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So, I play T'au. They've been my primary force for quite some time. However, my usual opponents play Blood Angels (with a heavy emphasis on deepstrikers) and Orks (with a huge mob of boyz). Recently the Blood Angel player discovered the unreasonably powerful captain his army is capable of building.

Captain, Jump Pack>Angels Wing relic, Thunderhammer>Artisan of War WT, Storm Shield, Death Visions strategem
This guy can 1 shot a fire raptor... for 129 points.

How the zog do I kill this? Other than railsiding it to death I don't see much of a way to do it, not to mention that by the time I've focused him down my squishy T'au gunline is getting hammer and anvilled
I was originally just going to handle it by blasting it with fusion fire from my ghostkeels, but seeing how good he is at dishing out hurt, a ghostkeel is a pricey unit to risk losing like that.

Help please?

kroot (deny him the ability to charge anything but kroot)
Sniper drones - (kill him with mortal wounds)

There is also some pathfinder drone that reduces charge range of opponents - not sure how effective that would be but check that out as well.

It's basically a question of getting those horrible thunder hammer attacks to hit something cheap.

Slamguinius isn’t really at his best against Tau to be honest. He beats us up in cc… like everyone else. Treat him like you treat everyone else who wants to fight you in cc: shoot him – or feed him a screen unit and then shoot him.

He’s a problem for people who play cc armies because he beats things up in cc. He makes it very hard to advance towards the BAs if this nutter is going to pop out and start one-shotting units. So instead stand far, far away and shoot the enemy until they are all dead. If he beats up the odd fire warrior, drone or kroot, you can live with that.

I'm a blood angels player. Deny good targets and gun it down. You only need 2-3 d6 damage shots through the invul. save and the FnP won't save em all. Slamguinius is very CP hungry so it won't use the shenanigans more than 1-2 times in a game. For big targets his melee potential comes from fighting twice by killing him. Usually Slamguinius gets shot if he fails the charge and even a Nurgle daemon prince kicks his butt in melee. Overwatch denial is a mean thing, but like I started this post, protect your valuable things with screens and don't leave any gaps in your screen that the captain won't just jump over with it's jump pack. Does Tau have any kinda auspex scan type stratagems?

“Unreasonably good”. Yeah, okay. Anyway, he’s only at his best when you throw him at something that will kill him so he can fight twice. That’s the only way you maximize fighting twice with +D3+1 attacks and +1 to wound. If he lives, you spend yet another CP and he gets shot to death next turn because he has 5 T4 Wounds. Even a SS is a waste of points because you’re giving him away regardless.

Massed pulse rifle fire (or pulse blasters if he gets close). At the end of the day, he is just 4 T5 wounds behind a 3+ save.

Blood Angels Captains are great units. Let's get that out of the way.

First, you need to take screening units so you can push back where that Captain can deep strike. For this, take Stealth suits (Ghostkeels can also work but the Captain can quickly take them down). The idea is you're deploying forward, spreading out, and creating as many 9" zones where your opponent can't deploy in deep strike as you possibly can. Your opponent should have Scouts, so both be deploying your infiltrators first meaning you'll be trading off zones of the board with the Blood Angels player. Pay careful attention to where he can deep strike, and where he can't. Kroot can also deny space, but Scouts deploy before Kroot get their bonus move, so they're a little less effective here at grabbing space (although they absorb a Captain's charge fantastically).

Same idea goes for your own deployment zone. You need to spread out and control the board so the BA player doesn't have room to deep strike anywhere you don't want him to.

Remember that he can only declare a charge if he's within 12" of one of your units, so deny him the opportunity to deploy within 12" of anything you aren't willing to lose to his charge.

Once he's actually on the board and doing damage, it's just a matter of shooting away the nearest units and then gunning the Captain down. He isn't particularly tough, he's just T4 and 5 wounds even if he does have good save and a 6+ FNP.

Pulse rifles. He's got 5 W, T4, and a 3+ save. Not hard; I do it all the time with BA in mirror matches.

Slamaguinius must be properly utilized. Don’t deep strike him until enemy chaff has been cleared out. Use him to one shot a key enemy unit and fight again that turn to get another. I would consider putting out a bait unit to draw him out then blast him.

 Primark G wrote:
Slamaguinius must be properly utilized. Don’t deep strike him until enemy chaff has been cleared out. Use him to one shot a key enemy unit and fight again that turn to get another. I would consider putting out a bait unit to draw him out then blast him.

It's ideal to force him to come down in a bad position, but if you can't do that, delaying him is exactly the point. The longer you can delay the big BA alpha/beta strike, the better you'll do as Tau against BA, since they'll be trying to keep up with your shooting without all their assets in play.

I'll borrow this topic and ask how to deal with him from an ork player's point of view? Tau is shooty bad in h2h so BA captain's awesome power is mostly related for survival since lesser guy kills tau in h2h anyway. With orks however...Well he sure ain't running short of targets seeing orks are all about h2h as well!

How good he is at clearing hordes?

tneva82 wrote:
I'll borrow this topic and ask how to deal with him from an ork player's point of view?

The same but in CC. Slamguinius excels at killing high value models so tarpit him with a squad of slugga boys and inflict death by a thousand choppa cuts. Slamguinius is going to kill a maximum of 5 boyz (8 if the BA player uses the Red Rampage strat). If you have a 20-strong unit in combat with him, the dozen or so remaining Orks should be able to put 5 wounds on him (without taking the DC save into account). So if he is not dead, he will be badly bleeding at this point.

Just keep him tied up, if he withdraws from an unfavourable combat, he cannot charge again the same turn (OK there is the "On Wings of fire" stratagem but that is even more CPs).

Basically, like any low Toughness unit with a good invulnerable save, massed small-arms fire or basic CC attacks is the most efficient way of taking him down

Ok goood to know. Don't have BA codex so I know of him only by what I have read. Sounds scary fellow but good if he's not at it's best at clearing up hordes. Though death by thousand cuts could be harder due to buddies. I doubt he's running out there alone.

tneva82 wrote:
I'll borrow this topic and ask how to deal with him from an ork player's point of view? Tau is shooty bad in h2h so BA captain's awesome power is mostly related for survival since lesser guy kills tau in h2h anyway. With orks however...Well he sure ain't running short of targets seeing orks are all about h2h as well!

How good he is at clearing hordes?

Not at all good. He has a few thunder hammer attacks, then the horde tramples him. Then he gets a few more thunder hammer attacks from a stratagem that lets him attack when he dies.

You don't want him anywhere near your vehicles and characters. Charge him with 30 boyz with an embedded power fist and he'll go away. Screen your valuable stuff and he's irrelevant.

Incidentally, there's a 3 point stratagem that lets him attack a second time at the end of the assault phase, even if he's still alive. 3 CPs is a lot, but can be worth it. This guy killed a repulsor and redemptor in a turn with that approach, which was annoying!

You could also bait him into deepstriking into an ewo cross fire trap. He wants your big suits, they are the ones most likely to have ewo. He can't charge if he's dead.

tneva82 wrote:
Though death by thousand cuts could be harder due to buddies. I doubt he's running out there alone.

He does often end up running off alone to try and tackle a big threat. Many players use "Descent of Angels" to give him a 3D6" charge on the turn he comes in from Reserve but if he does this, there is a good chance he will leave any bodyguards behind.

Mandragola wrote:
It's basically a question of getting those horrible thunder hammer attacks to hit something cheap.

Slamguinius isn’t really at his best against Tau to be honest. He beats us up in cc… like everyone else. Treat him like you treat everyone else who wants to fight you in cc: shoot him – or feed him a screen unit and then shoot him.

He’s a problem for people who play cc armies because he beats things up in cc. He makes it very hard to advance towards the BAs if this nutter is going to pop out and start one-shotting units. So instead stand far, far away and shoot the enemy until they are all dead. If he beats up the odd fire warrior, drone or kroot, you can live with that.

Tau are extremely resistant to cc actually. Unreasonably so in fact. They are much better at making it through melee than guard are. Drones make the kind of melee that slamguinious or custodes do practically worthless for a turn, and a turn is all they are going to get before they are shot to death

Here’s the thing, slamguinious kills one unit real good, but only with a small number of high damage attacks. You could, if you really want to, simply not take a rip tide. Or have a lot of drones. Have like 3 drones around your rip tides and commanders, and slamguinious is essentially worthless. Especially if they are shield drones. You merely need enough drones to survive fire from blood angels, which arent a snooty army, and drones are small and easy to hide

tneva82 wrote:
Though death by thousand cuts could be harder due to buddies. I doubt he's running out there alone.

He does often end up running off alone to try and tackle a big threat. Many players use "Descent of Angels" to give him a 3D6" charge on the turn he comes in from Reserve but if he does this, there is a good chance he will leave any bodyguards behind.

What allows him to attack again in his death throws?

 mrhappyface wrote:
What allows him to attack again in his death throws?

Only in death does duty end. Stratagem.