Cypher
SWORD: what Cypher kills
Damage for its points
per 100 pts spent
Its 95 pts kill ~85 pts in one activation.Typical unit: 48 per 100
Best against line infantry, weakest against heavy vehicles and monsters
Into each enemy type
Units near it by SWORD
Across the game· units
SHIELD: how hard Cypher is to kill for its points
Toughness for its points
per 100 pts spent
Its 95 pts take ~265 pts of enemy units to kill.Typical unit: 306 per 100
Units near it by SHIELD
Across the game· units
What creators say
4 creators- Raises enemy stratagem costs 3 of 4
- Should be in every list 2 of 4
- Shoots back when a nearby unit is shot 2 of 4
Compare
| Unit | Letter | SWORD | SHIELD | Lists |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cypher95 pts | A | Top 5% | Bottom 37% | 39of 184 |
| Haarken Worldclaimer95 pts | D | Top 24% | Bottom 33% | 1of 184 |
| Fabius Bile110 pts | A | Bottom 49% | Bottom 40% | 57of 184 |
How we got these numbers
What we ran
Cypher, 95 pts, with its datasheet's weapons, in Veterans of the Long War. 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.
95 pts → kills ~85 pts → 89 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.
~265 pts → 279 per 100Top and bottom %
Where each number ranks among the game's 935 units. 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.