List building 101 - 5 steps to winning in AoS

[Ben]

Hi everyone.

I posted an episode of my podcast last week that talked about tweaking army lists and thought it would make a good topic for disuccion on here too. 

From my 10+ Years of tournament gaming I would say that single most important thing when it comes to being a better player is having a good process for evolving an army list.  The events that I have won in the past have all come on the back of having a solid list that I have played to death and extensively tuned all the options so not only have I settled on the best combo but I am also intimately familiar with them. 

So what is this method?

What DOES Curry Do?

Old podcast listeners will appreciate the title  I have a simple method for tweaking my lists.

1. Choose A List.  There is no real secret here.  It might be that you want to use particular models, or it might be that you want to download the best 'net-list' you can find.  It doesn't matter how you start the process is the same.  This important part is to have your own guidleines.  

I waned to include an Iron Daemon in my Legion of Azgorh army.  (Prior to the recent updates) It was underpowered but a really cool model, i was determened to find a way to get some mileage out of it, so I had 2 guidelines to follow.  Use the Iron Daemon and have it perform at its best, and pick an army to get the most from it.

2. Define Unit Roles.  The first thing you are looking out for is what roles in the army each unit is playing.  Getting a clear idea of why a unit is in the list and what you expect it to do is key to winning games.  If you have a unit in your army that you are playing wrong then its very likely that you will be losing games and not actually know why.  Simple game plans that you stick to are easy to put into practice.  It can be as simple as, in this game my iron daemon will try use its high speed to rush the enemy.  Once I knew that was the plan I could try and pull that off an see if it works.  

3. Review Results.  The Iron Deamon was terrible at rushing the enemy.  It's big base meant it was very easy to kill due to lots of models letting to attack it.  Because I had a role, and a plan for that unit I could easily see what was working and what wasn't.  When you are doing this across your entire army you can quickly see which units are performing well and which once are failing miserably! Some times you will lose games but be very happy because your unit that had one role was able to pull it off spectacularly.  Wen you see this you know that its just a matter of tweeting the list around that unit. 

4. Revise Your Roles.  At this point I would still not change out any units, instead I would look at the units that you consider to be underperforming and ask yourself if they are suitable to perform that job.  In my case I could see that the Iron Daemon was excellent at 2 jobs.  Getting in the way of units and attracting attention.  I gave it a new job of simply holding up the enemy so I could shoot into them.  I played more games and found that this was its superpower.  

5. Make Targeted Changes.  Now is the time to bring in new units.  You have personal guidelines for the list you want to play and roles for each unit in the army.  You have tested and amanded your roles and now you can start making informed changes swapping out the units that you can see are not up too the task, and bringing in new units that do a better job and fit your own guidelines.  It's important that you don't make too many changes at once or you can easily lose track of wat is making a positive impact.  In some cases you will even remove a unit that is doing an excellent job, but you can get that job done more efficiently with a change.  

Once you have followed these 5 steps you can return to step 3 after each game.  You will notice that I don't at any time mention that you are look in at army performance as a whole.  Or that you are tracking wins.  Both of these are the goal that you are working towards.  When all your units are doing the right jobs your army will naturally be performing great together and the wins will follow.  Some of the units roles might naturally be to 'make the army work together better' or something similar.  

Summary. 

1. Pick a list

2. Give your units a job

3. Review your results

4. Revise units roles

5. Make small tweaks 

that's it.  5 steps.  Rinse and repeat 3-5 forever.  

 

 

This has worked for me every time I have used this method.  

Let me know what you are trying out and getting good results with, and also how you could see this method helping your list writing.  

Thanks for reading, 

Ben.  

[TheOtherJosh]

  @Ben is my understanding correct that you're using "Role" and "Job" semi-interchangeably? (E.g. In #2 and #4 in the summary)

Or is role in your mind more like: "This unit is my 'distraction unit'" and it's Job is to rush up the field and plow into stuff and look scary while they get shot up by my 'Ranged Support' Role units?

So variations in job, don't mean that the Role changes, merely how they're implementing the role given? 

[Tozon]

Hey Ben,

Great post.  I was wondering if you had a list of "roles" that you frequently assigned to units in your army?   Would be an interesting addition to the above as I am sure there are a few obvious ones (Objective scorers etc) but I'm sure there are some that a lot of people wouldn't consider.

Cheers