Ares Gunship
SWORD: what Ares Gunship kills
Damage for its points
per 100 pts spent
Its 580 pts kill ~180 pts in one activation.Typical shooter: 44 per 100
Best against heavy vehicles and monsters, weakest against hordes
Into each enemy type
Units near it by SWORD
In Adeptus Custodes
Across the game· shooters
SHIELD: how hard Ares Gunship is to kill for its points
Toughness for its points
per 100 pts spent
Its 580 pts take ~1494 pts of enemy units to kill.Typical shooter: 298 per 100
Units near it by SHIELD
In Adeptus Custodes
Across the game· shooters
What reviewers say
2 reviewers- Big anti-tank gun 1 of 2
- Too expensive for what it does 2 of 2
- The Caladius does long-range anti-tank better 2 of 2
- Hovers at the edge with no objective play 1 of 2
Compare
| Unit | Letter | SWORD | SHIELD | Lists |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ares Gunship580 pts | C | Bottom 18% | Bottom 29% | 0of 271 |
| Caladius Annihilator Grav-tank250 pts | A | Bottom 32% | Bottom 40% | 44of 271 |
| Caladius Grav-tank230 pts | C | Bottom 22% | Bottom 47% | 23of 271 |
How we got these numbers
What we ran
Ares Gunship, 580 pts, with its datasheet's weapons, in Emperor's Chosen. On its own: no leader, no stratagems, no other units' auras. Counted as dice: the army rule and the detachment's rule.
SWORD
Enemy points it kills in one activation, per 100 pts of its own, against a mix of targets weighted like top tournament lists.
580 pts → kills ~180 pts → 31 per 100SHIELD
Enemy points it takes to kill it, per 100 pts of its own: the points of the cheapest units from top lists that kill it 80% of the time. It's per point, so a costly unit has to be much tougher to score the same.
~1494 pts → 258 per 100Top and bottom %
Where each number ranks among the game's 404 shooters. How we score.
The letter
The average of 8 reviewers' newest Adeptus Custodes tier lists: Auspex Tactics (codex unit tier list, five tiers with tier 2 split) (21 Oct), Art of War 40k (every datasheet in the new codex ranked, with a Custodes specialist) (13 Oct), Black Crow Gaming with 6 Plus Plus Gaming (units tier review, two competitive Custodes and teams players) (28 Oct), Deploy on the Line 40K (first codex tier list, from his own games; characters rated against each other) (7 Oct), Goonhammer / tabletopbattles.com (codex review, roundtable, Competitive Innovations: 2 new-codex winning lists and 2 summaries) (30 Oct), TacticalTortoise 40k (meta watch of the first three X-1 new-codex lists) (27 Oct), Night Geist Gaming (one own Take and Hold list on preview points, explained unit by unit) (11 Oct), 1d6chan (community 11th-edition tactics wiki, updated for the codex) (30 Oct). A reviewer who would rather not be counted: tell us.
Lists
271 public Adeptus Custodes tournament lists, September – November 2026, from grimstat-corpus (CC BY 4.0). Also from Listhammer. Organisers and players: ask us and we'll take a list or an event down. Numbers run 4 Nov.