What makes a truly great army list?

[royalecheez]

Just what the title says. What do you guys consider a truly great army list? What moving parts need to come together and mesh to lay the eternal beat down on your opponents? I love tinkering with army lists, shifting units and load outs around, finding points to fill the gaps. Just curious what you guys think!

[gigasnail]

8th's been out a month. no one knows these things yet.

but you're going to need to be able to score (progressive and end of mission), deal with threats (local lists and meta, which can be *vastly* different), protect your army's warfight capability (either through having masses of bodies, units being very tough, hiding out of LoS/proper deployment, damage mitigation like catalyst and disgustingly resilient), and know how to deploy properly (when to go for the T1 charge, when to run up the board, when to hide out of LoS, which unit to reserve, take advantage of reroll bubbles while destroying your opponent's), off the top of my head.

[cheesytom1]

Yeah. I'd add that in my experience with Nids, it's better to do one thing well than try and do several things mediocre. (Genestealers, Carnifex, Gaunts, Long/short range etc.)

[zx57]

I would say as general rules of thumb I think a good list needs focus, balance, redundancy. Having a unified idea/concept for what your list needs to do is important. Basically it boils down to don't waste points on cool units that don't fit or stuff like a fast army with a couple slow carnifexes etc. Personally I like lists that can take all comers, it might not get you as far in a tournament but I believe it's better. Having a mix of anti vehicle, anti MEQ, anti swarm, etc helps you counter different threats and makes it well rounded. This kind of rolls into the next part, redundancy. If you lose your one anti tank unit to a bad roll or mistake, vehicles are probably going to roll right over you (maybe less so in 8th though we'll see) its good to have a back up. For Tyranids specifically I would also add that in my personal experience upgrades have almost always seemed inferior to more bodies on the board, we'll see if that is true in 8th.

Summary: Having a concise goal for what you want your list to do, not wasting points on anything that doesn't fit that goal, and have a mix of units with various ways of dealing with different threats.

EDIT: Is fun to play with and against.