Food For Thought: List Building Questions

Rodin Thinker Silhouette

I thought I'd start of 2013 with a Food For Thought covering one of the fundamental aspects of the game for me - list building. Now is not the time for me to go into why I think bringing a balanced list along is a good idea, but what I am going to offer today is the six fundamental questions I ask myself when I'm putting together an army.

Now, there is a huge amount of depth behind each of these questions and I've only really recently articulated these as I develop my understanding of what I want my 6th edition competitive army to be (but that is a subject for another post!). The more I play, the better I understand them myself, but they do help frame my thought process on and off the battlefield.

Anyway, enough rambling, these are the questions:

1. Can this list take and hold multiple/low numbers of objectives?
2. How effective is it in killpoint style games (low number of VPs vs effeciency/MSU)
3. How easily can it take/give up secondary objectives?
4. What control can I exert on the different areas of the battlefield (rear/mid/enemy deployment/flanks/airspace/reserves/alternative deployments)?
5. Am I comfortable with the balance of scoring (including secondaries), board control (mobility/range/blocking) and threat (anti-infantry(GEQ/MEQ/TEQ), ant-tank/MC, anti-air)?
6. Do I know what each unit’s purpose is and how the army works together as a whole (e.g. mobile&reactive/static&dug-in/glass hammer/etc.)?

If these are obvious to you, good! However, there is a lot of subtlety that can be applied, for example between the balance between threat versus durability? Do you achieve durability though large units, MSU, mobility or deployment? How many troops do you need to hold you home objectives and how can they contribute to the game offensively?

There are many more, but I hope you get the idea that whilst these may appear obvious to begin with, these is more to it the more you think about it. In time, I hope to delve into some of the subjects I've touched on here in further Food For Thought and CONCEPTS: posts, but I will discuss the coming year in another post.

If you have any other useful list building questions or requirements, please feel free to add your thoughts!