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Painboss

Character · 60 pts
Why it's takenIn 14 of 358 public listsThe 43rd most-taken Orks unit
Lists4% · in 14 of 358 public lists, September – November 2026
SimulatePainboss against any unit, in the calculator

SWORD: what Painboss kills

Damage for its points

28pts killed
per 100 pts spent

Its 60 pts kill ~17 pts in one activation.Typical melee unit: 55 per 100

Best against light vehicles and monsters, weakest against hordes

Into each enemy type

Everything28bottom 4%
Hordes26bottom 4%
Line inf.36bottom 7%
Heavy inf.38bottom 10%
Light veh. ★40bottom 19%
Heavy veh.31bottom 13%
Units near it by SWORD

Across the game· melee units

Flesh Hounds Chaos Daemons · just ahead29
Painboss 28
Lieutenant with Combi-weapon Space Marines · level with it28

SHIELD: how hard Painboss is to kill for its points

Toughness for its points

273pts to kill it
per 100 pts spent

Its 60 pts take ~164 pts of enemy units to kill.Typical melee unit: 307 per 100

For its points273bottom 34%
Units near it by SHIELD

In Orks

Painboss273

Across the game· melee units

Lord of Contagion Death Guard · just ahead274
Painboss 273
Daemonettes Chaos Daemons · level with it273

What reviewers say

5 reviewers
  • Fast, cheap protector with Squighogs 1 of 5
  • Overcosted for its role 1 of 5
  • Less reliable protector than before 1 of 5

Compare

UnitLetterSWORDSHIELDLists
Painboss60 ptsCBottom 4%Bottom 34%14of 358
Bigboss50 ptsCBottom 23%Top 11%27of 358
Deffkilla Wartrike80 ptsBTop 40%Top 7%56of 358

Leading a squad

Leading Beast Snagga Boyz140 pts together
SoloLeading
SWORD2878
SHIELD273432
Leading Squighog Boyz320 pts together
SoloLeading
SWORD2851
SHIELD273310

Per 100 pts: on its own, then for it and the squad together.

How we got these numbers

What we ran

Painboss, 60 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.

60 pts → kills ~17 pts → 28 per 100

SHIELD

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.

~164 pts → 273 per 100

Top 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.