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Hi guys,

I’m fairly new to Blood Angels and I know they have a lot of powerful deep striking melee infantry. However, I struggle to deal with screens that stop my guys getting close to the juicy targets they really want to kill.

The solution I see most people suggest is to use Death Company. However, they only seem to have three recommended methods for this if they don’t want to get shot off the table before they do anything:

1. Forlorn Fury (which only works if you go first)
2. Deep striking with Lemartes (which can only be done on turn 2, when it’s too late to clear screens)
3. Using Upon Wings of Fire (which prevents them from relying on Lemartes and renders their charges unreliable)

There is a possible fourth DC method that occurs to me - giving them drop pods instead of jump packs and then deep striking Lemartes in using Upon Wings of Fire, but I don’t see anyone else doing this so it makes me wonder if I’m missing something.

Sometimes I consider using shooty units like whirlwinds or dakka predators to do the job, but then the reaction to that seems to be that you’re not playing to BA strengths that way. I quite liked the idea of three predators with a cheapo captain and lieutenant using killshot.

Any ideas, guys? Thanks in advance

T2 isn't too late to be clearing screens. Deep strikers don't have to come in until T3, and you don't get your extra attack until then either, so really there are a lot of reasons to plan for a T3 main strike rather than a T2 main strike.

That said, you don't want to be clearing screens with death company anyway if you can avoid it, that's a really bad trade of points.

Scouts are one of the hidden gems of the BA codex. The +1 to wound is absolutely brutal on them - 3 attacks that wound on 2s or 3s against pretty much every screening unit out there. With the forward deploy, if they're trying to actually screen out, you can often get a T1 charge.

Also, better BA players tend to rely less on DS than you might think. A lot of the time it is better to start units on the table, and/or bring them in somewhere safe T2 and then charge T3.

Finally, unless the screen has fly, often you will want to be wrapping it rather than clearing it. Using screening units against a good BA player is very dangerous because the BA player has has so much movement that it's usually easy to set up wraps on units that are deployed far enough ahead of what they want to protect to avoid the 6" consolidate.

yukishiro1 wrote:
T2 isn't too late to be clearing screens. Deep strikers don't have to come in until T3, and you don't get your extra attack until then either, so really there are a lot of reasons to plan for a T3 main strike rather than a T2 main strike.

Is that efficient though? Hundreds of points doing nothing?

Also, better BE players tend to rely less on DS than you might think. A lot of the time it is better to start units on the table, and/or bring them in somewhere safe T2 and then charge T3.

Won’t they get shot off the board that way? There’s only so much LOS-blocking terrain right?

It depends on the table you'e playing on. But if you're not playing on tournament-standard tables with BA, you are unlikely to win a competitive game anyway. On a standard tournament table with the two big central LOS-blocking Ls, BA is such an elite army that you can usually deploy close to your entire army out of LOS of anything in your opponent's army that isn't super mobile - and if they're coming at you to get angles, that's typically just what you want.

You might want to look up Stephen Box's youtube channel - I think it's called Vanguard Tactics. He's a pretty solid BA main player, and he has a couple of BA-specific videos and battle reports on his channel you can see for free. He's a good person for a new player to learn from because (and I don't mean this as an insult in the least) he is more of a hard worker than a natural 40k genius, so he approaches things from closer to the point of view a normal player would.

AOW did a recent tactics interview with him too:
https://www.theartofwar40k.com/home/interview-with-stehen-box-on-blood-angels-stratgy

As a suggestion, perhaps Inceptors may be of help? They're hardly an assault unit by any stretch of the imagination, but with their Assault Bolters they put out a decent amount of dakka, they're tough, and most importantly, fast. I've used them to great effect dropping them in Turn 2 to shred a screening squad in preparation for a charge in the next turn.

I find a combination of various Troops works fine for clearing screens. Between Intercessors double-tapping at 30" and Incursors double-tapping and charging first turn you can often open up a big hole in your opponent's lines. SM shooting is very efficient thanks to all the re-rolls you get so even fairly small units can be very effective.

Also remember you don't need to completely remove every single screening unit. You only have to kill enough so they can't effectively redeploy any remaining screen to cover their gaps in the next turn. If they castle up, that's great because a single charging unit can tie up multiple enemies after creating even a small hole in the screen.

Re: the 6” consolidate - is that through canticles?

Yes, canticle of hate. Almost always what you're going to want running on the turn you make your main charge, unless there is no risk of failing and no ability to use the extra movement to wrap or jump to a new target, which is almost never.