The Twin Lance
SWORD: what The Twin Lance kills
Damage for its points
per 100 pts spent
Its 240 pts kill ~137 pts in one activation.Typical shooter: 44 per 100
Best against heavy infantry, weakest against hordes
Into each enemy type
Units near it by SWORD
In T'au Empire
Across the game· shooters
SHIELD: how hard The Twin Lance is to kill for its points
Toughness for its points
per 100 pts spent
Its 240 pts take ~589 pts of enemy units to kill.Typical shooter: 298 per 100
Units near it by SHIELD
Across the game· shooters
What reviewers say
5 reviewers- In nearly every list 4 of 5
- Debuffs and battle-shock swing games 3 of 5
- Hits hard, then fires and fades 3 of 5
- The only datasheet with interesting rules 1 of 5
- Price keeps rising, near its ceiling 2 of 5
- Weaker in the Kauyon lists 1 of 5
Compare
| Unit | Letter | SWORD | SHIELD | Lists |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| The Twin Lance240 pts | S | Top 24% | Bottom 23% | 156of 181 |
| Commander Shadowsun100 pts | B | Top 45% | Bottom 20% | 33of 181 |
| Commander Farsight70 pts | A | Top 13% | Top 8% | 119of 181 |
How we got these numbers
What we ran
The Twin Lance, 2 models, 240 pts, with 1 Fusion eliminator, 1 Fusion eliminator (melee), 1 Ion scattercannon, 2 Shardstorm burst system, 2 Twin pulse blaster, 2 XV pulse pistol, 2 XV pulse pistol (melee), 1 Ion scattercannon - overcharge, 1 Ion scattercannon - standard, in Retaliation 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.
240 pts → kills ~137 pts → 57 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.
~589 pts → 245 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.