Something which can be difficult for new players to understand is the concept of a bad unit being good. The same concept applies where a good unit becomes bad. I will try to explain how this happens and what you can do about them.
Firstly, bad units that can be good. Some people may say there isn't such a thing as a bad unit, but that is not true. However you do need to measure how good a unit is in context of its own book. A unit could indeed be utterly terrible in the overall game, but if it is the only unit you have in your book capable of doing a certain thing, or it does a certain thing very cheaply, then it is not a bad unit. This is important to bear in mind.
Lets look at an example. Imperial guardsmen. Not the veterans, but the regular guardsmen. These are a troops choice, who can take a single special and a single heavy weapon, with a below average statistic line and armour save. Within their own codex and indeed own troops section, they are competing against the superior veteran squads who have better shooting ability, on par with most elite armies, lots of options and the ability to take three special weapons and a heavy weapon for only two points a model more. Having taken this into account, you need to look into what the guardsmen can do that the vets cant and this has to be weighed against the cost of giving up a vet squad.
The first thing you notice is that the guardsmen are more expensive than most well equipped vet squads despite the worse statistics. This is because you have to buy two units and a platoon command. For 130 points you can field a naked platoon of twenty five guys. For a similar cost you could field ten vets with three melta guns and a lascannon. The difference here is the bodies that the platoon allows you to bring. You can attach a further three squads of ten, a conscript unit of up to 20 and multiple heavy and special weapon squads. The humble guardsmen choice is in effect the ability to deploy an entire army. This is what guardsmen bring to the table over vets, but at the opportunity cost of not deploying as many elite troops.
We now shall look at a unit which seems to be fairly terrible, but is in fact brings quite a lot of useful utility. Enter the Mawloc. Compared to the Trygon it has a worse statistic line, no ranged attack beyond its Terror from the Deep and competes directly with the Trygon, Tyrannofex and Carnifex for large monsters in heavy support.
So how do you get the most out of a creature that is fairly poor in close combat due to low weapon skill and attacks, but has no shooting attacks I hear people cry? The Answer is simple, in objective games this monster has no equal anywhere else in the codex. On turn four, tunnel. You need to be able to do this on turn four, regardless what it was doing up to this point. You need it to come up on an enemy objective on turn five. This has three key uses. Firstly it inflicts a bunch of strength 6 ap2 hits on the enemy unit which should inflict damage on pretty much anything. Secondly it pushes the unit away from the blast marker, If done correctly and you didn't scatter too badly they should now be outside of the three inches required to score. Thirdly, even if you scatter further away, or the enemy are still around, you should be able to run and contest the objective. This leaves the other player with the not so fantastic prospect of having to shoot or charge a large monster with a troops choice, which generally are not close combat experts. This means each Mawloc you have can effectively cancel one enemy held objective, provided you can keep them alive on most of their wounds up to turn four.
Next lets look at good units which can be bad. Typically there are two causes of this. A lack of synergy from units and competition for slots use.
First of all, lets consider what is considered to be a good unit which you can see in a previous article on What Makes a Good Unit
Usually this is something that is capable of doing a job well in the context of the army book. So how can a good unit be bad? If I have followed the advice previously given your good units can't possibly be bad right? Wrong.
Here is an example. Grey knight terminators. An exceptionally good unit choice, with a selection of power weapons, strong ranged weapons, very good armour saves, reasonable price and count as scoring. What is not to like? Following this logic, you want to fill all your troops choices up with them. This is how many cookie cooker internet lists work and for a lot of units, eg taking 5 plague marines, giving them two special weapons and sticking them in a rhino, this works a treat. However in terms of the Grey knight terminators, it doesn't. Let us consider why.
Firstly although they are good value for their points, you don't get very many models for your points investment. Terminators are normally valuable because they act in synergy with power armour marines. Many players will not bother targeting units with just small arms at terminators simply because the chance of killing them is very low. This in effect increases their survivability quite considerably in a normal balanced list. However in lists which don't have power armour as scoring, there is no real choice but to shoot the terminators. This coupled with a small number of models makes you vulnerable to freak unlucky dice rolls, and exceptionally vulnerable to armies packing a lot of ap1 or 2 weapons. This is a good example of a lack of synergy, terminators by themselves just don't have any real synergy with other terminators.
The second example concerns competition for slots. Every codex book limits choices to one-two hq, two-six troops and zero-three elite, fast attack and heavy support choices. A unit can be a solid choice, but due to the other choices in the same slots, they don't get picked in the vast majority of competitive lists. Going back to imperial guard, one unit that can be considered this is the Valkyrie. This comes with a selection of anti infantry weapons in the form of a multi laser, rocket pods and cheap upgrades to sponson heavy bolters. What is not to like? The problem is it is going against the Valkyrie Vendetta, a vastly superior beast with three twin-linked lascannons and the same option for sponson heavy bolters for a handful of points more. Imperial guard tend to have a large volume of anti infantry fire already, but accurate lascannons on a fast moving platform is pretty much unique to the Vendetta. This therefore means that the Valkyrie is a bad unit choice, despite being a good unit on paper.
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