Defiler
SWORD: what Defiler kills
Damage for its points
per 100 pts spent
Its 270 pts kill ~157 pts in one activation.Typical melee unit: 55 per 100
Best against heavy vehicles and monsters, weakest against hordes
Into each enemy type
Units near it by SWORD
Across the game· melee units
SHIELD: how hard Defiler is to kill for its points
Toughness for its points
per 100 pts spent
Its 270 pts take ~681 pts of enemy units to kill.Typical melee unit: 307 per 100
Units near it by SHIELD
Across the game· melee units
What reviewers say
8 reviewers- Strong gun platform in Brazen Engines 6 of 8
- Its special trick fixes poor accuracy into cover 5 of 8
- One per list is a common sight 3 of 8
- Misses too often outside Brazen Engines 2 of 8
- Too expensive after the points rise 1 of 8
- Lost its defensive-fire punch in the update 1 of 8
- Big and easy to play around 2 of 8
Compare
| Unit | Letter | SWORD | SHIELD | Lists |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Defiler270 pts | B | Top 44% | Bottom 22% | 43of 215 |
| Khorne Lord of Skulls505 pts | B | Bottom 11% | Bottom 8% | 10of 215 |
| Maulerfiend140 pts | C | Top 3% | Top 33% | 30of 215 |
How we got these numbers
What we ran
Defiler, 270 pts, with 2 Excruciator cannon, 1 Hades battle cannon, 2 Heavy reaper autocannon, 1 Shearing claws - strike, 1 Shearing claws - sweep, in Goretrack Onslaught. 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.
270 pts → kills ~157 pts → 58 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 → 252 per 100Top and bottom %
Where each number ranks among the game's 571 melee units. How we score.
The letter
The average of 9 reviewers' newest World Eaters tier lists: Secondary Objective (with Aiden, a top World Eaters player) (22 Oct), Goonhammer / tabletopbattles.com (dataslate review and Competitive Innovations, 6 winning lists and about 12 summaries) (25 Oct), Berzerker Dan (a GT World Eaters player) (3 Oct), Grimdark Roundtable (2 Oct), The Glorious Game (14 Oct), Exalted40k (12 Sep), Auspex Tactics (25 GT lists at 4-1 or better) (1 Sep), Tactical Sugar (20 Aug), The Red Path (29 Jun). A reviewer who would rather not be counted: tell us.
Lists
215 public World Eaters 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.