Hi all,

What I'm looking for here is the top 5 units for your army(s) that you must take to the gaming table.
A brief explanation why and how you use them. Feel free to to include point limit specific choices.

As a new player collecting several armies I am keen to see the what, how and why these choices are made.

Look forward to your responses.

For me, one would have to be the Imperial Guard Shadowsword; amazing utility and resiliency for the cost.

I would expect War Hounds to feature prominently as well.

1. Hydra. By far the most economical unit with extreme utility, great movement, can be fielded on its own or with a formation, hits AA/AP/AT. An IG player never has to feel cheated that he brought an excess of Hydras, even if his opponent has zero aircraft.
2. The Shining Spear. Any Eldar player would be mad to leave these death machines behind. Decent FF, awesome CC with lance ability for gobbling heavy armor and titans up, and an armor of 4+. Not to mention the 35cm move with a full consolidation.
3. War Walkers. I can count the number of Eldar games I've played without these on one hand. Lance shots, decent movement, and I just love the balls the Eldar have to put one of their dying race in the very front center of the vehicle with no armor.
4. Thunderbolts. For the price, they should always be in the army. Protect your army or harass formations at a distance, lay BM on unguarded artillery or hunt light vehicles.
5. Not sure...

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Marines:

The humble tactical detachment. Resilient and mobile and not too expensive.
Land Speeders. There are so many unpleasant things they can do to an opponents plans.
Thunderbolts, to harrass and kill broken units, and as cheap activation fillers
Terminators, for maximum concentration of force. Preferably on a retain, with a chaplain, delivered by T'Hawk, to an AA free zone, with a nice strong supporting fire formation nearby. Mmm...


Eldar:

Aspects, delivered by Wave Serpent or Vampire, for extreme offensive output
Foot Guardian Formations, with Wraithlords and Wraithguards. Deploy from backline or gate, deliver Avatar to face.
War Walkers, for scout screens.

I usually have at least 2 formations with scout (Scouts, Speeders, Rough Riders, Sentinels, Kommandos, Stormboyz, etc) in my armies. They're great for area denial and forcing opponents to move in certain ways.

After that, something to hold ground with (Tacticals, Mech/Inf coys, Warbands). They serve to anchor your flanks and hold objectives.

Finally, AT units (Annihilators, Land Raiders, Russes, Big Guns, Gun Wagons). Nearly everything has AP in EA, lots of AT shots are not as prolific though. You'll need to something that dishes them out in order to contend with most armies.

Once you have those, throw in the stuff you want to play with (arty, air, deep strikes, titan killers, etc).

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for my guard (in no order of preference)

- Reg Hq, fairly fast, shooty and resilient, plus the essential supreme commander!
- Shadowswords, scary and tough, extremely useful and potent shooting, everything miket said!
- Manticores/Basilisks - manticores are more powerful, basilisks more consistent and resilient, guard NEED to be able to hit stuff anywhere on the table against stuff like eldar who like to hide from your LOS shooting
- Thunderbolts, everything moscovian said, I often like to take two formations, they're decent interceptors and powerful gorund attack formations, if you can keep them alive until T3/4 they really shine at picking off broken stuff and breaking lone units before they activate
- Warhound titans - fast, reslient, shooty and most importantly for guard, reliable as they're the only int 1+ formation the guard have access to

For Marines
- Thunderhawks, for my money probably the best all-round unit in the game, they can be a terminator delivery system, a mobile flak bunker, an infantry/LV hunter and can be used to place blast markers at 75cm, they are utterly utterly fantastic and I love them!
- Terminators, with a chaplain, these are the boys that get stuff done, nothing beats the SUDDENLY TERMINATORS!! air assault that can rip the guts out of most non-skimmer formations
- Land speeders, I prefer tornados for the extra shots and range, but they're all great really, fast, skimmers, decent armour for LV with the all-important scout ability
- Scouts, super cheap, great for area denial and screening, fantastic in the late game when they can deny big swathes of the table and screen objectives, they're also no slouch in engagements with infiltrate and cc4+, I've killed warhounds with them before....
- Land Raiders, I don't always take these guys as they're pricy and tend to compete with the termies for a slot, but they are just great, pretty quick for AV, tough and within 45cm they pack a decent amount of AT shooting in,
-Bonus choice, pred annihilators, a cheaper way to get a good few AT shots into an army when you can't afford land raiders, they're also a good way to get a second hunter in to the army

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Imperial Guard:
- Vultures: impressive but limited AT punch, after delivering such power, still useful thanks to Scout and fast movement.
- LR Thunderer: very cheap source for RA and IC gun.
- Thuderbolts: dual purpose versatile aircraft: hunt tanks, infantry, broken formation, interception (two attacks, one of them 30cm for hunting down those Fighta-Bomberz).
- Basilisks/Manticores: for making enemy infantry stick to cover, or counter-battery fire.
- Hydra: multipurpose and I just love autocannons
6th!!! The Komissars!!

Eldar:
- Wave Serpent: tough and fast, delivering the powerful Aspects. Good FF.
- Nightwings: they can take down any enemy aircraft. The sky belongs to them.
- Night Spinners: cheap source of disrupt.
- Void Spinner: loving the disrupt artillery.
- Rangers: cheap Scouts and sniping.

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IMO generally in a tournament "all comers" list, the top few unit choices aren't really choices at all, they just pick themselves. For example, you always need air cover. And if you are running anything other than initiative 1+ then you need a supreme commander. You need a hard BTS, you need something fast, etc etc.

But for specific units...

Biel-Tan top 5:
aspects with autarch (most kinds can be made to work well with the correct transport)
firestorms or fire prisms
guardians in wave serpents OR guardians with wraithguard
scouts or war walkers
void spinner

Marines are pretty versatile and can handle themed lists so these aren't necessarily "musts", but for a standard list the top 5:
thunderhawks
terminators
scouts
land speeders
warhound

steel legion:
reg HQ
hydra
sentinels
thunderbolt
shadowsword

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Orks -

Number 1 unit -
Grots! these little guys don't cause BMs when destroyed and can be used to eat up hits in FF and CC.

After that -

SZG and SG are both good but pricey - I always take SZGs and usually (a pair of) SGs.
Landas - give some tactical options meaning the enemy can't let a formation become isolated..
Fighta bommas again can strike at different targets that would otherwise be out of range.
People say massed skorchas are good - but I need to convert a load of wartraks before I can try them out.
I like stormboys too as a cheap activation that can bubble wrap bigger formations with their scout ability.

No chaos so far, so, in no particular order:

chaos terminators – similar reasoning to regular marines, plus the chaos version can be upgraded with a range of toys (prince, daemon summoning, obliterators with AA).
daemon prince – one of (if not the?) toughest inf units in game and a fun chance for converting/modelling something characterful.
hellblades – generally strong fighter choice for AA and strafing.
decimators – brutal assault gun SHT
chaos retinue

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A couple Fire warrior formations with pathfinders to hold the line, a couple Crisis suit formations to bring the Greater Good once the enemy has closed, Skyrays for air cover. Pepper with piranhas and hover tanks to taste.

I really like the fusion cannon hammerheads for dealing with armored insurgents.
Not many things say 'hello, I love you' like six 2+ macroshots ..

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For Tau:
Fire Warriors - they're the backbone.
Rail-cannon Hammerheads - awsome range and great AT capabilities
Pathfinders and Recon - basically stuff to bring makerlights
Sky rays - Great anti air cover - they come at a nice price of 250 for three. A formation that can hide to the back and still sustain with 6 x AT4+ at a markerlit formation.
for number 5 I'm not sure.

Just as an aside, you have not included ant air caste units, can an Tau army be successful without them? I don't currently have any of the minis and I have my concerns.

P.S. Keep up the input on your top 5s, these are really interesting posts.

I've only played the AX-1-0's once; they were pretty effective the one turn they decided to show up, a massive waste of points the two others. But then, I'm notoriously unlucky with activation rolls =P

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Well I always bring a pair of Barracudas. I've only had the opportunity so far to try my AX-1-0 two times. They won me the game the first time by destroying a landed Space marine transporter and then later destroying terminators that were holding my blitz. The second game they just missed and died early.

They're a lot of points in an army that suffer if it has to few activations and they're quite fragile. But I need more experience with them. Right now I'm planning to try out the Sun Shark bombers of the Vior'la list. I look forward to se how that works.

The Orca is very nice as well I guess since you can land a crisis formation were it can do the most hurt. I don't own one though so haven't tried the air drop tau approach.