Ethereal
SWORD: what Ethereal kills
Damage for its points
per 100 pts spent
Its 50 pts kill ~2 pts in one activation.Typical shooter: 44 per 100
Best against hordes, weakest against heavy vehicles and monsters
Into each enemy type
Units near it by SWORD
Across the game· shooters
SHIELD: how hard Ethereal is to kill for its points
Toughness for its points
per 100 pts spent
Its 50 pts take ~84 pts of enemy units to kill.Typical shooter: 298 per 100
Units near it by SHIELD
In T'au Empire
Across the game· shooters
What reviewers say
4 reviewers- A cheap observer that makes command points 3 of 4
- Some lists take two or three 1 of 4
- Command points unreliable; dies to indirect fire 2 of 4
- Competes with Darkstrider 1 of 4
- Rare in winning lists 1 of 4
Compare
| Unit | Letter | SWORD | SHIELD | Lists |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ethereal50 pts | B | Bottom 1% | Bottom 5% | 28of 181 |
| Cadre Fireblade50 pts | B | Bottom 1% | Bottom 3% | 34of 181 |
| Commander in Enforcer Battlesuit80 pts | A | Top 18% | Bottom 46% | 127of 181 |
Leading a squad
| Solo | Leading | |
|---|---|---|
| SWORD | 3 | 79 |
| SHIELD | 168 | 309 |
| Solo | Leading | |
|---|---|---|
| SWORD | 3 | 50 |
| SHIELD | 168 | 346 |
Per 100 pts: on its own, then for it and the squad together.
How we got these numbers
What we ran
Ethereal, 50 pts, with 1 Honour stave, 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 ~2 pts → 3 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.
~84 pts → 168 per 100Top 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.