers, especially for those giant units, is really nice and can keep those poor conscripts in line. Next, it is pretty strong in combat, and we can imagine some heroic moments with this!
New 40k Cadian Octarius Rules Stratagems:
The Cadians received quite a few new Stratagem options in the book, with a total of 7 new options landing in players’ arsenals. Both of the Battle Tactic Stratagems look great! Cadia Stands from Octarius make your infantry harder to take down by making 1s and 2s to wound auto fail, while also giving you a +1 save if the weapon is being used against your infantry in 1 Damage.
If you are using large squads, this 1CP can save quite a few bodies swinging the turn in your favor! Shock Troops also looks to be great in a heavily infantry focussed list. This strat allows you to push up the board in emergencies and being able to still shoot your weapons as if you didn’t move. This can come in clutch in a pinch, and can even be used on non-infantry units for an extra CP.
Of the last two Stratagems, Load-Fire-Reload seems good. Causing a vehicle’s blast weapons to score double hits on nat 6s is great, or triple hits against monsters and vehicles, which is bonkers! On top of that, you can prevent them from taking overwatch shots next turn or Set to Defend, all for just a single cp!
New Octarius 40k Deathwatch Space Marines & Inquisition Rules
In the Octarius book, Deathwatch is getting new 40k rules access to 4 new stratagems with 2 looking a little bit better than the others. Battlefield Teleportation is fantastic for only 1CP allowing you to “blink” your unit and redeploy them anywhere they are needed!
While Specialism Extremis seems very picky on the surface, and expensive at 3CP, getting an entire unit to auto wound if they hit can be a massive boost in damage that turn, especially when you get high damage, but low strength attacks going against a high toughness unit.
In the book, Deathwatch got an Army of Renown called the Kill Team Strike Force. While there are quite a few restrictions that have to be met, the important thing to consider is the benefits. The best of which seems to be the Veterans of the Long Vigil ability.
This makes your already very versatile force into one that can truly turn into the swiss army knife of Space Marine armies. Each Battle round, you can manually select any Space Marine Chapter Tactic from the Core Space Marine Codex, and swap out your Xenos Hunters tactic for it!
That means you can have a huge variety in bonuses depending on what you need at exactly that turn. The only downside is you can’t select any tactic for more than one turn… Even still, this seems super strong!
New Inquisition 40k Rules:
Unlike the Deathwatch, Inquisition really didn’t get much. Essentially, they didn’t get anything! This “update” for Inquisition was just to bring them into an official venue. Think of this update as an Official printed FAQ, rather than an FAQ you have to look up and print yourself. The biggest change was simply to update the format to the newer bullet point style instead of having to dig through paragraphs for rules.
They are more or else exactly the same as they were before inside Psychic Awakening: Pariah, except now they can be paywalled behind the 40k app with the digital code at the back of the book…
New 40k Terrain & Fortification Rules: Octarius Supplement
With the new datasheets, a few Fortifications have been updated! The Void Shield Generator has had its Projected Void Shields ability revamped. It no longer cares about the location of the opposing unit, but now the aura degrades in range as the wounds remaining decrease, putting your models closer and closer to its explosion range!
Next up is the largest unaligned fortification the Fortress of Redemption. Its stat line has been changed with a +1 BS at all tiers and -2 Toughness. It has also replaced its previous Twin Icarus Lascannon with Redemption Lascannons, which function very similarly but put out fewer shots and have more consistent damage.
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Additionally, Fire Points has been upgraded to allow 20 models embarked to shoot instead of the previous 15 and Automated Weapons now prevent the Silo from being fired if no units are embarked. Overall, this looks to be an even trade, perhaps better, assuming you plan on keeping units embarked!
The Skyshield Landing Pad seems to have gotten quite a few rule changes, but ultimately this is just to make the rules more in line with the 9th edition core rules. The big take-aways are that Shielded only provides a 6+ invulnerable save instead of the previous 5+.
Additionally Unfurled now heals the landed aircraft a guaranteed 3 wounds, instead of d3 previously, and even better now regains the ability to use one-use weapons it already used prior to landing! It also gains +1 to hit with ranged attacks for that turn! Overall this is a massive boost in power for this Fortification going all-in on aerial focus and removing its niche invuln rule.
Looking at the Bastion now, we see it now has a bracketed stat line going from 4+ bs to 6+, whereas previously it had a static 5+. It also lost two wounds and now sits at 18 total. It gained the Roof Hatch wargear which increase the embarked shooting ability up to 15 models and now can also take a Comms Antenna which allows an embarked character to generate a command point on a 5+ in the command phase.
The abilities are brought up to speed with 9th edition rules but largely function the same. This seems to be a great update with CP generation being a huge bonus!
The final fortification is the Aegis Defence Line. +20 model, -5 icarus, -10 quad. It’s stat line and weapons are unchanged, however, some of the abilities have changed. Set-up now requires 3″ cohesion instead of the previous 6″. The Automated Weapons rule is slightly adjusted giving you the ability to prioritize the closest Aircraft instead of the closest unit period.
Additionally, to avoid the Automated Weapons restriction rule you now need an Infantry unit within 1″ of it to perform the new Operate Gun Emplacement (action) and it buffs its BS to a 4+. This also seems like a positive change, but still might not be that great overall.
With all the changes covered, the only thing left is to check the point changes! The Fortress of Redemption and Void Shield Generator both made it out with unchanged point values!
The Skyshield Landing Pad has gone up 20 points while the Bastion went down a whopping 30 points! Finally, the Aegis Defence Line also went up in points with a +15 point bump at base loadout and +10 from previous with the Quad-gun option instead. In general, these changes seem to be mostly positive, but only time will tell.
All the New Octarius Warhammer 40k Tyranids Rules
Starting off strong, Hive Fleet Leviathan got access to 3 new Warlord traits! The strongest looks like it may be Strategic Adaptation because it puts a ton of mind game power on your side, being able to teeter-totter match-ups in the early game can heavily sway the game into your favor early on.
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This is pretty sweet, allowing you to adapt to the game as it goes on. Plus, this is just fun, but it’s something else you’ll have to remember at the start of each battle round. So, you can just wait until you realize you need something and change.
Along with the new warlord traits, they also received 4 new relic options. The two best seem to be The Void Crown and Biomorphic Carapace. The Void Crown is great for two straightforward reasons, extra psychic support is always good, and getting un-deniable powers is fantastic!
Biomorphic Carapace on the other hand adds a ton of durability to one of your important character models, making them wounded on 4’s most of the time and 5’s a lot of the time depending on the model.
Synaptic Links are a new type of ability adding some extra support to some of the already existing models! Of course, this includes a points cost, but it might be worth running them for their effects. Additionally the larger game you play the more you get to take!
The next page details some of the range questions that might arise when playing. To summarize, Hive fleet Synapse units, even if they don’t take one of the new abilities, serve as range extenders if they are within range of as synapse range of a model with one of the new link abilities.
They form a sort of network that increases the normal 12″ of your one Link-equipped model to potentially the whole board (not quite, but a lot more than 12″)!
Finally, after getting through the rules and implications, we get to check out all the new abilities! There is 9 total, with each linked to a character, but for our purposes of choosing our favorites, we will ignore what model they are attached to, as the range and army formation can easily be expanded around a powerful ability! Two out of this list stand out, but many of them appear at the very least playable, so this is by no means an exclusive list.
First Psychic Channeling, look sneakily good. Being able to roll and extra dice and discard one means you’ll be casting much more of your powers on average (from the selected unit). Additionally, if you combine this with the new Void Crown relic, you can get an increasing amount of un-deniable powers!
Second, Bioweapon Bond or Weaponised Gestation, which fill the same role for different types of units, are both good. In short, roll buffs or re-rolls are always strong! It just depends on whether you have more Melee or Ranged threats to target within your list to receive the buff.
Synaptic Links allow larger Tyranid bioforms to extend a portion of their innate strengths to nearby units. Each synapse creature has its own unique ability, so stealthy Broodlords can guide swarms of chittering beasties through the shadows making your squishier units much more resistant to gunfire as they creep within clawing range of the enemy.
Giving the benefits of light and heavy cover all the time, then giving them dense cover over 12″ is really strong. Hopefully, this helps your Genestealers survive long enough to get into combat!
Meanwhile, sinister Neurothropes can project an aura of psychic dread through fast-moving units, like flocks of Gargoyles, ensuring a weakened enemy unit is liable to flee from the field no matter where they are.
This isn’t the craziest one ever but for 15 points it’s not bad. Maybe they’ll be the codex to really try and take advantage of enemy Morale.
Overall it’s a great time to play 40k as new updates bring renewed life to the game, however with supplement after supplement (not to mention the FAQs, etc.) there is a cost in money and time.
Need more on everything Warhammer? Here are the latest rules updates!
- All The New Black Templars Warhammer 40k Rules: REVIEW
- Octarius 40k Cadia Subfaction Rules
- Octarius 40k Deathwatch & Inquisition Rules
- New 40k Terrain & Fortification Rules
- Tyranids Rules For Octarius
All the Latest 40k News & Rumors
What are your thoughts on all these rules? Which is your favorite new option?
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About the Author: Andrew Schrank
