Painboy

Character · 45 pts

Why it's takenIn 53 of 432 public listsThe 30th most-taken Orks unit

Lists12% · in 53 of 432 public lists, September – November 2026

SimulatePainboy against any unit, in the calculator

SWORD: what Painboy kills

Damage for its points

45pts killed
per 100 pts spent

Its 45 pts kill ~20 pts in one activation.Typical melee unit: 55 per 100

Best against heavy infantry, weakest against heavy vehicles and monsters

Into each enemy type

Everything45bottom 29%

Hordes43bottom 25%

Line inf.61bottom 44%

Heavy inf. ★73top 34%

Light veh.56bottom 46%

Heavy veh.35bottom 20%

Units near it by SWORD

In Orks

Painboy45

Across the game· melee units

Chaos Questoris Knight Styrix Chaos Knights · just ahead46

Painboy 45

Dark Apostle Chaos Space Marines · level with it45

SHIELD: how hard Painboy is to kill for its points

Toughness for its points

302pts to kill it
per 100 pts spent

Its 45 pts take ~136 pts of enemy units to kill.Typical melee unit: 307 per 100

For its points302bottom 48%

Units near it by SHIELD

In Orks

Big Mek Dakkarig319

Gargantuan Squiggoth316

Painboy302

Mek291

Big Mek in Mega Armour278

Across the game· melee units

The Sanguinor Blood Angels · just ahead303

Painboy 302

Chaos Lord with Jump Pack Chaos Space Marines · level with it302

What creators say

6 creators

Brings back models each turn 1 of 6

Lost his protective bonus 2 of 6
Healing does not make up for it 2 of 6
Boyz do better with a Warboss instead 1 of 6

Compare

Unit	Letter	SWORD	SHIELD	Lists
Painboy45 pts	C	Bottom 29%	Bottom 48%	53of 432
Bigboss50 pts	C	Bottom 23%	Top 11%	35of 432
Painboss60 pts	C	Bottom 4%	Bottom 34%	14of 432

Leading a squad

Leading Boyz215 pts together

	Solo	Leading
SWORD	45	72
SHIELD	302	478

Leading Breaka Boyz165 pts together

	Solo	Leading
SWORD	45	91
SHIELD	302	355

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

How we got these numbers

What we ran

Painboy, 45 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.

45 pts → kills ~20 pts → 45 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.

~136 pts → 302 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 creators' 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). Questions? Get in touch.

Lists

432 public Orks 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 2 Nov.