Shield-Captain
SWORD: what Shield-Captain kills
Damage for its points
per 100 pts spent
Its 180 pts kill ~74 pts in one activation.Typical melee unit: 55 per 100
Best against heavy infantry, weakest against hordes
Into each enemy type
Units near it by SWORD
In Adeptus Custodes
Across the game· melee units
SHIELD: how hard Shield-Captain is to kill for its points
Toughness for its points
per 100 pts spent
Its 180 pts take ~383 pts of enemy units to kill.Typical melee unit: 307 per 100
Units near it by SHIELD
In Adeptus Custodes
Across the game· melee units
What creators say
7 creators- Sword and shield is the best, tough and precise 6 of 7
- Surges forward when shot 4 of 7
- Free self-ready makes it flexible 3 of 7
- Carries the extra-command-point warlord rule 3 of 7
- Competes with Trajann for the one character slot 3 of 7
- Costly once it joins a squad 1 of 7
Compare
| Unit | Letter | SWORD | SHIELD | Lists |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Shield-Captain180 pts | A | Bottom 21% | Bottom 11% | 50of 373 |
| Shield-Captain in Allarus Terminator Armour185 pts | C | Bottom 17% | Bottom 22% | 97of 373 |
| Blade Champion175 pts | C | Bottom 46% | Bottom 10% | 111of 373 |
Leading a squad
| Solo | Leading | |
|---|---|---|
| SWORD | 41 | 37 |
| SHIELD | 213 | 242 |
| Solo | Leading | |
|---|---|---|
| SWORD | 41 | 39 |
| SHIELD | 213 | 225 |
Per 100 pts: on its own, then for it and the squad together.
How we got these numbers
What we ran
Shield-Captain, 180 pts, with 1 Eternity-pattern Paragon Blade, 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.
180 pts → kills ~74 pts → 41 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.
~383 pts → 213 per 100Top and bottom %
Where each number ranks among the game's 571 melee units. How we score.
The letter
The average of 8 creators' 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). Questions? Get in touch.
Lists
373 public Adeptus Custodes tournament lists, September – November 2026, from grimstat-corpus (CC BY 4.0). Also from Listhammer, MiniHeadQuarters, ChampionsHub. Questions about a list or an event? Get in touch. Numbers run 4 Nov.