Strike Team
SWORD: what Strike Team kills
Damage for its points
per 100 pts spent
Its 70 pts kill ~21 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 Strike Team is to kill for its points
Toughness for its points
per 100 pts spent
Its 70 pts take ~279 pts of enemy units to kill.Typical shooter: 298 per 100
Units near it by SHIELD
Across the game· shooters
What reviewers say
4 reviewers- A cheap body with objective control 1 of 4
- Out-competed by Kroot Carnivores 1 of 4
- Absent from recent winning lists 1 of 4
Compare
| Unit | Letter | SWORD | SHIELD | Lists |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Strike Team70 pts | C | Bottom 16% | Top 17% | 22of 181 |
| Breacher Team80 pts | B | Top 1% | Top 33% | 43of 181 |
| Vespid Stingwings70 pts | B | Top 32% | Bottom 22% | 79of 181 |
With a leader
| Solo | Led | |
|---|---|---|
| SWORD | 148 | 196 |
| SHIELD | 399 | 399 |
| Solo | Led | |
|---|---|---|
| SWORD | 148 | 148 |
| SHIELD | 399 | 487 |
Per 100 pts: on its own, then with the leader joined.
How we got these numbers
What we ran
Strike Team, 10 models, 70 pts, with 10 Close combat weapon, 10 Pulse pistol, 10 Pulse rifle, 1 Support turret, 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.
70 pts → kills ~21 pts → 30 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.
~279 pts → 399 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.