Advanced Acquisition Cadre: The 11th-Edition T'au Stealth Detachment

One sentence: in your Shooting phase, when a friendly PATHFINDER TEAM/STEALTH BATTLESUITS unit is selected to shoot, those ranged attacks do not prevent your unit from being hidden.

That is the entire detachment rule, and three things follow from it that you will see claimed otherwise:

• It names two datasheets. Not a keyword, not your recon units generally. Ghostkeel Battlesuits get nothing from it, which surprises people, because the Ghostkeel is the model everyone thinks of as the stealth piece. The Ghostkeel only appears in this detachment as a legal bearer of one enhancement.
• It grants nothing except the preservation of hidden status while shooting. No save bonus, no detection range, no Benefit of Cover, no Stealth. The save bonus everybody mentions is a stratagem, and it is conditional.
• It applies every Shooting phase, automatically, for free. There is no once-per-battle limit and no command point cost, which is unusual and is most of why a 1-DP detachment is worth taking at all.

What it buys you is the answer to the T'au problem. Your army rule improves the accuracy of everything you own, but only while your Observers live, and 11th edition's detection layer makes the Observer the single most obvious target on the board. A Pathfinder Team that spots, shoots and is still hidden when your opponent's turn begins is a Pathfinder Team that does the same thing again next turn.

Three, all 1CP, and all three name the same two datasheets as the rule, so they inherit the same narrow scope.

• Marker Beacon (end of your Movement). Target one friendly PATHFINDER TEAM/STEALTH BATTLESUITS unit, then select one objective your unit is controlling; that objective is secured. This is the scoring half of the detachment and it is easy to under-use. Your recon units are already standing on forward objectives; this makes those objectives stick.
• Microdrone Support (your Shooting). When a friendly PATHFINDER TEAM/STEALTH BATTLESUITS unit starts an action, that action does not prevent your unit from being eligible to shoot. In a mission pack where actions score, this is the difference between a spotter holding a point and a spotter doing something useful while holding it.
• Autoreactive Camouflage (your opponent's Shooting). When an enemy unit targets a friendly PATHFINDER TEAM/STEALTH BATTLESUITS unit, if that friendly unit is hidden, your unit has +1 Sv. Read the condition: it only fires if the unit is already hidden, which means it only works if you have been playing the detachment rule properly all game.

The habit to build: spend Marker Beacon in the movement phase where a forward objective is contested rather than saving it, and hold one command point in your opponent's turn for Autoreactive Camouflage on whichever spotter is most exposed.

Two, and both are Upgrades on a unit rather than character relics. That matters here more than in most detachments, because a stealth list often runs very few Characters and would otherwise have nowhere to put an enhancement.

• Negation Emitters (Upgrade) (15 pts). STEALTH BATTLESUITS unit only. This unit has -3 inch detection range. Straightforward and defensive: put it on the squad you push furthest forward, because that is the one your opponent will try to detect first.
• Unmasking Suite (Upgrade) (15 pts). GHOSTKEEL BATTLESUIT/PATHFINDER TEAM/STEALTH BATTLESUITS unit only. When this unit is selected to shoot, you can select one enemy unit within 24 inches; that enemy unit has +9 inch detection range until this unit has shot.

Read the Unmasking Suite carefully, because it is widely reported backwards. It does not extend your own detection range toward 24 inches. It selects an enemy unit within 24 inches and makes that enemy easier for your whole army to see, by 9 inches, for the duration of one unit's shooting. It is an offensive tool that turns off an opponent's concealment, not a defensive one that improves your sensors.

There is also a claim circulating that this detachment's enhancements can push a Stealth Battlesuit toward a 2+ armour save. Nothing in the pack does that. The two enhancements are the ones above, and the only save effect anywhere in the detachment is the conditional +1 Sv from Autoreactive Camouflage.

(Points come from the Munitorum Field Manual and move with updates; confirm in the app.)

• Stealth Battlesuits are named in the rule, all three stratagems and both enhancements, which makes them the single most supported unit in the detachment. Faction Pack v1.2 reprints their datasheet in full and rewrites Forward Observers so that Guided units shooting their Spotted unit re-roll a Hit roll of 1 and a Wound roll of 1. That is a strong Observer effect on a unit that can now spot without being seen.
• Pathfinder Team is the other named unit, and the cheapest MARKERLIGHT Observer in the army, which is what switches the [IGNORES COVER] half of For the Greater Good on. The pack rewrites its Target Uploaded ability.
• Ghostkeel Battlesuit is a legal Unmasking Suite bearer and nothing else. It gains no benefit from the detachment rule or any stratagem, so bring it for its own durability rather than because the detachment supports it.
• Riptide Battlesuit is the payload. A recon detachment produces targeting, not damage. The pack rewrites Nova Charge and both Ion Accelerator profiles, so read the current datasheet.
• Broadside Battlesuits are the static half of the firebase, and they want exactly what this detachment provides, which is a spotter that is still alive in battle round four.
• Strike Team supplies bodies to hold the ground your hidden units are too valuable to stand on.

One omission to note: Tactical Drones, Heavy Gun Drones and the Remote Sensor Tower are all Warhammer Legends datasheets in 11th edition, so none of them is the cheap detection piece an older list might have used.

Take it when your list depends on Observers, which is to say almost always. One Detachment Point to stop losing your spotters is the best rate in the faction, and it is our default recommendation for the spare point in any 2-DP list.

Be clear-eyed about the limits. The rule covers two datasheets. It does nothing for your Ghostkeels, your Crisis suits, your Kroot or your vehicles. It adds no damage of its own. And with three stratagems it will not absorb command points.

Sample gameplan: pair it with Kauyon (2 DP). Kauyon does nothing until the third battle round, so rounds one and two are entirely about surviving with your targeting web intact, which is precisely what Expert Fieldcraft protects. Put Negation Emitters on the Stealth squad you push furthest, spend Marker Beacon to lock down a forward objective early, and hold a command point in your opponent's turn for Autoreactive Camouflage. From the third battle round your Observers are still alive, still hidden, and now feeding a gunline with [SUSTAINED HITS 1] that can ignore Hit roll modifiers.

For the fundamentals underneath all of it, read the T'au Empire army guide.