How to Play T'au Empire in Warhammer 40,000 11th Edition

Faction Pack v1.2 reprints For the Greater Good in full in its Rules Updates section, so what follows is first-party rather than reconstructed.

If your Army Faction is T'AU EMPIRE, at the start of your Shooting phase you can select units from your army with this ability to become Observer units. During your Shooting phase, for each Observer unit that has not been selected to shoot this phase and is eligible to shoot, excluding FORTIFICATION and Battle-shocked units, select one enemy unit that is visible to be marked as their Spotted unit until the end of the phase. Each enemy unit can only be marked as a Spotted unit once per phase.

Units from your army with the ability, excluding Observer units, are Guided units while targeting one or more Spotted units. Until the end of the phase, each time a model in a Guided unit makes an attack that targets a Spotted unit, improve the Ballistic Skill characteristic of that attack by 1 and, if the Spotted unit was marked by an Observer that has the MARKERLIGHT keyword, that attack has [IGNORES COVER].

The skill in this is an economics problem, not a targeting one. Every Observer is a unit that chose not to shoot. So the question at the top of each Shooting phase is: is what this unit would have killed worth less than the accuracy it can buy for everything else? A five-model Strike Team spotting for a Riptide is almost always yes. A Riptide spotting for a Strike Team is almost always no.

The Markerlight condition is the second decision. Pathfinder Teams, Marker Drones and units carrying them are what turn the [IGNORES COVER] half on, and in an edition with denser terrain that clause is frequently worth more than the accuracy. If your only Observers are non-Markerlight units, you are buying half the rule.

One more piece of housekeeping from the same pack: it errata the Ethereal to add the For the Greater Good faction ability, and it rewrites the Pathfinder Team's Target Uploaded ability, the Firesight Team's Precise Targeting ability and the Stealth Battlesuits' Forward Observers ability. All four are Observer-adjacent, so read the current datasheets rather than the ones you remember.

The structural change is Detachment Points. In 10th edition you chose one detachment; in 11th you get a DP budget of roughly 2 DP at 1,000 points and 3 DP at 2,000 points, and spend it on detachments that each cost 1 to 3 DP, so most factions can now combine detachments.

T'au are one of the factions where that flexibility is tightest. Four codex detachments were joined by three new 1-DP ones, which the Faction Pack prints in full: the Advanced Acquisition Cadre, the Auxiliary Cadre and the Experimental Prototype Cadre. But two of the four codex detachments cost 3 DP, which is the entire Strike Force budget, so Mont'ka and Retaliation Cadre can only ever be run alone. If you were expecting to anchor with Mont'ka and bolt a cheap specialist on, that is not a legal list.

The pack also does four other things. It reprints the army rule in full. It reprints the detachment rules of Kauyon, Mont'ka and Retaliation Cadre verbatim in the same Rules Updates section, and amends five named enhancements and two named stratagems across them, including tightening the Retaliation Cadre's Armour Penetration band from 9 inches to 8 and changing The Shortened Blade from 3 inches to 6. It adds four datasheets in full, including The Twin Lance, an Epic Hero Battlesuit Character pair, plus updated Stealth Battlesuits and Vespid Stingwings, and four Imperial Armour datasheets. And it moves a large slice of the range to Warhammer Legends.

That last one is the change most likely to invalidate a list you already own. The generic Crisis Battlesuits datasheet is now Warhammer Legends. So is the Commander in Crisis Battlesuit datasheet. The matched-play replacements are the three specialised Crisis datasheets, Crisis Starscythe, Crisis Sunforge and Crisis Fireknife Battlesuits, and the two named Commander datasheets, Commander in Coldstar Battlesuit and Commander in Enforcer Battlesuit. The good news is that this is a rules change and not a buying one: the same XV8 Crisis Suits and Commander plastic kits still build the matched-play datasheets. Eighteen more datasheets went to Legends alongside them, including Longstrike, Aun'Va, Aun'Shi, the Barracuda, the R'varna and Y'vahra battlesuits and the XV9 Hazard Battlesuits.

Your DP budget scales with game size: about 2 DP at 1,000 points and 3 DP at 2,000 points. The seven T'au costs, read from the Munitorum Field Manual v1.3 and independently agreed by the community mirror:

• 3 DP: Mont'ka (Priority Assets) and Retaliation Cadre (Purge the Foe). Each fills a whole 2,000-point budget, so each runs solo.
• 2 DP: Kauyon (Reconnaissance) and Kroot Hunting Pack (Take and Hold). Each leaves 1 DP spare.
• 1 DP: Advanced Acquisition Cadre (Reconnaissance), Auxiliary Cadre (Disruption) and Experimental Prototype Cadre (Priority Assets).

No T'au DP cost is contested. Both official sources and the mirror agree on all seven.

That lineup is narrower than it looks. Because two detachments cost 3 DP, and because two of the remaining five share a Unique Tag, there are exactly five legal two-detachment armies at Strike Force plus one legal three-detachment army:

• Kauyon + Advanced Acquisition Cadre
• Kauyon + Auxiliary Cadre
• Kauyon + Experimental Prototype Cadre
• Kroot Hunting Pack + Advanced Acquisition Cadre
• Kroot Hunting Pack + Experimental Prototype Cadre
• Advanced Acquisition Cadre + Auxiliary Cadre + Experimental Prototype Cadre

On Unique Tags, our two official sources disagree about the names but not about the effect. Faction Pack v1.2 prints UNIQUE: AUXILIARIES above the Auxiliary Cadre and UNIQUE: RETALIATION above the Experimental Prototype Cadre, restating both inside the rule texts. The Munitorum Field Manual v1.3 calls the same two tags AUXILIARY and BATTLESUIT. The mirror reproduces the pack's own internal inconsistency, printing an AUXILIARY badge above an AUXILIARIES rule text on the same page.

We do not state a tag name as fact, because two tier-1 documents contradict each other. What all of them agree on is which detachments share each tag: Auxiliary Cadre with Kroot Hunting Pack, and Experimental Prototype Cadre with Retaliation Cadre. So the legality answers are the same whichever document turns out to be right, and those two pairings get their own section below.

Seven detachments are legal. By DP cost:

3 DP, run alone

• Mont'ka (Priority Assets) is the early-aggression detachment. Killing Blow gives every T'au model's ranged weapons [ASSAULT] during the first, second and third battle rounds, and gives Guided units [LETHAL HITS] in the same window. Note which half is which: advance-and-shoot is the army-wide clause, and Lethal Hits is the one you have to earn with a spotter.
• Retaliation Cadre (Purge the Foe) is the close-range battlesuit detachment. Bonded Heroes gives every T'au Battlesuit +1 Strength on ranged attacks within 12 inches, and +1 Armour Penetration as well within 8 inches. The pack tightened that second band from 9 inches to 8.

2 DP, with a point to spare

• Kauyon (Reconnaissance) is the patient gunline. Patient Hunter gives every T'au model's ranged weapons [SUSTAINED HITS 1] during the third, fourth and fifth battle rounds, and lets Guided units ignore any or all Ballistic Skill and Hit roll modifiers against their Spotted unit in the same window. There are no re-rolls anywhere in it, whatever older write-ups say.
• Kroot Hunting Pack (Take and Hold) is the Kroot army. Hunter's Instincts adds 1 to Hit rolls against enemy units below Starting Strength and 1 to Wound rolls as well against units Below Half-strength, and the second rule, Skirmish Fighters, gives every Kroot model a 6+ invulnerable save against melee and a 5+ against ranged attacks. Selecting it makes Kroot Carnivores BATTLELINE.

1 DP, the splash picks

• Advanced Acquisition Cadre (Reconnaissance) is the stealth specialist. Expert Fieldcraft lets a Pathfinder Team or Stealth Battlesuits unit shoot without breaking its hidden status. That is the whole rule, and it is the only T'au detachment with no Unique Tag question attached to it in any source.
• Auxiliary Cadre (Disruption) is the Kroot and Vespid support package. Kroot and Vespid can prey-mark an enemy unit within 12 inches for +3 inch detection range, Ghostkeels and Stealth suits let nearby Kroot and Vespid shoot while staying hidden, and its Guided by Unity stratagem gives your non-Kroot shooters [LETHAL HITS] against anything within 9 inches of an auxiliary unit.
• Experimental Prototype Cadre (Priority Assets) is the character-suit package. Superior Craftsmanship gives BATTLESUIT CHARACTER units +6 inch Range on their ranged attacks. That is the entire rule. The hazardous experimental ammunition everybody mentions is a stratagem, and it costs a command point every time.

One set of expectations to reset: the Faction Pack prints one stratagem for the Experimental Prototype Cadre and three each for the other two new cadres. A 1-DP detachment is a narrow tool, and the price is correct.

The Kroot range is the most interesting thing in the T'au book right now, and it is also where the edition's one genuine trap lives. If you came here looking for the Kroot Hunting Pack, read this section before you write a list.

The Kroot Hunting Pack is current and legal. It costs 2 DP, its force disposition is Take and Hold, and it appears in the Munitorum Field Manual v1.3 detachment list. It has not been superseded or replaced. It gives you two rules rather than one, and the second is the one nobody mentions:

• Hunter's Instincts. Each time a KROOT model makes an attack, add 1 to the Hit roll if the target is below its Starting Strength, and add 1 to the Wound roll as well if the target is Below Half-strength.
• Skirmish Fighters. Kroot models have a 6+ invulnerable save against melee attacks and a 5+ invulnerable save against ranged attacks.

Selecting the detachment also gives Kroot Carnivores the BATTLELINE keyword, which is what lets a Kroot list score properly.

A 5+ invulnerable save against shooting on a cheap T3 body changes the whole feel of the army, and it is the reason a Kroot pack survives to reach the fights Hunter's Instincts pays for. Read the first rule carefully, though: it pays nothing against a fresh, full-strength unit. The pack is a finisher, not an opener, so the list-building question is always what does your opening damage.

The Auxiliary Cadre is a different thing, and it is not a Kroot army. At 1 DP it makes Kroot and Vespid into support pieces for a T'au core: they prey-mark for detection, they can shoot while hidden near a Ghostkeel or Stealth team, and Guided by Unity turns them into a mobile [LETHAL HITS] beacon for your suits. Its Student of Kauyon enhancement gives up to three Kroot Carnivores or Farstalkers units Deep Strike, which is the strongest single Kroot effect in the edition. That enhancement belongs to the Auxiliary Cadre; older write-ups that credit it to the Hunting Pack are wrong.

And here is the trap. Kroot Hunting Pack is 2 DP. Auxiliary Cadre is 1 DP. That is exactly 3 DP, exactly your Strike Force budget, and it is the most thematically perfect T'au list anybody can draw on paper: the detachment that makes Kroot the army, plus the detachment that makes Kroot better.

It is illegal. Both detachments carry the same Unique Tag, and no two detachments in your army may share one. The Munitorum Field Manual v1.3 and the community mirror both name that tag AUXILIARY and put it on both. The Faction Pack calls the Auxiliary Cadre's tag AUXILIARIES and does not print the Kroot Hunting Pack at all. The two documents disagree about the string; they do not disagree about the pairing. We never suggest it anywhere on this site, in either direction.

What to build instead, if you want Kroot:

• A real Kroot army: Kroot Hunting Pack (2 DP) + Advanced Acquisition Cadre (1 DP). The cadre supplies the opening damage the pack cannot generate, from hidden Pathfinders and Stealth suits that shoot every turn without being shot back. This is our recommendation.
• A harder-hitting Kroot army: Kroot Hunting Pack (2 DP) + Experimental Prototype Cadre (1 DP). A long-range Battlesuit Character cracks the target and the Kroot finish it.
• A T'au army with Kroot in it: Kauyon (2 DP) + Auxiliary Cadre (1 DP). Your Kroot hold ground and bait the advance through the two rounds before Patient Hunter switches on, then become a [LETHAL HITS] beacon once it does.

Check the Warhammer 40,000 app before an event, and if you are playing in a tournament, ask the organiser rather than your opponent.

Start from your collection, then check the arithmetic, because the arithmetic rules out more here than in most factions.

If you own a lot of battlesuits, you have two answers and they are opposites. Retaliation Cadre (3 DP) wants you inside 8 inches and gives you Strength and Armour Penetration for the risk. Mont'ka (3 DP) wants you advancing and shooting for three rounds. Both fill the budget alone, so neither gets a partner, and both are complete armies rather than anchors.

If you want a gunline, take Kauyon (2 DP) and spend the spare point. Kauyon does nothing at all until the third battle round, so the whole list-building question is how your Observers survive rounds one and two. Advanced Acquisition Cadre (1 DP) answers that question directly, and it is our default recommendation for a first 2,000-point T'au list.

If you want Kroot, take Kroot Hunting Pack (2 DP) + Advanced Acquisition Cadre (1 DP), and read the Kroot section above before you consider anything else.

If you want to experiment, run all three 1-DP cadres together: Advanced Acquisition Cadre + Auxiliary Cadre + Experimental Prototype Cadre is exactly 3 DP, uses three distinct Unique Tags, and gives you seven stratagems and seven enhancements to play with. It has no army-wide detachment rule, which is a real cost, but it is the most flexible legal T'au army in the edition.

For a first T'au list, we would build Kauyon plus the Advanced Acquisition Cadre. Kauyon's rule needs no timing decision beyond counting battle rounds, the cadre's rule is one clause you cannot misplay, and the pairing teaches the habit that decides T'au games, which is protecting the units that spot rather than the units that shoot.

Three shapes that a reasonable list-builder reaches for and that do not work. Two of them appeared on SprueSentry's own previously published T'au pages, and this wave corrects them.

Mont'ka plus a 1-DP cadre. Mont'ka costs 3 DP. At Strike Force you have 3 DP. There is nothing left. This is not a tag question, it is subtraction. Our previously published Auxiliary Cadre page recommended pairing it with Mont'ka or Kauyon; only the Kauyon half of that was ever legal.

Retaliation Cadre plus Experimental Prototype Cadre. This one is illegal twice over. Retaliation Cadre is 3 DP, so there is no point to spend, and both detachments carry the same Unique Tag on top of that: the Munitorum Field Manual v1.3 and the mirror both call it BATTLESUIT and record it on both, while Faction Pack v1.2 calls the Experimental Prototype Cadre's tag RETALIATION, which points at the same detachment from the other direction. Our previously published pages suggested this pairing from both ends. It is exactly the trap a suit-focused player falls into, because one detachment buffs Battlesuits up close and the other buffs Battlesuit Characters at range, and they read as designed for each other.

Kroot Hunting Pack plus Auxiliary Cadre. Exactly 3 DP, and a shared Unique Tag. This is the one that hurts, because unlike the other two it costs precisely the budget and it is the most obvious Kroot list in the game. It has its own section above and its own page.

The general rule, which is worth internalising because it is unusual: in a T'au army, the more thematically perfect a pairing looks, the more likely it is to be tag-blocked. The tags are drawn around exactly the units the pairings would stack.

Three habits carry T'au games in this edition.

First, treat Observers as a budget rather than a bonus. Every mark costs a shooting phase, because only units that have not been selected to shoot can spot. So the decision at the top of every Shooting phase is a trade, and the correct trade is almost always to spot with your cheapest eligible unit and shoot with your most expensive. A Strike Team that would have killed two models can buy +1 Ballistic Skill and [IGNORES COVER] for a Riptide. That is a good trade every time. The reverse never is.

Second, count Markerlights, not spotters. [IGNORES COVER] only applies when the Observer that made the mark has the MARKERLIGHT keyword. In an edition with dense terrain that clause is frequently worth more than the accuracy improvement, and it is entirely on your Pathfinder Teams and Marker Drones. A list with plenty of Observers and no Markerlights is buying half of its own army rule.

Third, respect the detection layer, because your spotters are the target. 11th edition's hidden and detection rules cut both ways, and a T'au army has an unusually clear weak point: a small number of cheap units whose death turns off your accuracy. The Advanced Acquisition Cadre exists precisely to fix this, and it is why it is our default 1-DP pick. Without it, screen your Pathfinders with something and accept that your opponent knows exactly what to shoot.

On command points, note the shape of each detachment's suite. Mont'ka has two 2CP stratagems, Pulse Onslaught and Counterfire Defence Systems, and both are defensive, which is the tell that an aggressive detachment expects to be shot at. Retaliation Cadre has two 2CP stratagems as well, The Shortened Blade and Fail-safe Detonator. The three new 1-DP cadres are all 1CP throughout. Budget for the reactive stratagems in your opponent's turn rather than spending everything on your own.

Start with the honest version of the buying question. T'au are a friendly army to collect because a small model count delivers a lot of firepower, and because the recent Kroot range means one of the strongest detachments is also one of the cheapest to build.

[Combat Patrol: T'au Empire](/40k/boxes/combat-patrol-tau-empire) is the standing entry boxed set. [Battleforce: T'au Empire](/40k/boxes/battleforce-tau-empire) is the seasonal multi-kit bundle: Battleforces are re-cut every year, so what is inside changes from season to season and the box is only worth buying when its contents match the detachment you actually want to play. We do not print a kit list for either box here, because Games Workshop's own product pages are the only reliable source for current contents and we will not reproduce a list we cannot verify today. Both linked pages carry live retailer pricing so you can compare against buying the kits separately, which is the calculation that matters with a Battleforce.

[Boarding Patrol: T'au Empire](/40k/boxes/boarding-patrol-tau-empire) is a Boarding Actions set. Boarding Actions is a separate game mode with its own two T'au detachments, the Starfire Cadre and the Kroot Raiding Party, and none of the seven detachments in this guide applies to it.

Buying by detachment, if you already know which way you are going:

• A battlesuit core, for Mont'ka or Retaliation Cadre. XV8 Crisis Suits and a Commander, plus a Riptide as the durable centrepiece. One caution that is specific to this edition: build and list your Crisis suits as Starscythe, Sunforge or Fireknife, and your Commander as Coldstar or Enforcer. The generic Crisis Battlesuits and Commander in Crisis Battlesuit datasheets are Warhammer Legends now. The kits are unaffected.
• A gunline, for Kauyon. Broadside Battlesuits and a Hammerhead Gunship to shoot with, Fire Warriors to hold the ground, and a Devilfish so Combat Embarkation has somewhere to put a unit.
• Spotters, for every detachment. A Pathfinder Team is the single highest-value purchase in the range, because it is the cheapest Markerlight Observer and the Markerlight keyword is half of your army rule.
• Stealth, for the Advanced Acquisition Cadre. The Kill Team: XV26 Stealth Battlesuits box is the catalog's only Stealth Battlesuit kit, and a Ghostkeel is the durable partner that can carry the Unmasking Suite.
• Kroot, for the Kroot Hunting Pack. Kroot Carnivore Squad first and more of them than you think, then Kroot Hounds for speed and Krootox Rampagers for punch. The Shapers are not optional, because each enhancement is locked to a specific one: Flesh Shaper for Borthrod Gland, Trail Shaper for Nomadic Hunter, War Shaper for Root-carved Weapons.
• Auxiliaries, for the Auxiliary Cadre. Kill Team: Vespid Stingwings and Kill Team: Farstalker Kinband are the two most improved units in the pack, and both are Kill Team boxes containing the kits.
• Centrepieces. Commander Farsight, Commander Shadowsun and The Twin Lance are all Epic Heroes, which means none of them can carry an Enhancement. Buy them because you want them, not because a detachment needs them.

Compare current prices across retailers on the T'au Empire army page and the boxes page.

One buying warning specific to this faction right now: do not buy a kit because an old list recommended the unit by name. Twenty T'au datasheets are Warhammer Legends in the current Faction Pack, including Longstrike, Aun'Va, Aun'Shi, the Barracuda, the Tetras, the TX42 Piranha, the Orca Dropship, the R'varna and Y'vahra battlesuits, the XV9 Hazard Battlesuits and the Great Knarloc. None of them is a matched-play datasheet to build a list around.

If you are new or returning, build a Kauyon (2 DP) plus Advanced Acquisition Cadre (1 DP) list first. Kauyon's rule needs no decision beyond counting to three, the cadre's rule is a single clause, and the pairing teaches the one habit that decides T'au games, which is that your spotters are more important than your guns.

Once you are comfortable, the natural next step depends on what you enjoyed. If you liked the waiting, stay on Kauyon and swap the 1-DP partner for the Experimental Prototype Cadre to add reach. If you found yourself wanting to move, go to Mont'ka at 3 DP and accept that it is a whole army rather than an anchor. If you found yourself wanting to be in the enemy's face, Retaliation Cadre at 3 DP is the same deal from the other direction.

If the Kroot models are why you are here, go straight to Kroot Hunting Pack plus Advanced Acquisition Cadre, and read the Kroot section above so you do not spend a month building the Auxiliary Cadre pairing that cannot be fielded.

Because T'au are still on a faction pack rather than a full 11th-edition codex, expect a future codex to re-tune this lineup and its points. Until then everything here reflects the current live rules, with two things flagged as less than certain: the Unique Tag names, which our two official sources disagree about without disagreeing about any outcome, and the enhancement points, which move with every dataslate. Mont'ka's Strike Swiftly went from 35 points to 45 in the current Munitorum Field Manual revision, which is the reminder to check the app rather than a printout.