Defiler
SWORD: what Defiler kills
Damage for its points
per 100 pts spent
Its 300 pts kill ~180 pts in one activation.Typical unit: 48 per 100
Best against heavy vehicles and monsters, weakest against hordes
Into each enemy type
Units near it by SWORD
Across the game· units
SHIELD: how hard Defiler is to kill for its points
Toughness for its points
per 100 pts spent
Its 300 pts take ~681 pts of enemy units to kill.Typical unit: 306 per 100
Units near it by SHIELD
Across the game· units
What reviewers say
4 reviewers- Main long-range gun, and surprisingly fast 4 of 4
- Works well with the army's re-rolls 1 of 4
- Combines with robots' free interventions 1 of 4
- Costly, and more with guns 4 of 4
- Weakest Defiler of the Chaos armies 1 of 4
- Lost bonuses in the summer update 1 of 4
- Autocannons do less to tough marines 1 of 4
Compare
| Unit | Letter | SWORD | SHIELD | Lists |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Defiler300 pts | A | Top 29% | Bottom 16% | 27of 89 |
| Chaos Vindicator185 pts | C | Top 45% | Top 49% | 1of 89 |
| Chaos Predator Annihilator140 pts | C | Top 42% | Top 44% | 5of 89 |
How we got these numbers
What we ran
Defiler, 300 pts, with 1 Ectoplasma destructor, 2 Excruciator cannon, 2 Heavy reaper autocannon, 1 Shearing claws - strike, 1 Shearing claws - sweep, in Warpforged Cabal (Warpfire Infusion: Within 6" of a psyker). On its own: no leader, no stratagems, no other units' auras. Counted as dice: 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.
300 pts → kills ~180 pts → 60 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.
~681 pts → 227 per 100Top and bottom %
Where each number ranks among the game's 935 units. How we score.
The letter
The average of 5 reviewers' newest Thousand Sons tier lists: Redundant Rolling (tier list and unit videos to 20 Oct) (20 Oct), Phyllain (meta watch of seven 4-1 lists, dataslate day, July update) (25 Oct), Goonhammer / tabletopbattles.com (dataslate review, Detachment Focus, Competitive Innovations: 1 full list and 8 summaries) (30 Oct), Grand Slam Gaming (three of his own 2,000-point lists) (21 Aug), 1d6chan (community 11th-edition tactics wiki, much text carried over from 10th) (30 Oct). A reviewer who would rather not be counted: tell us.
Lists
89 public Thousand Sons 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 4 Nov.