Cultist Firebrand
SWORD: what Cultist Firebrand kills
Damage for its points
per 100 pts spent
Its 45 pts kill ~20 pts in one activation.Typical shooter: 44 per 100
Best against hordes, weakest against heavy vehicles and monsters
Into each enemy type
Units near it by SWORD
In Chaos Space Marines
Across the game· shooters
SHIELD: how hard Cultist Firebrand is to kill for its points
Toughness for its points
per 100 pts spent
Its 45 pts take ~107 pts of enemy units to kill.Typical shooter: 298 per 100
Units near it by SHIELD
Across the game· shooters
What creators say
2 creators- Battle-shock tricks for cultists 1 of 2
- Useless in practice 1 of 2
Compare
| Unit | Letter | SWORD | SHIELD | Lists |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cultist Firebrand45 pts | D | Top 47% | Bottom 21% | 2of 184 |
| Master of Possession65 pts | D | Top 18% | Bottom 17% | 8of 184 |
| Sorcerer65 pts | C | Top 11% | Bottom 14% | 4of 184 |
Leading a squad
| Solo | Leading | |
|---|---|---|
| SWORD | 45 | 55 |
| SHIELD | 238 | 282 |
| Solo | Leading | |
|---|---|---|
| SWORD | 45 | 46 |
| SHIELD | 238 | 311 |
Per 100 pts: on its own, then for it and the squad together.
How we got these numbers
What we ran
Cultist Firebrand, 45 pts, with its datasheet's weapons, in Nightmare Hunt. 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.
45 pts → kills ~20 pts → 45 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.
~107 pts → 238 per 100Top and bottom %
Where each number ranks among the game's 404 shooters. How we score.
The letter
The average of 8 creators' newest Chaos Space Marines tier lists: M.S.G. (CSM tier list, 25 Oct) (25 Oct), Goonhammer / tabletopbattles.com (dataslate review, Detachment Focus, Competitive Innovations: 4 post-dataslate lists) (28 Oct), Auspex Tactics (meta watch of 30 lists, first month of 11th) (14 Jul), Boltgun Tactics (dataslate review and London GT recap; his own lists, inferred) (6 Oct), Exalted40k (every CSM list at the WTC, counted; post-dataslate list writing) (6 Oct), 40K Dirtbags (Chaos Cults list, 3-0 and 1st of 30 at an RTT) (19 Oct), 6 Plus Plus Gaming (interview with Theo Hayat, 5-0 at Birmingham) (14 Jul), 1d6chan (community 11th-edition tactics wiki, much text carried over from 10th) (30 Oct). Questions? Get in touch.
Lists
184 public Chaos Space Marines 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.