Stormsurge
SWORD: what Stormsurge kills
Damage for its points
per 100 pts spent
Its 375 pts kill ~135 pts in one activation.Typical shooter: 44 per 100
Best against heavy vehicles and monsters, weakest against hordes
Into each enemy type
Units near it by SWORD
In T'au Empire
Across the game· shooters
SHIELD: how hard Stormsurge is to kill for its points
Toughness for its points
per 100 pts spent
Its 375 pts take ~947 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
5 reviewers- Draws fire as bait 1 of 5
- Fine in teams built around it 1 of 5
- All the eggs in one basket 2 of 5
- Unwieldy and hurt by the hiding rules 1 of 5
- Absent from winning lists 2 of 5
Compare
| Unit | Letter | SWORD | SHIELD | Lists |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Stormsurge375 pts | C | Bottom 28% | Bottom 26% | 7of 181 |
| Tiger Shark395 pts | C | Bottom 32% | Bottom 16% | 7of 181 |
| Riptide Battlesuit190 pts | B | Top 30% | Top 37% | 69of 181 |
How we got these numbers
What we ran
Stormsurge, 375 pts, with 1 Cluster rocket system, 1 Destroyer missiles, 1 Pulse Driver Cannon, 1 Thunderous footfalls, 1 Twin T'au flamer, 2 Twin smart missile system, in Kauyon. 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.
375 pts → kills ~135 pts → 36 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.
~947 pts → 253 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.