Bigboss
SWORD: what Bigboss kills
Damage for its points
per 100 pts spent
Its 50 pts kill ~21 pts in one activation.Typical melee unit: 55 per 100
Best against line infantry, weakest against heavy vehicles and monsters
Into each enemy type
SHIELD: how hard Bigboss is to kill for its points
Toughness for its points
per 100 pts spent
Its 50 pts take ~212 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- The Weirdboy is the better buff for the slot 1 of 3
- Rarely taken in lists 1 of 3
Compare
| Unit | Letter | SWORD | SHIELD | Lists |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bigboss50 pts | C | Bottom 23% | Top 11% | 27of 358 |
| Painboy45 pts | C | Bottom 29% | Bottom 48% | 43of 358 |
| Painboss60 pts | C | Bottom 4% | Bottom 34% | 14of 358 |
Leading a squad
| Solo | Leading | |
|---|---|---|
| SWORD | 42 | 75 |
| SHIELD | 424 | 444 |
| Solo | Leading | |
|---|---|---|
| SWORD | 42 | 98 |
| SHIELD | 424 | 334 |
Per 100 pts: on its own, then for it and the squad together.
How we got these numbers
What we ran
Bigboss, 50 pts, with its datasheet's weapons, in Ramship Raiders. 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.
50 pts → kills ~21 pts → 42 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.
~212 pts → 424 per 100Top and bottom %
Where each number ranks among the game's 572 melee units. How we score.
The letter
The average of 9 reviewers' newest Orks tier lists: Auspex Tactics (meta watch: unit play rates in 25 winning lists) (24 Oct), WAAAGH Taktiks (dataslate review and meta watch of three 6-0/4-1 lists) (20 Oct), Highstakes 40K (Damian Cooper, a winning Ork player: dataslate review) (1 Oct), 40K Dirtbags (Derek, a top US Ork player: dataslate review and list idea) (4 Oct), Astrategas Wargames (Spanish datasheet tier list, two hosts) (14 Oct), Goonhammer / tabletopbattles.com (Competitive Innovations: 7 full lists and 28 summaries) (30 Oct), Art of War 40k (codex datasheet tier list) (1 Sep), Secondary Objective (codex tier list) (9 Sep), 1d6chan (community 11th-edition tactics wiki) (30 Oct). A reviewer who would rather not be counted: tell us.
Lists
358 public Orks 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.