Pathfinder Team
SWORD: what Pathfinder Team kills
Damage for its points
per 100 pts spent
Its 85 pts kill ~70 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
In T'au Empire
Across the game· shooters
SHIELD: how hard Pathfinder Team is to kill for its points
Toughness for its points
per 100 pts spent
Its 85 pts take ~268 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
6 reviewers- Scout forward and guide shots for the army 5 of 6
- In nearly every winning list, often two 3 of 6
- Good guns for the cost 3 of 6
- Recon drones stop scouting armies 1 of 6
- Ten models are harder to hide 1 of 6
- Fragile, with no durability 1 of 6
Compare
| Unit | Letter | SWORD | SHIELD | Lists |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pathfinder Team85 pts | S | Top 3% | Top 43% | 139of 181 |
| Stealth Battlesuits100 pts | S | Bottom 48% | Bottom 38% | 167of 181 |
| Vespid Stingwings70 pts | B | Top 32% | Bottom 22% | 79of 181 |
With a leader
| Solo | Led | |
|---|---|---|
| SWORD | 167 | 185 |
| SHIELD | 315 | 315 |
Per 100 pts: on its own, then with the leader joined.
How we got these numbers
What we ran
Pathfinder Team, 10 models, 85 pts, with 10 Close combat weapon, 7 Pulse carbine, 10 Pulse pistol, 3 Rail rifle, 1 Semi-automatic grenade launcher - EMP, 1 Semi-automatic grenade launcher - fusion, in Starfire Cadre. On its own: no leader, no stratagems, no other units' auras. Counted as dice: its own abilities, 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.
85 pts → kills ~70 pts → 82 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.
~268 pts → 315 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.