Skullmaster
SWORD: what Skullmaster kills
Damage for its points
per 100 pts spent
Its 85 pts kill ~39 pts in one activation.Typical melee unit: 55 per 100
Best against heavy infantry, weakest against heavy vehicles and monsters
Into each enemy type
Units near it by SWORD
Across the game· melee units
SHIELD: how hard Skullmaster is to kill for its points
Toughness for its points
per 100 pts spent
Its 85 pts take ~269 pts of enemy units to kill.Typical melee unit: 307 per 100
Units near it by SHIELD
Across the game· melee units
What reviewers say
5 reviewers- Makes a Bloodcrusher brick hit like a greater daemon 4 of 5
- Taken in all the winning lists 2 of 5
- Horns hit hard on the charge 2 of 5
- Points keep rising 1 of 5
Compare
| Unit | Letter | SWORD | SHIELD | Lists |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Skullmaster85 pts | A | Bottom 32% | Top 46% | 70of 159 |
| Chaos Lord with Jump Pack85 pts | B | Bottom 17% | Bottom 22% | 1of 159 |
| Chaos Lord in Terminator Armour90 pts | B | Bottom 10% | Top 48% | 1of 159 |
Leading a squad
| Solo | Leading | |
|---|---|---|
| SWORD | 46 | 44 |
| SHIELD | 316 | 305 |
Per 100 pts: on its own, then for it and the squad together.
How we got these numbers
What we ran
Skullmaster, 85 pts, with its datasheet's weapons. On its own: no leader, no stratagems, no other units' auras.
SWORD
Enemy points it kills in one activation, per 100 pts of its own, against a mix of targets weighted like top tournament lists.
85 pts → kills ~39 pts → 46 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.
~269 pts → 316 per 100Top and bottom %
Where each number ranks among the game's 572 melee units. How we score.
The letter
The average of 7 reviewers' newest Chaos Daemons tier lists: FattyMatty 40k (Demonic Mondays: his own verdicts and games, Plague Legion player) (26 Oct), Barnyard Wargaming (Daemons specialist: October team-event vlog and June first impressions) (26 Oct), Goonhammer / tabletopbattles.com (Competitive Innovations: 4 winning lists and 14 summaries, 2 Oct to 30 Oct) (30 Oct), 40K Fireside (team New Zealand captain, Daemons player: three WTC lists) (3 Aug), Auspex Tactics (army tier list's Daemons segment, 23 Oct, and one strong list) (23 Oct), True Daemon Lord (Daemons-only channel: Plague Legion in 11th, preview rules before points) (12 Jun), 1d6chan (community 11th-edition tactics wiki, largely carried over from 10th) (30 Oct). A reviewer who would rather not be counted: tell us.
Lists
159 public Chaos Daemons 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 2 Nov.