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So I wanted to talk about target priority. Because unless you are playing a select few armies, every shooting phase and assaulting phase requires you to make a choice. Do I shoot unit "A" or "B"? Do I assault "A" or "B"? You are, as I am, aware of the repercussions of making a mistake in this manner; it really can mean the difference between victory and defeat. And so I was hoping to start a project here:
How would you recommend someone beat *your* army? What is the rough order of "value targets" in your opinion?
For example, I'll start with my two armies: Tyranids and Blood Angels.

How to beat Tyranids, by a Tyranid Player:

Shooting Priorities

1. Trygons- A 3+ save and Six wounds means this puppy is going to survive a heavy beating. But with enough las, plas, and just plain dakka, eliminating one Trygon will potentially change the outcome of a game for you. Save demolisher cannons and other pie plates for hordes. Yeah, you'll probably wound, but unless the 'nid is unwisely bunching his forces up, you're still only inflicting a single wound as opposed to crippling a brood of hormigants, for instance.

2. Genestealers- These are point-for-point among the most efficient deadly close combat units in the game. If your opponent is foolish enough to walk stealers across the board, unload as much bolter fire into them as you can. However, if playing against an opponent who is wisely outflanking, make sure you set your flanks up with a unit that you are fine with losing. Chances are, the genestealers will consume them in a single assault phase. Follow up with bolter fire, pie-plates, and MOST IMPORTANTLY template weapons if you have them.

3. Tervigons- Tervigons are force multipliers. For a relative steal they turn a multiplying horde of termagants into furious charging, re-rolling to wound poison wielding assault monsters. I've seen my brood of 30 some termagants annihilate far more expensive units simply because I had the Tervigon nearby. AP1 and 2 works wonders against her if you have it. Unlike Trygons, Demolisher cannons are also appropriate against Tervigons as you will also likely score a few hits on her brood. In all honesty, after you kill the Tervigon you can essentially ignore the termagants.

4. A Hive Tyrant with wings- Highly mobile and highly dangerous. Do not give these creatures a chance if possible. Thankfully they are too expensive for most lists except for gimmicky ones. Unlike Trygons and Tervigons, these bad boys "only" have 4 wounds.

5. Warriors- First feel some pity for your tyranid friend. He paid 30 points (base) for each warrior on the field. Now watch his face as you double out his 3-wound model with melta, demolisher rounds, las, and krak missiles. Just don't let him get into close combat with bone swords or something equally as dangerous.

6. Zooanthropes- The reason I put them below Warriors in priority is because almost everybody sends em in with a mycetic spore. They will get a chance to shoot at your land raider, or medusa, or storm raven, or whatever. And chances are, with a brood of 3, they'll get at least one penetration. That being said, double them out with S8+ before they drop those AP3 pie plates on whatever they blew out of your transports.

7. Hormigaunts/Gargoyles- Dangerous and highly vulnerable to anything more powerful than a sneeze. Give yourself some cover and use standard bolter fire to dramatically reduce their charge which, inevitably, makes or breaks if the unit has paid for itself. You have bigger fish to fry. UNLESS they have opted to take a horde or two of 30 hormigaunts. With bounding leap, you can expect the little guys to be in your face turn 2, so dedicate at least some of your firepower their way.

Don't waste your shooting:
-Pyrovores- Who takes these?
-Hive Guard- If the Tyranid isn't keeping these behind LOS-blocking cover, you are going to win and really don't need to worry too much about excellent target priority decisions.
-Unsupported Termigants
-Mawlocs and Tyrannofexes (see below)

Assault Priorities:

1. If you have a force weapon buried in a squad, you can instantly kill his T6, 6 wound, 250-point Trygon or 210 point Tervigon after inflicting a single wound. Do not underestimate the value of tool like this.

2. Hive Guard- If you can tar pit Hive guard with a mobile assault force, you will save yourself a major headache. Yes, they are toughness 6. However, they are NOT monstrous creatures, which means that you will likely be able to keep them locked in the assault phase for the entire game depending on the force.

3. Tyrannofex- Yes, it's a monstrous creature, but even with the mighty rupture cannon, it hits the target 33% of the time. This should give you plenty of time to send in a hammer unit with a power fist/claw, weapon, to carve away at the fex.

4. Mawlocs- WS3 (no scything talons), I4, A3. Yes, that's 3 power weapon attacks that will likely wound. However, it's only hitting 1-2 against MEQ. I've seen my 170 point mawloc die to 50 points of boyz more often than i'd like to admit.

5. Zoanthropes- These guys are absolutely horrid in close combat. If you have a power fist hidden in your squad, you will almost certainly kill the zoanthropes within 2-3 assault phases.

Do not assault:
-Genestealers- Unless you are rocking something with decent saves (TS/SS termies) it might seem appetizing to remove that extra attack. But at I6, these little guys are going first. And they *will* rend at least a few times. And it *will* hurt your precious hammer unit more than it hurts the stealers. Shoot them. They have a 5+ save.
-Deathstars-Hive tyrants supported by tyrant guard. Your opponent sank 400+ points into a deathstar unit. Now use 150 points of weapons to annihilate it from range. Most armies, especially given the mechanized metagame, can out-maneuver a deathstar.
-Warriors- Double these guys out with S8 shooting. Trust me, it's worth it.
-Trygons without force weapons.
-Tervigons without force weapons- she's not a CC threat like the other MCs in the nid codex. You're just tar-pitting your squad that could potentially be clearing an objective. Wait until you have to before committing to a charge against her.

Wargear:
Flamers and S8+- Nothing in between, except for rending weapons, are going to do you many favors. Bolter fire is fantastic against gaunts, but require effective estimation of distance and cover in order to avoid the inevitable charge of bugs. Big guns for big bugs, templates and plates for hordes, and you should have little problem against bugs.
Jaws of the World Wolf deserves a special mention. I still can't get over it when I foolishly get within range of JotWW and lose a Tervigon. Nothing takes the wind out of my sails more than this single psychic ability.

Force Weapons- Essentially the hard counter to monstrous creatures. Bury them deep within a squad.

Power Weapons against MCs, particularly power fists are especially brutal.
====================================
And, so, that is how one should approach my beloved Tyranids in a match. If you see my army and follow this guide, you should have a much easier time beating me, rather than trying (futilely) to out-shoot my entrenched hive-guard or recklessly charge into my horde of genestealers. Some of this may be obvious, but I hope this list made some of the subjective and difficult decisions more clear.

So I pass the challenge on to you: How do we beat your armies?

This is pretty one dimensional advice which doesn't factor in the army you are playing with (i.e whether you actually have assault units etc), and some of it is seriously flawed. For example: I play mech armies (90% of all competitive 40k lists), so I don't really care about Genestealers, Gaunts, Gargoyles or Warriors at all, since they can't hurt my vehicles and are either pretty fragile or not that fast. I don't care about Zoanthropes because they have terrible range and I have psychic defence and decent positioning skills to avoid them dropping in to get an easy Land Raider kill (which btw is very low % anyway), I will shoot them only if they become a threat. Trygons also aren't incredibly fast and can only hurt me in assault, so they don't have to die straight away. A flying Tyrant however can catch me faster, isn't overly tough, and is a source of Synapse, so is an obvious target.

In general 40k target priorities boil down to 'can this unit hurt me badly atm, if yes, can I cripple it or kill it, if yes shoot it. Followed by 'will this unit hurt me if it gets close enough and if so how long do I have to deal with it'. Against Nids only Hive Guard and Tyrannofexes are a notable threat to vehicles from range, so almost everything is going to be going into them. After that you take out the fast anti tank assault units, followed by the slow anti tank assault units then everything else. Removing Synapse is a bonus if you can manage it, but shooting Tervigons before you kill the damage dealers will lose you the game. As soon as you remove the ranged threat then you are most of the way there, I can deal with your 250pt Trygon assaulting and killing a 35pt Rhino when in return you are going to take a volley of melta to the face and die anyway. You have to be very lucky to get terrain which means you can hide ALL you Hive Guard completely out of sight, particularly if you expect to actually kill anything with them (as in LOS blocking terrain in the back corner isn't much help when you can barely hit the center of the board).

You don't have to have S8+ weapons against the MCs. It helps against Warriors since you get ID, but anything with S6+ is a threat to the MCs. AP3 is the biggest threat (Missiles mostly) but its definitely possible to torrent Trygons etc dead (I do it easily with my Eldar and Dark Eldar will eat you with Poison).

Force Weapons aren't exactly a great counter to MCs by default. Unless you are Grey Knights then a) you are wounding on 6's b) you are an IC so can get picked out in assault and squashed. Grey Knights still aren't automatic counters to MCs either, because without an IC you are either wounding on 6's or wounding on 5's with no ID. Either way you have to get through Shadows (GKs are often only LD9). Similarly S4 (or less) power weapons aren't much of a threat to MCs at all, even in large numbers (i.e a Blob Squad) they won't kill an MC very fast.

For the assault targets. For starters I would be very surprised if a Nid player let his Hive Guard get into assault range. The rest is just a case of 'if its a shooting unit and you somehow get range assault it if you have a fist'. I'm very surprised you left off the most powerful weapon against Nids in the game - multi assault. Having a dedicated assault unit tear in to a big unit of Gaunts etc (or more than 1) and also hitting a couple of fearless units can rapidly remove big chunks of your army just from Fearless wounds. You also failed to mention that 99% of Nid units don't have Grenades, which means sitting in cover and boltering them to death works very well against the smaller bugs because you thin them out and still strike first if they assault. Lack of invulnerable saves mean that Nids really struggle against dedicated assault units (which for the most part do have invulnerable saves), TH/SS Terminators will crush all the units you said the avoid assaulting (except maybe the Stealers since they hit first and have numbers). Any unit with access to S5-6+ power weapons (or poison) can easily assault a Trygon or a Tervigon, and if they are striking first can probably handle Warriors as well.

Don't waste your shooting on hive guard, because if the opponent isn't keeping them behind LOS blocking cover you are going to win?

So my units are COMPLETELY static and cannot move, thus if you pop something behind LOS blocking cover I will not be able to shoot?


...right. Right. I enjoy using the mobility I paid for in my units (hey, a rhino ain't just a metal box- its got wheels!)

And if your going to talk target priority, there is also the question of what weapons do you have? I have a squad with plasmaguns (lets say havocs, with 5 of them!) and they are within rapid fire range of genestealers and a Tyrant. Do you really think my MC killing firepower is going to be directed at the genestealers, according to your list? Speaking of which, last time I got outflanked by genestealers, my longfangs beat them down =\ a bit of an odd example, but rending really ain't like power weapons.

Then there's also the position of units- where your units are and where MINE are. So number 6, Zoanthropes, might be alot more of an issue when they pod down next to my landraider and (thankfully!) fail psychic tests/get nullified/miss with their lance of vehicular death, and are going to have another crack next turn... It tends to make me want to take them out before the uhhh warriors on foot or the trygon still slithering towards me.

Well, you guys are very mean and very harsh.
Its good advice, and it ain't foolproof.
Every thing here is conditional, but the basic advice works.

Now a turn for my necron...

Shooting

1. Wraiths - if your opponent is smart, he'll be fielding alot of these, or a lot of destroyers (see later). Bolter fire and the like destroys them easily. Don't waste your big guns on them.

2. Destroyer - if your opponent has any, he has alot. Anything S4 or above that ignores their 3+ will work. Shoot them early or their high mobility will give you problems

3. Warriors/Flayed Ones - 3 words: MAKE HIM PHASE. While decent at standing and shooting, these go down v. anything with a range greater than 24". As long as it ignores their armor save, your golden

4. Tomb Spyders - These sometimes take priority over everything else, as they tend to hold the army together in the late game. Shoot with S6 weapons that ignore armor and your good.

5. Scarab Swarms/Heavy Destroyers - Easy kill points. Their self explanatory for how to kill.

6. Pariahs/Immortals - For immortals, the fire just bounces off them, see assaults. Pariahs, just avoid this point sink

7. Monolith - Just don't shoot it, you wont hurt it. Even a vindicator has only a 14.6 % change to destroy it.

Assault

1. Everything except wraiths - You'll win, trust me

Overall, your not going to be able to tarpit them with the amount of Monoliths people field, but you will do more damage in an assault.
Lords are the first priority for CC

I remember on Advanced Tau Tactica, they had a PDF on pretty much how to play Tau. I'm going to post some of it that can be kinda blanket for all armies.

S.W.O.T Analysis

Strength : Advantages of Position, Local Superiority, Immediate Capabilities, Reserves?

Weakness : Loss of Key Units, Gap in Capabilities,Commitment/Plan predictability, Timescales/Deadlines

Opportunities : Own Objectives, Potential Unit Partnership, Vulnerability of Key Enemy Units, Make the Enemy reactive

Threats : Obstacles faced, Especially Dangerous Enemy Units, Insurmountable Weakness, Enemy Objectives

Target Priority

1. Anything that is about to charge your Infantry next turn.

2. Enemy transports

3. Summoning Units

4. Targets that will Secure you Victory Points or deny them from the enemy

5. Specific Key Threats to your army


Refer back to SWOT analysis.



This was written back in 4th and I have been using it all through 5th and late 4th when I played Static Tau. Printed out a full copy of the PDF and keep it in the back of my Codex. Anyways, this seems like a more effective chart than going through every single army.

No one unit will always be the best target 100% for every army (barring Armies using Deathstars, it is always best to avoid the deathstar and wipe out the rest of the army.), but best bet is, like the chart said, Things about to assault you, transports, Summoners( Icon bearers, Homing Beacons, Webway portal guy), Anything that will net you a Kill point or deny the enemy a kill point, Specific key threats.