Meta thoughts from Calvin

Calvin here with a look back at this past years GTs we've attended and the state of the meta during this timeframe.
    Nearly one year ago at the Daboyz GT, with 6th Ed being newly released I saw a field of 90% mono build armies, people were still wrapping their heads around allies, with necron flyer spam just starting to hit the tables and hearing the heavy sighs as people drew 3 maxed units of flamer and screamer spam.
     Nearly 4 months later at Indy, flyers were EVERYWHERE! Helldrakes, stormravens, vendettas and....night scythes. If you weren't usin em, you were in for an uphill battle.
    Adepticon brought more of the same, but with the expectation that the upcoming tau would hopefully go some way towards mitigating these builds.
    And then it happened. Our group went to Nova expecting to see alot of tau and we were not disappointed! Triptide lists were out in force, and for those not using mono tau they were an ally. Flyer spam didn't even show up in anticipation of this meta shift. Not to mention the large amount of MCs and FMCs that the bulk of shooting armies were not prepared or armed with enough high strength weapons to handle.
      All this brings us to present day. Marines are out and while not a hard counter to tau they have all the tools to be on even footing with any army across the table from them and will bring I think a solid balance to things. So lets take  a look at some of the things you'll need to keep in mind when building a competitive armylist moving forward.
      Some people prefer to run the rock, 3 landraiders or multiple stormravens all kitted out with elite squads, you know the guy, he bought 4 riptides and doesn't care if your having fun while he blasts you off the board. The problem with these lists is they are succeptible to running into a hard counter. I'm talking to the general who prefers a balanced list, a TAC list. So here's some of the things I think about when I design my TAC.

Scoring: This entire edition revolves around the taking of an objective, playing a shooting army is perfectly viable, but if your showing up to the table without solid, dependable troops to push your enemy's objective you've
put yourself at a disadvantage before the first dice roll.

Tarpits: I always like to include at least one, and it needs to be stubborn, fearless or have ATSKNF

Shooting: the ability to gun down not only infantry, but threaten flyers and stack wounds on MCs or armor.

Threat: I take at least 2, in many cases you'll need 1 of these units to guard your own shooting element ideally with the support of the tarpit to lend a hand. This unit should be able to hold its own against other elite combat units and have mobility to put pressure on your opponent. If your able to send more forward it forces your opponent to put their shooting into these threats and hopefully leave your shooting to pick and choose their target.

In the coming weeks I'm going to spend more time going over each individual army and the competitive builds and units that are most efficient vs some of th