Reactive or Proactive
The other day I was reading a post on a 40k forum about army lists that are designed to take on all comers. Somebody in that post said, "Among take-all-comers lists, there seem to be two distinct schools of thought. There is the reactionary approach, where you aim to have something in the army list to deal with any threat the enemy poses, and the proactive approach, where you aim to have things in your army list that no opponent will be able to deal with unless they were expecting you and built the list accordingly."

I thought it was an interesting point. What he's talking about here is the idea of overloading one aspect of your army. It's fairly easy for most lists to deal with 2 or 3 tanks. It's nearly impossible for most lists to deal with 6 or more. Similarly, it's easy to deal with 80 or so Ork boyz. Dealing with 160+ of them is an entirely different story. While I am generally a proponent of building more "balanced" or, in his words, reactive lists, I thought it would be interesting to look at how the other half lives. (And I'll definitely admit to building some overloaded lists, but I usually made them more well-rounded than most people do.)

The Right Tool for the Job
Any army list will need to be able to deal with Light Vehicles, Heavy Tanks (This category includes Monstrous Creatures as well,) Light Infantry and Heavy Infantry. Any list that cannot deal with one of these will be completlely hamstrung against certain opponents. Army lists may take various options to deal with these, and they may not always have a great answer to them, but they have to take them. If we assume that we have a list that is balanced between the 4 target types (and a 1500pt limit) then they'll have roughly 375pts dedicated to each one. (This is a gross simplification, but work with me.) If the opposing list has left out one of the target types, the first list will have effectively wasted 375pts. Even worse, in leaving out one of those target types, the other list might have brought more of another target type than the first list can deal with. (In other words, perhaps the other list left out Heavy Tanks, so the 375pts of Lascannon are wasted, but they've also brought twice as much of their light infantry, which might be more than the 375pts of Heavy Bolters can deal with. While there are weapons that can be used against multiple target types (for example, Missile Launchers can hit Light Infantry with Frag Missiles, then hit Light Vehicles, Heavy Infantry or Heavy Tanks with Krak Missiles) but they are often less effective in general, or lose a lot of efficiency shooting at secondary targets. (To follow the previous example, Krak Missiles are poor against AV14 targets and are less efficient against Light Infantry than a more dedicated weapon like a Heavy Bolter.) In stereotypical SM terms, Missile Launchers are great against Light Vehicles, Lascannons are great against Heavy Tanks, Heavy Bolters are great against Light Infantry and Plasma Cannons are great against Heavy Infantry. While I'm at it, let's also look at an example list, also using SM units: Rhinos are Light Vehicles, Predators are Heavy Tanks, Scouts are Light Infantry (well, as close as SM come to it, anyway) and standard Space Marines are Heavy Infantry.

How to Overload your List
Eliminate one particular target type. It's very important that you eliminate it entirely, since if you take just one Heavy Tank, the opponent's Lascannons _will_ have a target and because they can concentrate on your single target, they will eliminate it quickly. This wastes your points, so don't take any of that target type. To follow the example above, you might choose to eliminate Predators and other Heavy Tanks from your list, so any points they spend on Lascannons will be wasted.

Also eliminate secondary targets if possible. Since you are trying to make them waste their points, it won't help if you give them good secondary targets to fire at. For example, if you eliminate Heavy Tanks from your army, enemy Lascannons will be wasted. On the other hand, if you include a lot of multiwound models that can be instakilled with those Lascannons, they will still be effective. Following the same stereotypical list above, Missile Launchers are best against Light Vehicles, and a good secondary target for them is Heavy Tanks. Lascannons are best against Heavy Tanks and a good secondary target for them is Light Vehicles. (Lascannons are too expensive to be effective in shooting at single Wound models of Heavy Infantry.) Heavy Bolters are best against Light Infantry and have Heavy Infantry as a good secondary target. Finally, Plasma Cannons are best against Heavy Infantry and have Light Infantry as a good secondary target. Continuing our example of the SM army eliminating Lascannon targets through not using Predators, we might also want to consider eliminating Light Vehicles.

Accentuate the Positive
Okay, so now we've eliminated Heavy Tanks and maybe even Light Vehicles. We are successfully causing the enemy to waste a bunch of points on Lascannons that they won't get much use out of. However, that leaves us with extra points and brings us to the next step in the Overloaded army concept: Increase your presence of one particular type of target. Overwhelm another of their weapons with more targets than they can handle. Let's double the amount of Space Marines (Heavy Infantry) we are bringing. That will overload their Plasma Cannons, so they can't do enough damage to take out all of our Space Marines. If we've gotten rid of our Rhinos (Light Vehicles) we can put the points from them into more Space Marines, further increasing the gap between our numbers and their Plasma Cannons.

Compensate
Now that you've gotten rid of one or more target types and overloaded on another type, it's time to look at your capabilities. Make sure you haven't left your army too vulnerable to an enemy target type. (Following the example, if your Predators were the only place your army had Lascannons originally, you might need to include something like that in your Tactical or Devastator squads or something.) While it's important that you have at least some answer to every target type, you don't have to go overboard. Remember, you are taking a proactive or aggressive approach, so your overloading should already be giving you a good advantage. A few things that can answer to each target type should be fine. (2-3 Lascannons or some Powerfists in assault-ready squads should do the trick here.)

Reduce the Threats
The next step is to reduce the threat against the part of your army that you have overloaded. In our example, their Plasma Cannons are already overloaded, since they have more targets than they can effectively deal with. Now you compound that issue by focusing on those Plasma Cannons. You want to either neutralize or eliminate the element that can damage what you did bring. That means you want to either eliminate enemy units that have Plasma Cannons, or you want to make sure that they cannot effectively target your Space Marines. This might involve placing your units so that they are out of range or line of sight from the Plasma Cannons. It might also involve placing other units in the way of those Plasma Cannons. For example, a Tactical Squad or Devastator squad with one or more Plasma Cannons cannot move and shoot. If you put a Rhino directly in front of them, they won't be able to shoot your Space Marines without either blowing up the Rhino or moving. If they blow it up, they will now be firing through cover at your Space Marines, making their Plasma Cannons much less effective. A similar effect might be achieved by advancing a spread-out Scout squad toward them. The Scout squad will give cover to the Space Marines behind them and (since they are spread out and worth fewer points than a Space Marine) are not good targets for the Plasma Cannons. The next turn, they might remain in place, or they might even charge the enemy squad to keep them from firing. If you focus on eliminating or neutralizing their Plasma Cannons early, you will maximize your advantage by having lots and lots of Space Marines and leaving the enemy with no good weapons to take them on.

Great Minds Think Alike
Of course, if your opponent had the same idea, then it comes down to a rock-paper-scissors contest (which army offers more of an advantage over the other) or who can implement their plan first or better; or maybe a very good understanding of the Control/Beatdown relationship. Usually, it will be some combination of the three. Let's look at each in turn...

Rock is Dead, Long Live Paper and Scissors
Some army lists and unit types simply have an easy time beating others. If you are on the business end of one of these, you won't be able to use your army in the way you originally intended. Using our example of the Overloaded Space Marine list that has no Heavy Tanks, particular foils might be a Plasma Cannon-heavy list or a Heavy Assault list featuring lots of Power weapons. Either of these will have plenty of nastiness to chew through your best strength. To make up for this, you may need to sacrifice units to reduce enemy effectiveness. (Against the Plasma Cannon list, you can use Rhinos or Scout Squads to give them poor targets while your units start reducing theirs or you sneak up from behind the Scouts/Rhinos and then assault them. Against the Assault Heavy list, you want to absorb their charges with your basic Space Marines or Scout Squads, then countercharge with any effective assault units you have.) This will probably be an uphill battle, but keeping your wits about you can make it winnable.

Get there Firstest with the Mostest
Enacting your plan quickly, while trying to slow down theirs can be an effective way to keep the tide from turning against you. You want to start eliminating what they have that can threaten your overloaded target types as quickly as possible. At the same time, you know that is what they want to do to you, so try to prevent them from doing it, or at least delay them. For a more concrete example, let's say that you've overloaded your Space Marines as above. In turn, your opponent has overloaded Heavy Tanks, using 3 LandRaiders, A Predator and 2 Ironclad Dreadnaughts. You want to do everything possible to eliminate his Plasma Cannons and to keep your Lascannons available to shoot.

Who's Ready for a Beatdown?A vital point to winning a game like this is an understanding of the Control/Beatdown relationship. At any point in the game, the two armies can be described as one or the other of these two. The Control army is the one that currently holds the advantage in the game. If the game were to end right now, the army that would win is the Control. The Control army wants to delay the other army and keep it from eroding it's advantage. The Beatdown has to play aggressively and work quickly to change the advantage. If there isn't an apparent advantage at the moment, look at the victory conditions for each army. If one army has a victory condition that would prevent the other from achieving it's victory condition, that would be the Beatdown. (For example, an army that wants to assault will be the Beatdown against an army that wants to shoot, because assaulting prevents shooting.) If neither army's victory condition would prevent the other's, then try to determine which side would win if both sides got what they wanted right now. That army is the Beatdown because they want to act quickly to get their victory condition into play. If neither has an advantage or would prevent the other's victory condition, the slower army will almost always be the Beatdown. (The faster army has spent more points on mobility, so the slower army has a mass advantage. If the faster army has time to use it's mobility to give it local advantages and limit the damage it receives, it can "hang on" for the win.) For a more detailed discussion of Control and Beatdown, please go here.

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