Detachment Focus: Auxiliary Cadre

Merry Grotmas! Games Workshop is releasing a new series of detachments – one per army, every day until Christmas. In this series we’re looking at these new detachments, covering what’s in them, how they play, and how they’ll fit into the broader meta and your games.

Auxiliaries have always been a key part of the T’au Empire’s identity. Unlike almost every other group in the galaxy, the T’au sometimes recruit defeated aliens to the cause of the greater good, incorporating them into the empire as checks notes valued partners, and even incorporating them into their armies to fight alongside the Fire Caste, combining their unique talents and capabilities with Empire technology. We got an expanded look at the Kroot in their own right via the Kroot Hunting Pack in the T’au Codex, but for Grotmas the Empire is celebrating the spirit of togetherness with a Detachment focused on auxiliary and T’au units fighting side-by-side. We’ll take a look at the options this gives you in today’s Detachment Focus.

We’d like to thank Games Workshop for providing us with a preview copy of these rules for Review purposes.

Detachment Overview

The Auxiliary Cadre rewards you for throwing waves of Kroot forwards while your elite T’au units blow stuff clean off the table. It boosts the impact of pretty much all your shooting as long as you’ve got Auxiliaries up in the opponent’s face, and has some great tools to ensure that you’re building up points with them at the same time.

The Video Version

If you’d like to watch or listen to this Detachment Focus, we’ve got you covered with a video version, which you can find here:

Detachment Rule: Integrated Command Structure

Integrated Command Structure rewards you for having a mix of Kroot/Vespid and regular T’au units in your army. Auxiliaries in this detachment act as spotters for your other T’AU EMPIRE units (excluding TITANIC, VESPID and KROOT), gaining a 9” Targeting Triangulation Aura that gives you +1AP when you shoot at something within it. In turn, your non-Auxiliary T’AU EMPIRE units are carrying Localised Stealth Projectors, an Aura that prevents KROOT and VESPID units that are visible and wholly within 6” of one of your units being targeted from outside 18”.

The big draw here is obviously the first part of the effect – for an army that can build for high volume and that has good access to Ignores Cover, additional AP is very strong. The Retaliation Cadre detachment already provides one way of getting that, but this is both broader in who it can affect (AP-4 Sky Rays being a particular highlight) and doesn’t require putting your alpha units in harm’s way, instead being able to send some (cheap) Kroot to die heroically. Missile Fireknifes, Sky Rays and burst cannon Riptides all win especially big from this, but fundamentally it just makes your stuff better at what you want them doing.

The back half is much more niche, as this detachment wants you throwing your Auxiliaries forward a lot of the time, but does have a nice interaction with solo Krootox, who are already a useful backfield objective holder, and can now be protected in the open if you have a nearby ally hiding behind a wall.

Enhancements

Unsurprisingly, the Enhancements here focus on augmenting your Auxiliaries, particularly Kroot (since they’re more numerous, and there are not yet any actual Characters for Vespid).

• Student of Kauyon (15 pts): Taken on a Kroot Shaper, gives up to three Kroot Carnivore or Kroot Farstalker units Deep Strike. Mostly a miss – you just don’t really need this, and it has massive anti-synergy with the Detachment Rule.
• Admired Leader (20 pts): Taken on a non-Kroot Character, lets you pick a Kroot or Vespid unit within 12” in your Command Phase to gain +1OC and Leadership until your next Command Phase. This is a bit more like it, with a few applications. First up, while 10 Kroot can usually flip an objective, 10 Kroot at OC3 damn sure can, and being able to make speedy Vespid OC2 in a pinch is nice as well. Secondly, this gives you a way of putting OC onto Kroot Hounds without needing a Kroot Character, letting you take them as very cheap objective grabbers. It also lets you teach them to do tricks Actions. The reach on this is very generous (and lets it reach out to units that have Scouted), so combining it with three units of Hounds seems really good, especially as they get the Targeting Triangulation aura. Such good boys.
• Fanatical Convert (10 pts): Gives a KROOT Character For the Greater Good. Obvious application is to stick this on a Lone Spear for an extra Observer that doubles as a positional piece, and if you’re feeling daring you could also take it on a (much cheaper) Shaper and lean on Stealth Projectors to protect them. Probably go for the Lone Spear though.
• Transponder Lock Module (25 pts): Take this on a Walker Character, and they can Deep Strike turn 1 as long as they come in within 12” of a Kroot or Vespid unit (and outside 9” of the enemy as normal). This is the good stuff, and a major draw to this detachment – turn 1 Deep Strike with an alpha shooting threat is such a powerful threat that it can warp opposing game plans even if you don’t actually pull the trigger on it, and it can be excellent when you do. It does, also, make sending forward a 40pts Kroot Hound unit even more hilariously multi-purpose.

Stratagems

This detachment gets a very tasty Stratagem suite, adding lots of flexibility and very reliable ways to get your tools into position.

• Experimental Modifications (Strategic Ploy, 1CP): Gives a Kroot or Vespid unit +1AP when they Shoot or Fight. Most eligible units don’t get quite enough from this, but there’s a big exception in Krootox Rampagers, who get a massive leg-up from it, making them a nice counter-charge threat. Will also occasionally be worth popping just on a squad of Karnivores in melee where taking down some opposing chaff is life or death.
• Multisensory Scanning (Battle Tactic, 1CP): Give a T’au Empire unit re-roll 1s to Wound when they Shoot or Fight, or full Wound re-rolls for Kroot or Vespid. This is a nice, broadly useful bonus. Plenty of T’au stuff can make good use of re-roll 1s to wound, (Fireknifes, Broadsides and Starscythes enjoy it), it’s more effective than the previous one at letting most Kroot/Vespid stuff punch up a bit, and you can use both this and Modifications if you need some Rampagers to punch out a premium threat.
• Interlocking Manoeuvres (Strategic Ploy, 1CP): At the end of either Fight Phase, one T’au Empire unit that was eligible to Fight in the phase can either make a Fall Back move or (if they are not Engaged) make a Normal Move of up to 6”. In either case, you can’t Embark at the end of the Move if you Disembarked earlier in the turn. This is really good – obviously you can use it as a better version of Fall Back/Shoot (with the subtle tradeoff being that you have to have the CP in hand at the end of the opponent’s turn) and that’s a thing T’au are just fine with, but it’s much more flexible than that. You can also use it in your turn to aggressively play for objectives by bouncing some Kroot off a hull that doesn’t really threaten them in melee, or use it as a pseudo Fire and Fade by ricocheting some Crisis suits off a foe. Really important to note that while the Normal Move version has a 6” cap, the Fall Back does not, so a Coldstar team can bounce a whole 12”, either getting to safety or (occasionally) bunny hopping onto an enemy objective. This is great, and also forces opponents to be really careful about going for bully charges when you have a CP up, as it can just hand you free movement.
• Pheromone Waypoints (Strategic Ploy, 1CP): Auto-advance 6” on a Kroot or Vespid unit. Good clean fun – it’s the kind of effect you want on your scoring chaff anyway, and extra good here with the Detachment ability.
• Alien Expertise (Battle Tactic, 1CP): Advance/Shoot for any of your units, Advance/Charge as well for Kroot or Vespid. Another winner – Advance/Shoot is great to have in your back pocket, and Advance/Charge gives you huge Primary denial reach on Kroot, especially combined with some of the other Stratagems if you need big reach.
• Guided Fire (Battle Tactic, 1CP): Gives a non-Kroot/Vespid unit +1S to their ranged weapons when they shoot, or +2S instead if they’re wholly within 9” of a Kroot/Vespid unit. The hits keep coming (or wounds in this case), as +1S gets plenty of T’au guns to good break points, and +2S can be transformative for a few things, especially Sunforge teams (and like a lot of the boosts here, is really not hard to tee up). You tend to have enough variety of profiles in a T’au list that this will be great somewhere in a lot of games, and really your biggest problem is going to be getting enough CP to use all these tricks.

Playing This Detachment

This detachment is broad enough in what it enables that you don’t need to massively adapt your playstyle – it just plays good 40K, and gives you some tools to make big plays or lock-in scoring with very high reliability. The only exception is going to be managing your Kroot/Vespid supply – bluntly, a lot of the time when you send these out, they’re going to die immediately, so you need to ration them and make them count. This is another reason why I’m hot on having an Enhanced Lone-spear at the back, because it gives you a pocket Kroot for a situation where you need to scramble to clear something out. Really though – make good trades, squeeze the maximum number of points out of your sacrificial units, and sweep through to victory.

Strengths

• Cohesive, coherent detachment rule that plays to the mobility of Auxiliaries and strength of T’au shooting.
• Great stratagems that support units across the entire T’au roster.
• Early game alpha strike potential.

Weaknesses

• Built around Kroot and Vespid units, who are easily focused down, so you’ll be sacrificing a lot of them, and are in trouble if you run out.
• Despite being the focus, those Kroot and Vespid units are still just playing support for the T’au, they don’t really shine in their own right (except Rampagers)
• High CP demand in a faction that can only get extra on a 4+

A Sample List

Waves After Waves - click to expand

I mean “see previous”, this is an implementation of all the stuff I’ve talked about through this review. Admired Leader powered Kroot Hounds are your cheap early scoring and setup units, and your various guns and alpha threats can blast whatever ails you.

Final Thoughts

This detachment is really good, and a genuinely welcome addition to the T’au arsenal. With the deep strike changes softening the blow that the Retaliation Cadre can deliver, T’au players will be looking to test new builds. Look to see lots of experimentation with this once events kick back off in the new year.

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