One of the things newer gamers often struggle with is creating a balanced list. Many more experienced gamers can fall into this trap as well without a bit of self analysis on their list after completion.
I am primarily a gamer who plays with moderate strength lists. I acknowledge what makes a strong list and I have designed, on paper at least strong lists. I have studied many tourney winning lists and I have taken the time to understand what makes them tick.
The first thing to consider when building a list is a general one. How do I want this army to play? Some armies are capable of being designed to play in different ways, others not so much. This is what leads to tags like Nidzilla where the general design of the list is around monstrous creatures, or Imperial Guard Leafblower lists designed to blast your opponent off the table before he gets to you.
With a concept in mind, you need to first look at the HQ and troops choices available to you. At this stage you don't need to buy them lots of gear, just buy the units with the minimum equipment needed to complete your assigned role. For example you may want to do a Tyranid horde style army, so you buy two large units of gaunts and a HQ who fits what you want him to do. This might be a Hive Tyrant with wings and Old adversary. Do not spend points on other upgrades at this point unless the Tyrant has a specific designated role eg tank disruption, so you buy him a heavy venom cannon.
Once this minimum requirement is dealt with you can turn your attention to the units which you are employing to actually win you the game. This is not a concept many people actually follow. Many people just blindly add units because they would like to use them. That is also fine, but you risk losing the focus of the list. You often have a choice of units to fulfill what you want to do, and these will often work in different ways. Taking the Nidzilla list as an example, you have a choice of which monsterous creatures to use, be it Carnifex, Trygon, Hive Tyrant, Tergivon, Harpy or Mawloc. You need to consider how each unit will interact with the army. Fast moving monsters will typically need fast moving support units such as gargoyles, ravenors or shrikes, where as the slower ones can be supported with slower moving Tyranid units.
Once you have worked out the focus of the list you next need to turn your attention to two other areas, scoring and supporting. These are both equally important so you need to balance your list with both in mind. Obviously where a scoring unit can fulfil a supporting role, by means of including special/heavy weapons or bringing extra transports to the table, this should be encouraged. In a typical 2000 point game, it is always worth including at least three troops choices to ensure you have enough troops to fulfil the objectives which occur in 60% of the games. Remember those gaunts I mentioned earlier? This is when you equip them for their specified role.
Support elements are the other units which you include to help your army work in its intended play style, and more importantly help you win, by filling in glaring gaps in the checklist I am going to present later on. Typically multiple units can fill this same role. The best example of this is found in the space marine book. You can bring four extra missile launchers on Landspeeder typhoons or Devastator squads for roughly comparable prices, but in totally different slots and functionality. Which you include should be based around how you want your army to behave. There is no point including a single landspeeder in an army with no other vehicles because it becomes a priority target. You need to include multiple units with roughly the same armour band, eg light armour 10-11 to hopefully split the enemies fire. In this situation you would be better to include foot devastators so not to present a lone target. It is the support stage that you should further equip your Hive Tyrant I mentioned earlier.
Once you have completed your list, you need to compare it against the following list of requirements;
Can you deal effectively with the following?
Light infantry: Typically Imperial guard, eldar guardians, tyranid gaunts etc
Heavy infantry: Typically marines and their equivalent
Elite infantry: Typically terminators and other troops with good saves, invulnerable saves and/or multiple wounds/high toughness often with power weapons
Light armour: Typically transports. Armour 10/11 vehicles, typically transports such as rhinos.
Medium armour: Typically tanks. Armour 13/12 in primary facings often with weak rear armour, eg predators, falcons
Heavy armour: Typically heavy tanks. Armour 14 in the front arc. Includes Landraiders, Monoliths, Leman Russes etc
Monstrous Creatures: Large creatures which have multiple wounds, attacks and a generally high statistic line.
Against some of these unit types, you will be able to use the same weapons:
Light infantry: small arms. Most troops will come with small arms like bolters, lasguns, fleshborers etc
Heavy infantry: small arms en-mass can work, but typically they will still have a save. Ideally you need ap 3 or greater weapons to remove these.
Elite infantry: small arms en-mass can work but you will typically need anti tank weapons to remove their saves, and even then they will often have an invulnerable.
Light armour: rapid-fire heavy weapons are best used here, typically autocannons, multi-lasers, scatter lasers
Medium armour: you need higher strength heavy weapons to deal with these, usually strength 8 upwards Krak missiles and melta weapons are typical examples
Heavy armour: ideally melta weapons, otherwise strength 10 or lance weapons will suffice.
Monstrous creatures: rapid fire heavy weapons are best used. Monsters can absorb individual high strength shots due to their high wounds characteristic
If you have a list that can't deal with all of these, it is not necessarily a problem if you know the army you are playing against as some most armies do not have the luxury of all of these types of unit.
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