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Okay, so I got second place at my FLGS in the 'ard boyz prelims.. mainly by avoiding the nasty lists in the luck of the draw and by virtue of the fact that our group is generally pretty laid back so there weren't any jetbike councils or 5 Battlewagon orks around...

HOWEVER, I do know that I'll be facing a Horde Ork Player, Mech IG, and Double Lash Chaos among other nasties at the semis in Bangor. Keep in mind that I've played all of 5 games of 5th edition 40k and only about 25 games in my entire life (2nd edition - 5th edition).

For the preliminaries, I took the following:

Shas'el- plasma, fusion, pos relay, hwmt, 2 shield drones, bk
Shas'el- plasma, fusion, mt, 2 SD, bk
2 Bodyguards- plasma, fusion, mt, 1 SD each

3 Crisis- plasma, fusion, mt
3 Crisis- 2 w/ tlmp, flamer Shas'vre w/ afp, tl flamer, hwmt
5 Stealth Suits

4x6 Firewarriors
1x10 Kroot

2x8 Pathfinders
2 Devilfish- sms, mt, dp, fd

2x3 BASS- sms, team leader w/ bk, hwtl, hwbsf, 2 shield drones
3 Sniper Teams

What I'm thinking for the semis is this: (assuming the scenarios remain the same)
Shas'el- plasma, fusion, mt, 2 shield drones, bk

3 Crisis- plasma, fusion, mt
3 Crisis- tlmp, flamer
3 Crisis- flamer, tlmp, shas'vre w/ tl flamer, afp, hwmt, bk

4x6 Firewarriors
Devilfish- sms, mt, dp, fd
10 Kroot- 7 hounds

2x8 Pathfinders
2 Devilfish- sms, mt, dp, fd
3 Piranhas- 1 w/fusion blasters, tl, ta 2 w/fusion blasters, ta

2x3 BASS- sms, team leader w/ bk, hwtl, hwbsf, 2 shield drones
Railhead- burst cannons, mt, dp, fd, bsf

Basically, I dropped my second hq choice because of kp issues and the fact that they didn't do all that much more than a regular helios pattern squad would. I dropped the stealth suits because with 2500 points on the table, there was just too much stuff that could get to them easily. They were probably my most disappointing unit. The sniper drones really were underwhelming as well - unless I dedicated a ton of markerlights to making them effective.

I added the Railhead because I expect to face horde Orks. The extra pie plate will help. A mobile railgun doesn't hurt either. I added the piranhas because I wanted something that could get to hidden rhinos and artillery quickly. I also wanted to give myself more deep strike/charge blockers. Same goes for the extra d-fish. I'm torn about the third crisis squad. I like the flamers for deep strikers and outflanking stealers and such, but I also considered twin linked fusion instead of the missile pods for more deep striking armor death. I could also drop that unit completely along with a pathfinder or two and just get more fireknife/helios suits.

Anyone like the new list better or should I just stick with a more gunline approach?

I'm a big fan of the airbursting fragmentation launcher. There are WAAAAY too many things out there that profit from 2-4+ cover saves and are hard to uproot....this is your best answer to them. I like to take my Shas'o or Shas'el and put crowd control on him (along with Iridium armor) so that if you *do* play against something like Horde Orks, you've got 2+ armor saves to keep from getting ganked on the assault. Jumping up to 30 Orks, dropping a flamer on them, then dropping a large blast template (cover ignoring) on them is a sure way to kill....a LOT of orks. Follow it up by assaulting the mob (always better to assault than to be assaulted by orks), and you deny them attacks; they'll have 2-3 base attacks instead of 3-4, and will be STR3 against your T4. Works great against Tyranids too, although I wouldn't recommend assaulting genestealers with a shas'o or 'el alone.

Don't forget power klaws that accompany every mob of orks, those three S8 nob hits will destroy your HQ if you don't have shield drones to pass the wounds to.