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Are there any different techniques or theories when building a TAC list for a thousand point game?

Seems like it's very difficult to fit in everything you need in such a small list, so do you take multiple jack of all trades units or focus on the highest priority specialists and accept some gaps in the army.

You just need to rely on units a lot more. In a huge game you tend to have multiple units able to do the same thing (thats why people spam the smaller effective units). In small games it doesnt work as well so you have to rely on a unit to do its job without backup units, and focus on killing the enemy units that lack a back up.

 Swastakowey wrote:
You just need to rely on units a lot more. In a huge game you tend to have multiple units able to do the same thing (thats why people spam the smaller effective units). In small games it doesnt work as well so you have to rely on a unit to do its job without backup units, and focus on killing the enemy units that lack a back up.

If I understand you correctly, you're saying you can't afford redundancy.
For example, you take one source of AA to deal with flyers and that's it. If it isn't enough, you just suck it up and focus on beating the rest of the opponent's army.

 minigun762 wrote:

 Swastakowey wrote:
You just need to rely on units a lot more. In a huge game you tend to have multiple units able to do the same thing (thats why people spam the smaller effective units). In small games it doesnt work as well so you have to rely on a unit to do its job without backup units, and focus on killing the enemy units that lack a back up.

If I understand you correctly, you're saying you can't afford redundancy.
For example, you take one source of AA to deal with flyers and that's it. If it isn't enough, you just suck it up and focus on beating the rest of the opponent's army.

Or you need more general purpose units and fewer specialists. Those 'late game objective grabbers' that sit around and do nothing all game become more of a hindrance when you have fewer points to work with.

You don't need to do things all that terribly different, if you don't want to (especially if you build lists with a good, solid core to begin with). At 1000 points, your opponents can still things that require lascannons and meltaguns to handle, especially if they min-max. It's still possible to take two riptides in a 1,000 point tau list, for example.

If you did want to tailor things for the points value a little more, then I guess I'd say that anti-infantry weapons become a bit more useful, as the ratio of infantry:good units goes up as points go down. Heavy bolters are useless in an 1850 point game because those bolters are only going to be useful against 250 points of that 1850 point list. At 500 points, though, that's half the list that that weapon is good against.

I think, here more than others, MSU takes priority. The more units you have, the more flexible you can be. You can grab multiple objectives, you can split them up or you can focus them all on one target. You should back this up with one, really tough unit.

So with Black Templar. I would take 3, 5-man las-plas squads in rhinos. a dreadnought in a drop pod, and a 9-man crusader squad with a chaplain in a drop pod. Oh and a stormtalon. So I have 3 rhino guys to run around and provide supporting fire or sit on objectives. I have a dreadnought in their face on turn 1, and then the HQ squad to come in and get mixed up in backfield objectives.

With orks though, I go high toughness. 2 AV14 vehicles and a squad of nob bikers. 40 boys in the two wagons. 5 nob bikers, a bikerboss, and a small loota squad just to be annoying.

So I would say either go multiple units all over the place, or get as tough as possible, so that all those little units cant do anything to you and you can annihilate them in one turn.

But I would also say that objectives matter more with these games. smaller points usually means fewer troops, so the more objectives you can get, the better.