Sorcerer
SWORD: what Sorcerer kills
Damage for its points
per 100 pts spent
Its 55 pts kill ~58 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
Across the game· melee units
SHIELD: how hard Sorcerer is to kill for its points
Toughness for its points
per 100 pts spent
Its 55 pts take ~134 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
3 reviewers- Cheapest unit, fills spare points 2 of 3
- Does little beyond giving cover 2 of 3
- A poor stand-in for a Lord Exultant 1 of 3
Compare
| Unit | Letter | SWORD | SHIELD | Lists |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sorcerer55 pts | C | Top 2% | Bottom 20% | 8of 146 |
| Lord Exultant95 pts | S | Top 6% | Bottom 14% | 141of 146 |
| Daemon Prince of Slaanesh165 pts | C | Top 24% | Top 35% | 7of 146 |
Leading a squad
| Solo | Leading | |
|---|---|---|
| SWORD | 106 | 90 |
| SHIELD | 244 | 259 |
| Solo | Leading | |
|---|---|---|
| SWORD | 106 | 79 |
| SHIELD | 244 | 278 |
Per 100 pts: on its own, then for it and the squad together.
How we got these numbers
What we ran
Sorcerer, 55 pts, with its datasheet's weapons, in Coterie of the Conceited (Pledges to the Dark Prince: 7+ points). On its own: no leader, no stratagems, no other units' auras. Counted as dice: 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.
55 pts → kills ~58 pts → 106 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.
~134 pts → 244 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 Emperor's Children tier lists: Joy's 40k channel (datasheet tier list, its dataslate review and its detachment tier list) (28 Oct), Goonhammer / tabletopbattles.com (dataslate review, Detachment Focus, Competitive Innovations: 5 winning lists and 22 summaries) (28 Oct), Auspex Tactics (army overview, top units, winning lists and the WTC's 36 lists) (6 Aug), 1d6chan (community 11th-edition tactics wiki, partly updated for the dataslate) (30 Oct), Grand Slam-Gaming (three of his own lists) (28 Aug), Chaos Coterie (three list builds) (12 Jul), Vanguard Tactics (the 1-DP detachments, on preview rules before points) (10 Jun). A reviewer who would rather not be counted: tell us.
Lists
146 public Emperor's Children 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.