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A lot of people talk about 40k as a strategy game and being a "good general". Ignoring the army tiers, what makes a "good general"? To me it's a couple things.

-prioritizing targets: a lot of armies have key units that help them pull off combos. Being able to neutralize these units is key to stopping a lot of these combos

-knowing when to play to objectives and when to try to table your opponent

-being smart about deployment: this came up recently in a Seize the Initiative thread and I think it's a good point. I've lost games because of bad deployment

-recognizing bad units/lists: sure, you might love your Mutilators, but sometimes you have to realize when a unit is overpriced or underpowered, especially if you want to play at a competitive level. If you're playing casual games, then this isn't a big deal

What else do you guys think defines a good general?

Knowing when to sacrifice a unit. Sometimes you gain more by tossing a unit as a tar pit/speed bump, or to soften up something for later. But knowing what and when to efficiently "trade units" is key.

Giving your opponent choices. If all they can shoot is your deathstar, well that's what they'll do. But if you expose two other units and suddenly they have to think. Will they still pour everything into your resilient deathstar, or go for a squishier target, leaving your deathstar untouched? Remember, if your opponent doesn't have to think they are less likely to make mistakes. This can go hand in hand with the above.

Baiting. A somewhat third prong of the above two. Baiting your opponent into an easy kill to help influence their movement or leave something more important untouched can be a powerful move.

The master level of these making them think that they chose to do it and it is a good choice.

Hm, I think that a good general has to be aware of quite a bit in this game.

1) Has to have a working knowledge of most of the rules of the game. Often, when someone is proposing a new powerful unit that no one has seen before, it's because they don't understand the rules (Such as ID only causing d3 wounds to a GMC). This can cause games to be lost.

2) Has to have a working knowledge of the better units/formations in the game. While it would be ideal if you had all of the units/formations memorized, I don't think that is possible. Usually knowing the stronger ones/ more common ones is enough to avoid gotcha moments.

3) Be aware of psyker powers. This can be lumped into 2, but some psykers have powers that are ball busting and you need to know which ones to try to block. It's better to just throw all of your dice against one power in a deny the witch attempt than to spread them out.

I think the first three are the base that everything else is built on. You can't have good deployment if you don't know what your enemy is capable of or what your own units can do, for example.

4) Deployment. You need to be able to look across the table and at your own army, and decide how to deploy/ what to deploy. With the amount of long range firepower in this game, and the increased speed of units, many armies are effective turn 1-2, so deployment is critical. Failing at deployment can cost you the entire game.

5) Target priority. You need to be able to see what units are effective against your lists, and take them out quickly. Sometimes everything is effective, though this is relatively rare with the better dexes.

6) List building. I rate this last since, worse comes to worse, you can cruise the internet for lists until you get better at the game. The math is usually very easy in this game as well, since synergies are somewhat rare in most dexes and are usually very obvious (Gosh, when should i use ignore cover guys?). Oddly enough, it's probably one of the more important parts of the game (I'd rank it number 3 or 4), but it's so easy and be done by others that I'll put it at the bottom.

Having more money.
"The sinews of war - infinite money".

Apart from that, in 40k, the most important things are skills in listbuilding (though for this, you can just go on the internet), recognising what combinations of units and wargear work well, and devising a tactic based on those units.
The other important skill is to read your opponent's tactic, so you know which units are important to target, and which are only there as a distraction.
After money, distraction is the most important element of 40k. There aren't really any other skills required for 40k, it is pretty light on strategy and tactics.

Of course it is also important to have a good knowledge of the rules and the different armies and units, but this is not a skill, it just comes down to reading the rulebook.