Cadre Fireblade

Character · 50 pts

Why it's takenIn 34 of 181 public listsThe 20th most-taken T'au Empire unit · Role: Bought for the squad it leads

Lists19% · in 34 of 181 public lists, September – November 2026

SimulateCadre Fireblade against any unit, in the calculator

SWORD: what Cadre Fireblade kills

Damage for its points

7pts killed
per 100 pts spent

Its 50 pts kill ~4 pts in one activation.Typical shooter: 44 per 100

Best against hordes, weakest against heavy vehicles and monsters

Into each enemy type

Everything7bottom 1%

Hordes ★16bottom 1%

Line inf.12bottom 1%

Heavy inf.7bottom 1%

Light veh.6bottom 1%

Heavy veh.4bottom 1%

Units near it by SWORD

In T'au Empire

Cadre Fireblade7

Across the game· shooters

Manta T'au Empire · just ahead9

Cadre Fireblade 7

SHIELD: how hard Cadre Fireblade is to kill for its points

Toughness for its points

158pts to kill it
per 100 pts spent

Its 50 pts take ~79 pts of enemy units to kill.Typical shooter: 298 per 100

For its points158bottom 3%

Units near it by SHIELD

In T'au Empire

Ta'unar Supremacy Armour181

Kroot Flesh Shaper178

Ethereal168

Kroot Trail Shaper160

Cadre Fireblade158

Across the game· shooters

Orion Assault Dropship Adeptus Custodes · just ahead159

Cadre Fireblade 158

Thunderhawk Gunship Space Marines · level with it158

What reviewers say

5 reviewers

Boosts a Breacher unit's damage a lot 3 of 5
Leads the Devilfish objective plan 1 of 5

Rarely seen outside Breacher lists 2 of 5

Compare

Unit	Letter	SWORD	SHIELD	Lists
Cadre Fireblade50 pts	B	Bottom 1%	Bottom 3%	34of 181
Ethereal50 pts	B	Bottom 1%	Bottom 5%	28of 181
Commander in Enforcer Battlesuit80 pts	A	Top 18%	Bottom 46%	127of 181

Leading a squad

Leading Breacher Team130 pts together

	Solo	Leading
SWORD	7	80
SHIELD	158	246

Leading Strike Team120 pts together

	Solo	Leading
SWORD	7	51
SHIELD	158	277

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

How we got these numbers

What we ran

Cadre Fireblade, 50 pts, with 1 Close combat weapon, 1 Fireblade pulse rifle, in Starfire Cadre. 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 ~4 pts → 7 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.

~79 pts → 158 per 100

Top and bottom %

Where each number ranks among the game's 407 shooters. How we score.

The letter

The average of 8 reviewers' newest T'au Empire tier lists: 6 Plus Plus Gaming (unit tier list, with its pinned comment) (13 Oct), Tau Tactics (meta watch of five top-cut lists from LVO and LGT) (4 Oct), Goonhammer / tabletopbattles.com (Competitive Innovations: 5 full post-dataslate winning lists and 16 summaries) (23 Oct), WednesdayNightWarhammer (State of the Empire, dataslate review; few units graded) (2 Oct), Puretide Program (WTC 2026 meta analysis: unit counts across the T'au lists) (6 Aug), Tawnis Tactics (Learn to Play Kroot: unit review inside Kroot Hunting Pack) (5 Sep), Invasive Wargaming (damage per point mathhammer after the July update) (28 Jul), Vanguard Tactics (competitive breakdown of the 1-DP detachments on preview rules; unit views inferred) (15 Jun). A reviewer who would rather not be counted: tell us.

Lists

181 public T'au Empire 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.