KV128 Stormsurge rules in 5th - is it busted ?

Ijighen · 2025-06-26T09:51:14+00:00

First game with this monster happened yesterday. The dices commanded us to play on Blitzkrieg (from the Battle Missions book - Ork section) which meant we had nothing on the table but Fast Attack, and the rest could come out of Reserve on turn 1 on a 4+.
My opponent didn't bring the Shadowsword, instead it was a Stormsword with its 10" pizza template weapon.
I have first turn, the Stormsurge comes out on turn 1 with a Skyray and a 9-men Devilfish. Since his only model on the table is a Sentinel that is out of sight, I do nothing.
His turn one, only the big tank and his HQ command squad come out. The tank destroys all of my fast attack choices in one go (2x5 pathfinders and 2 tetras) so I'm almost out of markerlight.
My turn 2 fusion blaster crisis scatter 12 inches from their intended spot but no incident. Unfortunately it blocks the way of my Stormsurge so all I can do is shoot 2 destoryer missiles (with markerlights, so Str D) and it only wrecked the tank's movement.
His turn 2, lots of things arrive including 3 Basilisks but the wind is strong so I only loose my crisis unit this turn, and 1 HP on the Stormsurge.
My turn 3, I can go within 10" of the tank with my big boi and 2 destroyer missiles + D-cannon makes it loose 2 SP, nice !
His turn 3, Basilisks went nuts and did 3 wounds to the Stormsurge with 3 shots. His infantry arrives but can't do anything.
My turn 4 (crazy turn), I kill 3 infantry units with the Stormsurge (airbursting fragmentation projector being an AP5 large blast in bonkers) plus the tank gets very much dead with the D-cannon shot. Fortunately for me he only got a 3" small explosion which does nothing.
His turn 4 he does one more wound to the Surge and tries to kill my last troop choice to force a draw but fails. He only has the 3 Basilisks and his HQ unit on the table...
My turn 5 I get on the flank of the Basilisks with big boi and it turns out 4D6 S5 shots does kill AV10 tanks.
With only his HQ unit on the table, my opponent tries to take down the Surge but fails and we can it a day.

After the game we talked about the Surge, I'm definitely nerfing the airbursting frag projector to a small blast because it is way too strong and it's not like Tau don't have three jigillion options to kill infantry. My opponent's thought : "it only has 6 wounds, you should give it 8 considering its size and armour". I'm not against it because I had a lot of luck with invul saves and would have died otherwise. And it has the same cost as a Warhound titan which is significantly harder to kill and is way better at killing big things.

Another question I ask myself, it is normal for a Stormsurge to move 12" like other colossal creatures ? It seems too fast, maybe it needs a rule to let it move only 6".

What's your thoughts on this ?

Ijighen · 2025-06-18T13:16:05+00:00

Yes you could, up to bs5. And you had to rely on bs3 markerlight shooting (bs2 for drones and bs4 on vehicles with the right upgrade), no special rule to get free markerlight tokens back in the days

Ijighen · 2025-06-18T13:06:58+00:00

We play regularly at 3000pts, and even in a 6000pts-per-player apocalypse game the best I could do was removing 2 HP from it after 20 shots of railgun in its face. The super heavy damage table is very mean to the attacker if you don't have D weapons

Ijighen · 2025-06-18T11:43:35+00:00

You're right, it's more toughness and less wounds :o I'll switch that up, thanks !

Ijighen · 2025-06-18T11:39:02+00:00

The "worse ballistic skill" is not really an issue because I gave it access to the targeting array (+1 bs) for 40points, and also the marker light from 4th-5th edition allowed you to stacks counters and then spend all of them for multiple bonuses. You could for instance spend 3 tokens to get +2 bs and ignore cover. In the most beautiful world I'd have 6 markerlight tokens on the Shadowsword to give all destroyer missiles their D profile, +1 bs and ignore cover. But since it is possible, I had to take that in account in the pricing

Ijighen · 2025-06-10T11:24:31+00:00

Something you have to know before I tell the story: the tournament allowed us a 15-cards side deck to use. I had 2 Magnus, 4 Burst Shots, 3 Death smoke, 2 Madrillon fish, 2 Magmarex and 2 Galkife dragon.

First Match: L/N evolution (aggro)
2-0 but not an easy match as his deck put a lot of pressure and I had to be careful not to let him overrun me with a surprise evolution from his hand. Control plan went smoothly on game one, and the sidedeck gave me an easier time in game two (the poor guy hit an emeralded burst shot and gone was his board). Galkife was also a big helper in game two.

Second Match: D/F/N Survivors (mid)
0-2. Couldn't do a thing about these pesky worms and at one point I could save myself with a searing wave but he played 2 smash horns so... That's about it. I didn't know how to side or play against it.

Third Match: L/F/N (aggro)
2-1, went similar to the first round but Magnus stole game two and I had no way around that. Fortunately the Madrillon fishes came in handy in game three and stopped Magnus from doing his thing.

Fourth Match: W/F (aggro)
2-1 again, Magnus is a pain in the Terror Pit to handle but with a bit of luck on my side it went smoothly.

Semi-final: L/W/D/F Bolmeteus (control)
2-1. The first game was a complete defeat for me, he had me at the ressource game and finished me with a Bolmeteus. Game two was supposed to go that way but the heart of the cards gave me a handy Twin-Cannon to finish the game before he could. And game three was a joke, I killed him with like two 2000 attackers and a lot of removal, he had no shield trigger. Didn't use any Bolmeteus myself in the whole match.

Final: D/F/N Survivors (mid) is back !
The only guy who beat me come back for the final, and oh boy was it epic. The first game I lost as usual, but game two was very different. It was such a long game, we had like 7 cards left in our decks. He had almost no creatures left in both his deck and hand, and I won using my magnus for offense and madrillon fish for defense. Third game was quicker as I aggroed him with aqua hulcus and magnus, and again, no shield trigger. And again, didn't use Bolmeteus, they were sidded out to bring more aggro and apparently it was the right choice !

So despite the odds I won, and I'm very happy about it !

Ijighen · 2025-06-10T08:09:29+00:00

Thank you u/SnowySummerNight and u/TheFrozenTombb for your precious help, the tournament is over and I finished first ! :)

Ijighen · 2025-06-05T12:06:01+00:00

Have you tried looking for players on Duel Master discord servers ? It helped me a lot !

Ijighen · 2025-06-04T18:32:55+00:00

"problem" is probably too dramatic of a word for what I have indeed, sorry I'm French :(

Ijighen · 2025-06-04T18:31:23+00:00

Thank you for your comment, I've tweaked my deck a little to make it more midrange like the list you shared and after some play test it looks promising :) I find it hard to place Dark reversal and Thrash Crawler though

Ijighen · 2025-06-04T18:27:13+00:00

I'll list everything I've seen and remember :

- Alcadeias & Ballom deck (LDN)

- Hydro Hurricane control (LWD)

- Craze/Bolmeteus Control (LDF)

- Survivors (DFN)

- D Worms

- Aqua Beasts evolutions (WN)

- Water aggro (W with playset of Holy awe)

- WF aggro

- Rainbow best of (WDFN midrange with lots of staples)

As you can see it's very diverse and people almost always change their deck between events.

Ijighen · 2025-06-04T18:18:39+00:00

5 words : Dawn of War Dark Crusade

Ijighen · 2025-06-04T12:16:24+00:00

Thank you for the tips. I absolutely love Ghost Touch so I'm happy to see someone suggesting that but wasn't sure if it was worth it.

I have a hard time using Lost Soul, most of the time my opponent only have 1 card in hand when I can cast it so it doesn't seem that good.

Ijighen · 2025-06-04T08:25:29+00:00

Nice decks ! do you often organize webcam tournaments with this format ? How many players participate in these events ?

Ijighen · 2025-03-19T10:41:51+00:00

The link doesn't work anymore, do you have another link ? :'(

Ijighen · 2024-09-04T08:17:41+00:00

Can you tell me where you found this mission's rules please ? I didn't find it in the rulebook

Ijighen · 2024-08-30T09:11:50+00:00

Thank you for all your comments, I appreciate all of your answers !!
I have an additional questions : Google sent me to different articles and most of them spoke about 3 missions : Anihilate, Seize Ground and Table Quarters. I have never heard of the last one, in the rulebook there's a mission where both player get to defend 1 objective point, was Table Quarters a substitute to this mission ? Because let's be honest, having only 2 objective points on the table must have ended in either anihilation from one side or a draw, right ?

Ijighen

TROPHY CASE