The Art of Listhammer

Stumbled across this forum post while searching for Jwolf's blog the other day. Below is the main body of the post...

Foreword and Introduction

In this thread, cold, hard math and facts reign supreme. Opinions, feelings, emotions, fluff, and accusations of taking the fun out of the game (aka "cheese") have no place here, so leave those kinds of things at the door (please turn your sarcasm detectors on). The intent and purpose of this article is to give competitive players a better understanding of the importance of what they take in their army lists.

In an ideal setting, you and your opponent would have perfectly evenly-matched forces and luck would not play a role. Only sound strategies, tactics, and decisions would lead you to victory. This is not the case in Warhammer 40k.

During a competitive game, there are many important things that you simply do not have control over. A referee/moderator will have chosen how much and what kind of terrain you are going to play with. Although you can roughly predict the outcome of dice rolls with averages and so forth, in the end they are still random. You also do not have any control over your opponent's list, and enemy action will change how you play and affect the decisions you make in-game.

But, there is one element that you have complete control over before the game even starts, and that is your own army list. Any given army list has several innate values associated with it. These values include the amount of damage that the list can put out in one turn, how much damage it can recieve, what its average effective range is, how far it can move its troops, et cetera. What we are trying to do is maximize these to give ourselves quite a significant edge during the game.

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The Core of the List

The strongest part of a properly built list is its core. This includes, but is not limited to, the compulsory 1 HQ and 2 Troops. In recent times, the most competitive types of lists have been of the well-rounded "take all comers" flavor, being able to effectively handle any threat thrown at it. So, let us begin. The best place to start is with your compulsory force, because you MUST take them. This can usually be done in under 500 points. You want these 3 units to be able to work together and support each other.

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Auxiliary Units

These units usually fall under the Elites, Fast Attack, and Heavy Support categories. They are taken to help the core of the list accomplish its goals, whether it be taking objectives, drawing fire away from them, or causing raw damage. Redundancy is still as important as ever. There are very few instances where taking just one of something is a good idea, as it will usually get focus fired and destroyed.

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I would like to conclude by pointing out something very important. In many of the lists that I see posted here, there are people still trying to gear out their units to take on multiple types of targets. While this can work, it is not the most efficient way to make your army versatile. Instead of giving each individual unit a mix of weapons to handle anything (for instance, a Veteran squad with a flamer, plasma gun, and melta gun) specialize them to do only one or two things very well. If you specialize everything, you waste nothing. Instead of having an army made of "jacks of all trades, masters of none", try to shoot for an army made up of units that are masters of one trade, effectively making your army as a whole a master of all trades.

- slobulous from Librarium Online in The Art of Listhammer