The Patient Web: Kauyon + Advanced Acquisition Cadre

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How to build it

The instinct is to spend the whole budget on guns. Resist it, because Kauyon's rule already improves every gun you own and improves none of them before round three.

Buy Observers first, and buy Markerlights specifically. The [IGNORES COVER] half of For the Greater Good only applies when the Observer that made the mark has the MARKERLIGHT keyword. A Pathfinder Team is the cheapest Markerlight Observer in the range and is named in the cadre's rule, all three of its stratagems and one of its enhancements. Two Pathfinder Teams is a reasonable floor; three is not excessive.

Stealth Battlesuits are the other named unit, and 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, which makes them the best value in the list.

The gunline should favour volume over size. [SUSTAINED HITS 1] pays per attack, so a Broadside Battlesuits unit firing many shots gains more per point than a single high-damage gun. A Riptide Battlesuit earns its place on durability, since surviving to round three is the plan.

Enhancements. From Kauyon, Exemplar of the Kauyon at 20 points brings Patient Hunter forward to the second battle round for the bearer's unit; put it on the character leading your main shooting block and you get four rounds of the rule instead of three. Through Unity, Devastation at 30 points is the alternative if you would rather have army-wide [LETHAL HITS] on Guided units while its bearer's unit is an Observer. From the cadre, Negation Emitters at 15 points goes on the Stealth squad you push furthest, and Unmasking Suite at 15 points goes on whichever unit is best positioned to strip an enemy's concealment. Both cadre enhancements are Upgrades on units, not character relics, which is useful in a list that may run very few Characters.

Screening. A Strike Team or two on objectives. Kauyon is a plan about where your opponent chooses to go, and cheap bodies are how you choose it for them.

Common questions

Is Kauyon plus the Advanced Acquisition Cadre legal?

Yes, at 2,000 points, and it is legal under every reading of the current sources. Kauyon is 2 DP and the Advanced Acquisition Cadre is 1 DP, using the full 3-DP Strike Force budget. Kauyon carries no Unique Tag in the Faction Pack, the Munitorum Field Manual or the community mirror, and the Advanced Acquisition Cadre carries none in any of the three either, so neither is part of the contested tag naming question.

Why spend the spare Detachment Point on stealth rather than on damage?

Because Kauyon's second clause only applies to Guided units shooting a Spotted unit, and a Spotted unit only exists if an Observer survived to mark it. Kauyon also does nothing at all for the first two battle rounds, so the whole list is a bet on reaching round three with your targeting web intact. Expert Fieldcraft lets Pathfinder Teams and Stealth Battlesuits shoot without breaking their hidden status, which removes the exact reason your Observers get killed.

Does this combo work at 1,000 points?

Partly. At Incursion you have about 2 DP, which Kauyon uses on its own, so you cannot take both. At that size, run Kauyon alone, or run the Advanced Acquisition Cadre together with one other 1-DP cadre. All three 1-DP cadres carry different Unique Tags, so any two of them are legal together.

Which enhancements should I take across the two detachments?

Exemplar of the Kauyon at 20 points on the character leading your main shooting block, because it brings Patient Hunter forward to the second battle round for that unit and gives you four rounds of the rule instead of three. Through Unity, Devastation at 30 points is the damage-first alternative. From the cadre, Negation Emitters at 15 points on the Stealth squad you push furthest, and Unmasking Suite at 15 points on whichever unit is placed to strip an enemy's concealment. Both cadre enhancements are unit Upgrades rather than character relics. Points are dataslate-volatile, so confirm them in the app.

How many Pathfinder Teams should I take?

At least two, and three is not excessive. The [IGNORES COVER] half of For the Greater Good only applies when the Observer that made the mark has the Markerlight keyword, and the Pathfinder Team is the cheapest Markerlight Observer in the range. It is also named in the cadre's detachment rule, all three of its stratagems and one of its two enhancements, so it is the most supported unit in the list.

The Patient Web: Kauyon + Advanced Acquisition Cadre

The problem this list solves

The legality question this list avoids