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We need to separate Kryptman's plan in two different parts, his Galactic Cordon and his Gambit.

The Galactic Cordon mostly worked, it was a plan meant to slow down Leviathan and it did just that. It wasn't a complete success because even though slowed down Leviathan was far from starving and thus the Cordon could never be more than simply a delaying action.

His Gambit though has been pretty much an unmitigated disaster. The Gambit wasn't meant to buy time (as that was the job of the Cordon), it was meant for both Tyranids and Orks to destroy each other, which obviously didn't happen.

The thing with the Gambit is to show that even though Kryptman is the foremost expert on Tyranids, that doesn't mean he truly knows the Great Devourer, and he made the mistake of assuming he did.

Actually I don't think it is ever said that Kryptman's Gambit's goal was for mutual destruction. That was the best case scenario, but I don't think that was ever the stated goal. The goal was to buy time, and hopefully result in the neutralization of at least one threat of either the Orks or Tyranids. It certainly bought time, time that would not have been bought otherwise since the rest of the Imperium seems to have abandoned his original cordon strategy. As of the last known known state of the Octarius warzone, the Tyranids are victorious, the Overfiend is dead, and there is a succession struggle between rival Ork warlords. The Ork empire of Octarius seems to be effectively neutralized, at least until a new undisputed Overfiend can start to reconstruct it.

So while the Gambit might not have achieved the best case scenario, I would not call it an unmitigated disaster. It achieved its minimum goal of buying time for the Imperium, and it seems to have put the Orks of Octarius out of action as a coherent Ork empire. It was a partial success.

The 9th edition codex states that Kryptman hoped for mutual annihilation, and previous codexes also state that Kryptman had become arrogant enough to believe he could control the Tyranids. The guy is clearly smart, but he is letting his pride get the better of him. Or he is just senile.

Either way the codexes state that the Gambit was a mistake as Octarius provided exponential amounts of growth to both warring xenos and the fighting started spilling over Imperial sectors.

Buying time doesn't quite work if your opponent is growing faster than you in that time.

But it didn't buy time. The Octarius Gamble failed miserably because Imperial forces had to be drawn in to stop the war from spilling out of Octarius, which it did anyway.
Numerous worlds were lost to Ork invasions or Genestealer Cult uprisings because Kryptman pitted the two most hyperadaptive and warlike species known to mankind against each other and expected them to stay in their own back garden.
When elements of twenty-five Astartes Chapters, eight Knight houses (including one which was annihilated), four Titan Legions, eight Sororitas Orders, and thousands of Skitarii, PDF, and Militarum personnel get brought in to contain the outcome of Kryptman's plan I'd hardly call that a success. A significant portion of the Imperium's might was dedicated to cleaning up his mess and they took massive losses in the process and Leviathan came out of that war stronger than when it went in.
The Galactic Cordon bought time, the Octarius War wasted it in return.

Also looking through the 9th edition codex and it ups the human cost of the Galactic Cordon to trillions.
Which does make sense as the previous codexes stated that the Galactic Cordon was the biggest Imperium inflicted genocide on humans since the Horus Heresy.

That's why the rest of the Inquisition balked at the cost. It may have been the correct course of action but we aren't talking about an isolated exterminatus but the systematic destruction of hundreds of loyal and valuable Imperial worlds (including Hive Worlds and Forge Worlds) to simply buy time.

The Gambit bought time because those tendrils were headed towards Terra. By making them divert to hit the Orks, it bought time as the Sol system was not attacked by Leviathan. Even the current state with the Tyranids just beginning to break out is still better than the alternative, which would have been the Tyranids at Sol. The Gambit bought time at the cost of the Tyranids coming out stronger, but the Orks have come out weaker (at least so far). It neutralized one of the big Ork empires from being a coherent threat. Also the very fact the Imperium had time to divert forces and fortify worlds around the space of the Octarius War shows the Imperium had gained time.

The Imperial worlds that were destroyed in the cordon were lost anyway. The cordon strategy involved Exterminatus on worlds the Tyranids were already attacking, and which the Imperium could not defend anyway. If nothing had been done, those worlds would still have been lost and consumed, rendering them irrecoverable by the Imperium anyway. The cordon was making the best of a bad situation as there was no hope of a successful reconquest of those worlds (since they would have been stripped).

Iracundus wrote:
The Gambit bought time because those tendrils were headed towards Terra. By making them divert to hit the Orks, it bought time as the Sol system was not attacked by Leviathan. Even the current state with the Tyranids just beginning to break out is still better than the alternative, which would have been the Tyranids at Sol. The Gambit bought time at the cost of the Tyranids coming out stronger, but the Orks have come out weaker (at least so far). It neutralized one of the big Ork empires from being a coherent threat.

Firstly, no it wasn't. The tendril on a direct course for Terra was stopped at Tarsis Ultra. Kryptman did help there by synthesising a bio-toxin to kill a Norn Queen but that was a once-off plan. Funnily enough, he also conducted Exterminatus without authorisation in that campaign.
Secondly, those forces that were dragged in to stop Octarius from getting worse (which it did) could have been used to stop the tendril from getting to Sol. Unlike the Cordon, everything that died in the Octarius War can get consumed by Leviathan and in turn, strengthen it. The Overfiend's empire being broken doesn't help when every dead combatant feeds Leviathan allowing it to become stronger than before.
Kryptman's plan also came close to failing at the first hurdle and it was only pure luck that one Bioship made a landing on Ghorala.

The Imperial worlds that were destroyed in the cordon were lost anyway. The cordon strategy involved Exterminatus on worlds the Tyranids were already attacking, and which the Imperium could not defend anyway. If nothing had been done, those worlds would still have been lost and consumed, rendering them irrecoverable by the Imperium anyway. The cordon was making the best of a bad situation as there was no hope of a successful reconquest of those worlds (since they would have been stripped).

That's not true. Many worlds were evacuated and then destroyed with only some being invaded by the Tyranids before getting glassed. Kryptman destroyed a whole slew of planets in the cordon to slow Leviathan but still killed billions of his own people which is the problem other Inquisitors had. The dogma of the Imperium is fine with massive casualties if those casualties died fighting the enemies of man, which they didn't because they were killed by Kryptman.

Eh the whole "Tarsis tendril was headed for Terra" doesn't really works if you see a map. Neither the Octarius tendril btw.

The current tendrils that are going to Terra is the Valedor one and the new Pacificus one.

 Gert wrote:

The Imperial worlds that were destroyed in the cordon were lost anyway. The cordon strategy involved Exterminatus on worlds the Tyranids were already attacking, and which the Imperium could not defend anyway. If nothing had been done, those worlds would still have been lost and consumed, rendering them irrecoverable by the Imperium anyway. The cordon was making the best of a bad situation as there was no hope of a successful reconquest of those worlds (since they would have been stripped).

That's not true. Many worlds were evacuated and then destroyed with only some being invaded by the Tyranids before getting glassed. Kryptman destroyed a whole slew of planets in the cordon to slow Leviathan but still killed billions of his own people which is the problem other Inquisitors had. The dogma of the Imperium is fine with massive casualties if those casualties died fighting the enemies of man, which they didn't because they were killed by Kryptman.

The cordon strategy was to destroy a world that the Tyranids had already attacked and that was about to fall or that had recently fallen, in the process of being consumed. The whole point was to make the Tyranids get no reward for the effort expended in fighting and taking a world, leaving them at a net loss in terms of energy and biomass. We see an example of this strategy in action on pages 42-43 of the 3rd edition Tyranid Codex. A SM ship enacts Exterminatus on an Imperial world that has just fallen to the Tyranids, before the Tyranid ships have had a chance to feed from the capillary towers, and we are shown the cheery peaceful scene of an Imperial base's structures being broken down by Tyranid flora (all Imperial defenders already dead and gone, just the base structures left) before the firestorm sweeps over them.

Simply destroying worlds ahead of the fleet does little beyond redirect the fleet towards areas that do have biomass. The Tyranid fleet scouts would just encounter a dead world and then keep moving without stopping. Not much energy or effort expended. It is specifically having to fight that is energetically expensive as the Tyranids have to wake or create new creatures, and replace losses. The analysis of Tyranid consumption, first written about in BFG and then repeated in the 3rd edition Tyranid Codex, is that the hive fleets don't start to have a net replenishment in biomass until a world has fallen and they start consuming it. Being interrupted in that last phase would leave them at a net deficit and that is exactly what the whole cordon strategy relied on.

Kryptman killed nobody that was not already doomed to die from the Tyranids. Their worlds were going to fall and be consumed anyway.


Addendum: Having found the old 4th edition Codex, here is a quote:

With a grim finality, the venerable Inquisitor Kryptman ordered that a galactic cordon be established. His plan was that a band of worlds should be evacuated across the path of Leviathan's main advance, with many of them razed to the ground to deny in order to deny the hive fleet any further raw materials for its ships. This would slow its advance long enough for Battlefleets Solar and Tempestus to muster. Any worlds already under invasion within the boundaries of this cordon were to undero Exterminatus just at the point when the Tyranids descended to feed upon the doomed populace. Kryptman theorised that in this manner the swarms would expend great resources to claim a world only to have every living thing upon it reduced to ash by barrages of cyclonic torpedoes and virus bombs.

p. 20, 4th edition Tyranid Codex

 Tyran wrote:
Eh the whole "Tarsis tendril was headed for Terra" doesn't really works if you see a map. Neither the Octarius tendril btw.

The Tarsis tendril was headed for Terra. The 4th edition Codex says right after describing the defeat of the Tarsis tendril:

After the dissipation of the tendril of Leviathan pushing towards Terra, the worlds in the great tract of space between the jaws of Leviathan began to register on Imperial augurs once more.

p. 18, 4th edition Tyranid Codex

Iracundus wrote:
No that's wrong. That is not how the cordon strategy worked. It was to destroy a world that the Tyranids had already attacked and that was about to fall or that had recently fallen, in the process of being consumed. The whole point was to make the Tyranids get no reward for the effort expended in fighting and taking a world, leaving them at a net loss in terms of energy and biomass. We see an example of this strategy in action on pages 42-43 of the 3rd edition Tyranid Codex. A SM ship enacts Exterminatus on an Imperial world that has just fallen to the Tyranids, before the Tyranid ships have had a chance to feed from the capillary towers, and we are shown the cheery peaceful scene of an Imperial base's structures being broken down by Tyranid flora (all Imperial defenders already dead and gone, just the base structures left) before the firestorm sweeps over them.

Simply destroying worlds ahead of the fleet does nothing and is illogical. The Tyranid fleet scouts would just encounter a dead world and then keep moving without stopping. Not much energy or effort expended. It is specifically having to fight that is energetically expensive as the Tyranids have to wake or create new creatures, and replace losses. The analysis of Tyranid consumption, first written about in BFG and then repeated in the 3rd edition Tyranid Codex, is that the hive fleets don't start to have a net replenishment in biomass until a world has fallen and they start consuming it. Being interrupted in that last phase would leave them at a net deficit and that is exactly what the whole cordon strategy relied on.

From the 4th Edition Tyranid Codex:

So from the Codex itself, Kryptman evacuated or destroyed worlds that were yet to be invaded and also destroyed worlds already under invasion. Then some of the worlds he had evacuated were taken over by Orks, rendering said evacuations meaningless. Kryptman's Cordon bought time but condemned billions of Imperial lives at his orders, not under the claws of Leviathan or Orks.
You are wrong and the Codex proves it.

Kryptman killed nobody that was not already doomed to die from the Tyranids. Their worlds were going to fall and be consumed anyway.

Which isn't the point. It doesn't matter if Kryptman believed them doomed because they were not his lives to end. If they had all died fighting Leviathan then he likely wouldn't have been exiled because they died fighting for the Imperium but many were killed before Leviathan even got to their world. Kryptman spent lives that were not his to spend, even under his mandate as a Lord Inquisitor he did not have the authority to enact genocide on that many uncorrupted Imperial citizens.

 Gert wrote:
Which isn't the point. It doesn't matter if Kryptman believed them doomed because they were not his lives to end. If they had all died fighting Leviathan then he likely wouldn't have been exiled because they died fighting for the Imperium but many were killed before Leviathan even got to their world. Kryptman spent lives that were not his to spend, even under his mandate as a Lord Inquisitor he did not have the authority to enact genocide on that many uncorrupted Imperial citizens.

Actually they were. By the letter of the law, an Inquisitor has such authority as they answer only to the Emperor. Of course we know that in practice the authority of the Inquisition is constrained by practicalities and on the internecine politics and factions of the Inquisition itself, but from a legalistic theoretical point of view, Kryptman was within his authority as an Inquisitor Lord.

Iracundus wrote:
Actually they were. By the letter of the law, an Inquisitor has such authority as they answer only to the Emperor.

And yet time and time again that is proven to be false. Inquisitors have power for as long as they are allowed it and Kryptman pushed his limits too far.

 Gert wrote:

Iracundus wrote:
Actually they were. By the letter of the law, an Inquisitor has such authority as they answer only to the Emperor.

And yet time and time again that is proven to be false. Inquisitors have power for as long as they are allowed it and Kryptman pushed his limits too far.

Please read carefully what I wrote. By the letter of the law, Kryptman was entirely within his authority. In practice we know the Inquisition plays politics. However the claim that Kryptman was acting in flagrant violation outside of his mandate is false, because his mandate was unlimited as written. He fell to politics and because his peers did stop to count the cost and didn't think the ends justified the means, which is ironic considering this is a bunch of Inquisitor Lords we are talking about.

Iracundus wrote:
Please read carefully what I wrote. By the letter of the law, Kryptman was entirely within his authority. In practice we know the Inquisition plays politics. However the claim that Kryptman was acting outside of his mandate is false, because his mandate is unlimited as written.

The reality of the Inquisition trumps the letter of the law and as a Lord Inquisitor, Kryptman would have known that. He chose to enact a massively bold and controversial plan, giving his enemies the perfect rallying call to end his career if not his life. If he didn't think that the political aspect of being a high ranking member of the Inquisition wouldn't factor in then he was a fool and deserved his fate.

 Gert wrote:

Iracundus wrote:
Please read carefully what I wrote. By the letter of the law, Kryptman was entirely within his authority. In practice we know the Inquisition plays politics. However the claim that Kryptman was acting outside of his mandate is false, because his mandate is unlimited as written.

The reality of the Inquisition trumps the letter of the law and as a Lord Inquisitor, Kryptman would have known that. He chose to enact a massively bold and controversial plan, giving his enemies the perfect rallying call to end his career if not his life. If he didn't think that the political aspect of being a high ranking member of the Inquisition wouldn't factor in then he was a fool and deserved his fate.

Certainly Kryptman made a political misstep. Perhaps he thought the results would silence the critics or that he would have sufficient favors or esteem from his past track record to weather the criticism. Given the magnitude of his past successes from the discovery of the Tyranid threat of Behemoth to the defeat of one major tendril of Leviathan (the Tarsis tendril), this would have been a reasonable assessment. Kryptman misjudged the political pushback from his decisions but his actions were not in and of themselves some wild violation of his Inquisitorial mandate. By the letter of the law he was within his authority and if he had won the political fight, no doubt the Inquisitors and others of the Imperium would be nodding their heads solemnly at the great cost but understandable necessity of his actions.

The fact he is still active even afterwards with apparent agents and even Deathwatch operatives following his orders shows that there was and still is considerable dissension within the Inquisition. Clearly he still has some form of support or others turn a blind eye to his activities.

The political fight is all that mattered as soon as he gave the first Exterminatus order. He thought his reputation would allow him to kill billions of Imperial citizens and leave scores of worlds barren, and technically he was right. It wasn't until those same worlds were taken by the Orks and his plan started to crack that he was exiled. The Imperium didn't care about the people in the end, it cared about the rocks not being in their control. The people were just a good reason to get started.
But if Kryptman didn't prepare for political backlash then again that is his fault and the punishment of exile is fair enough.

And yes, afterward he still had allies much in the same way that Dragan Vangorich had allies after he murdered almost every High Lord of Terra. Just because he had allies, doesn't mean he was right.

Considering that he bought the Imperium time, enough so that the original under the galactic plane maw of Leviathan did not already result in a siege of Terra and Leviathan had to try for a western Pacificus approach as well, I would say that all things considered Kryptman was right. Nobody else had any viable alternative plans and his cordon and gambit made the best of a bad situation.

A vainglorious flag-waving last stand on the worlds Leviathan was attacking would have achieved nothing. The Imperium wants to reconquer worlds hence why Exterminatus is frowned upon, but worlds lost to the Tyranids are worthless reconquests. Kryptman made his decision in cold acceptance of the reality that the Imperium could not fight Leviathan in a conventional war of attrition and hope to prevail. The Imperium needs to fight smarter not just harder against the Tyranids, and Inquisitors that drink the Imperial Kool-Aid and end up believing in their own Imperial propaganda about military invincibility do not help.

Kryptman was a realist but got so focused on the external threat of the Tyranids he misjudged the internal political threat of his peers. However the Imperium even now reaps the rewards (and downsides) of his efforts. Leviathan has broken out, the Orks of Octarius are splintered, but all this is happening with time that was bought by his actions. There has been no Tyranid siege of Terra yet due to his actions. In that same timeframe, Guilliman had time to wake up and now Terra has time to react to this 4th Tyrannic War coming in from the direction of Pacificus.

As I mentioned previously, the narrativef rom Warzone: Octarius seemed to end with a hint that Kryptman might act and once again stall Leviathan, possibly through using the Ork Metk's "crown" that disrupted the Hive Mind and synapse network at least on a local level. So Kryptman might once again end up being the biggest non-SM hero the modern 40k Imperium has. Given the surfeit of square-jawed manly SM warrior heroes, I think this is a good thing.

There wasn't going to be a siege at Terra because Leviathan still had thousands of worlds to go through first. You're jumping the gun with your claims. A tendril aiming for Terra does not mean it would have got there, especially coming from the Eastern Fringe which they still did even if they breached from below the galactic plane.
The Cordon bought time but at a cost too great for the Imperium to allow Kryptman to remain an Inquisitor. The Octarius gamble was a mistake that wasted the time the Cordon bought and drew in huge military resources that could have been used elsewhere.
Also that "crown" you mentioned isn't in Kryptman's hands. Inquisitor Van Roth has it so your hero isn't doing much of anything because he isn't an Inquisitor anymore.

 Gert wrote:
There wasn't going to be a siege at Terra because Leviathan still had thousands of worlds to go through first. You're jumping the gun with your claims. A tendril aiming for Terra does not mean it would have got there, especially coming from the Eastern Fringe which they still did even if they breached from below the galactic plane.
The Cordon bought time but at a cost too great for the Imperium to allow Kryptman to remain an Inquisitor. The Octarius gamble was a mistake that wasted the time the Cordon bought and drew in huge military resources that could have been used elsewhere.
Also that "crown" you mentioned isn't in Kryptman's hands. Inquisitor Van Roth has it so your hero isn't doing much of anything because he isn't an Inquisitor anymore.

Leviathan was not coming from the Eastern Fringe. Look at the maps of Leviathan and its earliest incursions. It was coming from below the galactic plane and some of those incursions were within Segmentum Solar itself. That is why for example the 4th edition Codex makes reference to Battlefleet Solar, not just Battlefleet Tempestus. Any incursion within Segmentum Solar, into the heartland of the Imperium, is already far too much of a threat to Terra for the Imperium to countenance. That was what made the Imperium panic. The previous Tyranid fleets of Behemoth and Kraken were from the far Eastern fringe and thus easy for the High Lords and other peers of the Imperium to dismiss as far enough away to not worry about, but not so when worlds within Segmentum Solar are fallling.

Inquisitor Van Roth failed and is implied to be dead by the end of Warzone: Octarius. Kryptman was monitoring Van Roth's efforts and the hint was that he would be picking up where Van Roth left off.

So it is lost, thought the Inquisitor. We have failed, all of us.

A bright flash made Van Roth look to the sky. It was a burning Imperial cruiser heading straight for the ground. He sank to the floor. All there was left to do was wait for the blast of the Haven Spire's self-destruct to consume him.

p. 27, War Zone: Octarius, Book 1: Rising Tide

While it is certainly not unknown for GW to write a last minute escape, the situation seems pretty hopeless for Van Roth at the end. His party has been mauled and is surrounded by masses of Tyranids. An Imperial cruiser is falling out of orbit and will no doubt cause a huge impact event. The Eldar Haven Spire's self-destruct sequence was triggered. Death approaches for Van Roth in at least 3 forms when the book's narrative ends.

 Gert wrote:

Iracundus wrote:
No that's wrong. That is not how the cordon strategy worked. It was to destroy a world that the Tyranids had already attacked and that was about to fall or that had recently fallen, in the process of being consumed. The whole point was to make the Tyranids get no reward for the effort expended in fighting and taking a world, leaving them at a net loss in terms of energy and biomass. We see an example of this strategy in action on pages 42-43 of the 3rd edition Tyranid Codex. A SM ship enacts Exterminatus on an Imperial world that has just fallen to the Tyranids, before the Tyranid ships have had a chance to feed from the capillary towers, and we are shown the cheery peaceful scene of an Imperial base's structures being broken down by Tyranid flora (all Imperial defenders already dead and gone, just the base structures left) before the firestorm sweeps over them.

Simply destroying worlds ahead of the fleet does nothing and is illogical. The Tyranid fleet scouts would just encounter a dead world and then keep moving without stopping. Not much energy or effort expended. It is specifically having to fight that is energetically expensive as the Tyranids have to wake or create new creatures, and replace losses. The analysis of Tyranid consumption, first written about in BFG and then repeated in the 3rd edition Tyranid Codex, is that the hive fleets don't start to have a net replenishment in biomass until a world has fallen and they start consuming it. Being interrupted in that last phase would leave them at a net deficit and that is exactly what the whole cordon strategy relied on.

From the 4th Edition Tyranid Codex:

Spoiler:

With a grim finality, the venerable Inquisitor Kryptman ordered that a galactic cordon be established. His plan was that a band of worlds should be evacuated across the path of Leviathan's main advance, with many of them razed to the ground in order to deny the hive fleet any further raw materials for its ships. This would slow its advance long enough for Battlefleets Solar and Tempestus to muster. Any world's already under invasion within the bounds of this cordon were to undergo Exterminatus just at the point when the Tyranids descended to feed upon the doomed populace. Kryptman theorised that in this manner the swarms would expend great resources to claim a world, only to have every living thing upon it reduced to ash by barrages of cyclonic torpedoes and virus bombs. With one stark and callous decision, Kryptman had condemned billions of souls to extermination. To this day it remains the single largest act of genocide ever inflicted upon the Imperium upon its own since the Horus Heresy.
The decision to abandon hundreds of worlds in the face of the alien advance was met by howls of outrage. Many influential Inquisitors called for Kryptman to be declared Excommunicate Traitoris. When these barren worlds were swiftly claimed by the Orks migrating ahead of the Tyranid invasion, Kryptman's detractors cursed him for a radical, a traitor and a fool. A Carta Extremis was issued, stripping him of his title and forcing him into hiding as a criminal of the worst kind

So from the Codex itself, Kryptman evacuated or destroyed worlds that were yet to be invaded and also destroyed worlds already under invasion. Then some of the worlds he had evacuated were taken over by Orks, rendering said evacuations meaningless. Kryptman's Cordon bought time but condemned billions of Imperial lives at his orders, not under the claws of Leviathan or Orks.
You are wrong and the Codex proves it.

Kryptman killed nobody that was not already doomed to die from the Tyranids. Their worlds were going to fall and be consumed anyway.

Which isn't the point. It doesn't matter if Kryptman believed them doomed because they were not his lives to end. If they had all died fighting Leviathan then he likely wouldn't have been exiled because they died fighting for the Imperium but many were killed before Leviathan even got to their world. Kryptman spent lives that were not his to spend, even under his mandate as a Lord Inquisitor he did not have the authority to enact genocide on that many uncorrupted Imperial citizens.

That quote strongly suggests only worlds under attack by Tyranids experienced Exterminatus with human populations present- other worlds were evacuated and some then had the biospheres devastated before the Tyranids arrived. Those Orks would have occupied barren worlds.

That is still a success for the Imperium, as they would have preserved Imperial resources removed from the worlds even if the Tyranids nommed an under-developed ork colony on a barren world.

Sounds like some commanders baulked at waiting till the last moment to commit exterminatus though, or they would not raze worlds not yet under attack as this would have less impact. It would be a lot more dangerous to counter-attack Tyranids than destroy an empty world.

Obviously the cost was huge. Other members of the Inquisition censuring Kryptman is not particularly unusual once they had the barest pretext. The Inquisition is a fractious mess at the best of times, look at the political battle Lord Inquisitor Hector Rex had to endure just to allow the Ordo Malleus to take the lead on an impending daemonic incursion. This was obviously the right course of action, but politics nearly scuppered it.

Even so?

Let’s think strategically. And in the moment, as Kryptman had to.

Between Leivathan’s encroachment and the Arch Arsonist, The Imperium was already fighting on two fronts, against foes noted for being truly implacable and thriving, one way or another, from war.

Neither is going to go away on its own. And colossal as The Imperium’s own resources are, they’re not infinite.

Kryptman bought breathing space. Yes the butcher’s bill was staggering - but it was always going to be had he Done Nothing.

Both foes were on the March. Maybe a given world could’ve driven them off. Maybe a given system might’ve carried on regardless.

I’d argue Kryptman did a bit of doom mongering, and took the very real prospect of all the threatened worlds/systems being doomed anyway, and found advantage. One where those two implacable foes will knock each other about for a long and indeterminate amount of time instead of both of them taking turns to kick your head in.

I don’t think he was under any pretence that whatever emerged from that war would be a flaccid weedy little crippled thing. But he took Tank Squaring as a military concept and kicked it so hard, it became the Square Root.

In short? Whatever crops up from the downside of the Kryptman Gambit, is not going to be as bad as fighting its constituent parts at the same time across a staggeringly wide front.

Except it will be.

The Octarius war drew Orks from neighboring sectors, which in turn fed the Leviathan tendril.

Whatever comes out of Octarius will be a considerably greater threat than the original foes because the winner not only will have added the strength of the loser to its own, but also the strength of every Ork and Tyranid tendril in a radius measuring several sectors.

It’s still a Single Unified Foe with somewhat predictable tactics. Not two very different foes with very different tactics and strategies.

Thinking about it, there’s something from my Professional Life I think is maybe colouring my thoughts that others may not recognise for what it is.

Agony Of Moment, as it relates to car insurance (my frame of reference).

Essentially, Insurance revolves around the question of “what would a reasonable person do”. But, Agony Of Moment is a (British) legal precedent for situations so unusual it’s hard to say what a Reasonable Person would do.

Example.

My car is neatly parked, in accordance with local restrictions.

When it’s time to go home, a Reasonable Person would go back to their car, start it up. Depending exactly how and where you’re parked you check your mirror or pull out cautiously, stopping should any other traffic present itself. All calm, all good. Certainly you don’t just pile into your motor, get it going, pull out as fast as you can and hope for the best.

Unless your life is in immediate danger. Such as being pursued by a Mad Machete Killer.

Provided you can evidence the Mad Machete Killer existed? It changes liability.

Kryptman, I’d argue, was acting in Agony Of Moment. The lives and planets lost were a staggering bill. But had Kryptman done nothing? One way or another, that bill was gonna come due.

Yes he pulled out into oncoming traffic without due care and attention. But…for now…..he’s not caused a pile up.

IDK, the current state of Octarius with Leviathan winning and the Cordon Impenetra forces barely holding seems like a pile up