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So I left the game at the end of 5th edition and am just coming back. Can somebody explain to me like I'm a five year old on how the army construction rules work? It doesn't really make any sense to me.

OK, its changed a bit since 5th, here's the breakdown of the two types of list.

A Battle-forged list is made up of any number of Detachments, each of which conform to a FOC and offer bonuses for doing so. The most common Detachment type is the Combined Arms Detachment, which is what you will recall from 5th; 1-2 HQ, 2-6 Troops, 0-3 FA/HS/Elites. This grants the ability you to reroll your Warlord Trait, and more importantly, gives your Troops choices the Objective Secured rule, which means that if their objective is contested by anything other than enemy Objective Secured Troops. As you can see, this is a very useful bonus and you won't need to really change your list from 5th to get it.

The other detachments include an Allied Detachment which has lower minimum and maximum requirements than a Combined Arms Detachment, and army specific ones such an an Elite-heavy SW one that boosts WS of Wolf Guard, or an Ork one with extra troop slots. Not all armies have these options yet, though.

The other option is to play an Unbound list, which had no requirement beyond the normal per-unit restrictions (no 20-man Terminator Squads ect). Other than that, you can take any units from any codex and play them.

There are also Formations, which are separate from the above, and grant Special Rules and Bonuses for taking a set list of units. They don't count as Mandatory Requirements, for Detachments ect, they are essentially 'plug-ins' for an army.

Hope that clears it up.