Building a Tournament list (Part 1)

I am participating in the "Valentine's Day Massacre" held by my gaming club, the "Frederick Area Gamers". The masses have voted that I play Witch Hunters, with that in mind I want to build my list to be as competitive and as fun as possible.

There are some lists that are quite popular in the tournament scene as well as with my local gaming club. In order to be competitive, my list needs to be able to take on these powerhouse lists. The lists I am talking about are any/all of the following.

• Dual or single Lash lists. (Chaos Space marines utilizing Lash of Submission)
• Tyranid Monstrous Creature (TMC) (Tyranids with up to 8 monstrous creatures)
• Horde Orks (~200+ bodies, making a mathematical victory difficult)
  
• Nob Biker Orks (good list building combined with wound allocation ensures orks giving beat-downs)
  
• Drop Pod Spam
• Gunline (Tau, Guard, Marines, Eldar, Chaos can all be gun-line armies)
• Mech Marines/Eldar/Chaos/Tau
• Daemon-Bomb (using one of the named Daemons like Skarbrand, Fateweaver, Epidemius, etc...)

Wow, that is a lot to think about in terms of army construction. Lets begin by taking a look at what it takes to counter each of the above.

• Lash: Some sort of protection from psychic powers.
• TMC: Plenty of High-Strength low AP weapons or resilient power-weaponed close combat troops.
• Horde Orks: Str 4 Ap 6 or less wepaons, templates, blast markers, ordnance. Close combat units with a high number of attacks.
  
• Nob Biker Orks: High strength (5+) weapons that ignore cover (preferably AP 4 or less)
• Drop Pod Spam: Drop pods are beaten in the Metagame, not in list building, but it helps if every unit has some way to destroy the pods once they land.
• Gunline: Survivable way to cross the board to engage it in assault -or- be able to outshoot it.
• Mech Marines/Tau/Chaos/Eldar: Mobile anti-tank firepower or close combat ability
• Daemon-Bomb: Like Drop pods, this list is beaten in the meta-game, but it is beaten differently.

Next we will investigate how I intend to counter these in the list I build.

-Mike