T'au Empire Kauyon Detachment Guide (11th Edition)

Kauyon's identity is the delayed payoff. Broadly, the detachment rewards patience with an escalating shooting bonus - improved accuracy and reroll support that comes online in the mid-to-late game, so your firepower peaks precisely when the enemy has advanced into your optimal range. The strategic shape is a trap: early turns you conserve, screen and reposition, absorbing the opponent's aggression; then you turn on the bonus and delete the units that walked into your zone. This makes Kauyon a strong answer to melee and rush armies, because it lets you weather the first-turn charge and then punish the over-extension. The risk is inverse to Mont'ka's - if you cannot survive to the payoff turn, or the opponent refuses the bait and out-scores you early, the detachment underperforms. The exact turn the bonus activates and what it grants are the kind of details errata adjusts, so confirm the current Kauyon rule in the Faction Pack before relying on the timing.

Kauyon's stratagems support the survive-then-punish arc: expect defensive and repositioning tools to help you weather the early game, plus offensive tricks that amplify the payoff turn. The general discipline is to spend Command Points frugally in rounds 1 to 2 - using reactive stratagems only to protect key pieces or blunt a charge - and then unload your offensive stratagems in the turn your detachment rule peaks, stacking them with Guided fire to remove multiple threats at once. Holding CP for that decisive turn is the whole skill of the detachment; spending it too early can leave you without the tools to close the trap. As with every detachment, specific stratagem names, costs and timing windows are updated by dataslates, so treat this as the pattern and read the exact current stratagems in the Faction Pack rather than assuming a fixed list.

Kauyon's enhancements generally reward the patient-hunter plan: buffs that improve your reroll or targeting output, extend the reach of your best firebase, or add resilience to a key Character so it survives to the payoff turn. Evaluate them by asking which one best guarantees you reach and then maximise your peak turn - survivability enhancements are unusually valuable here because the whole plan depends on living to the mid-game. Place the enhancement on the Character anchoring your main gunline or your most important support piece, not on a disposable screen. Names, costs and effects shift with errata and balance updates, so choose from the live list in the current Faction Pack. If two options look close, favour the one that helps you weather the early game, since a Kauyon list that dies before its payoff turn has no plan B.

Kauyon wants a durable, accurate gunline plus enough board control to bait and screen. Riptides, Broadsides and heavy Crisis configurations provide the sustained firepower that benefits most from reroll bonuses on the payoff turn. Pathfinders and drones are essential for markerlights, since Guided fire plus Kauyon's rerolls is the combo that makes the trap lethal. Fire Warriors form a static scoring and screening backbone. Kroot give you cheap, expendable bodies to slow the enemy advance and control where they commit - crucial for a bait-and-punish plan. The list-building priority is resilience and reliable markerlight coverage over raw speed, because Kauyon does not need to chase the enemy; it needs to survive and then hit accurately. Confirm current datasheets and points, as unit profiles and costs are periodically updated by dataslates.

Take Kauyon if you enjoy patient, reactive play and are confident in your board management. It excels against aggressive melee and rush armies that hand you the over-extension you want to punish, and it rewards players who can absorb early pressure without panicking. It is less forgiving for newcomers than Mont'ka, because misjudging the survive-to-payoff arc can lose you the game before your bonus even activates - so if you are brand new, consider starting with Mont'ka and graduating to Kauyon once your target priority is sharp. Under 11th edition's DP budget you can anchor a list with Kauyon and, if the points allow, add a 1-DP specialist to patch a gap; check its current DP cost in the Faction Pack. For the underlying markerlight and target-priority fundamentals that Kauyon leans on hardest, read the T'au Empire army guide.