Tactical Basics
The primary focus of all tactics is local superiority. If you can get more of your stuff in one place than they can, you'll have the advantage. You can achieve this local superiority in many different ways. First, let's take a look at what local superiority means.

Local Superiority
Local superiority means that you have more effectiveness in a particular area than your opponent does. Assuming that you aren't playing with 1500pts vs your opponent's 1000, you won't be able to achieve this everywhere on the board. One of the first tactical plans is to concentrate your forces.

Concentration of forces
The easiest way to concentrate your forces is to put them all in one place. People have a tendency to spread their forces out across the length of their deployment zone. If you instead deploy in a Wedge or Castle formation, you are placing most or all of your forces in a single spot. If you do this and your opponent spreads out, you will have all of your forces up against 1/2 or 1/3 of their forces. Instant local superiority! If you have a fast army, or fast elements in your army, you can start by having your forces more spread out, then move them so that they come together quickly. While I will talk about that more later, I think you get the idea. Another way of doing it is to have a higher concentration of points in one area. 10 Tactical Space Marines cost 150pts. 10 Dark Eldar Warriors cost 80pts. If you put those two units in one place, the Space Marines will have local superiority. You can also achieve local superiority by preventing the enemy forces from concentrating, which is where delaying actions come in.

Delaying Actions
If you can prevent the enemy from concentrating their forces, you can more easily achieve local superiority. One way of achieving this is to use tarpit units. These are units that can sustain a lot of damage and are placed in the way of the enemy or even directly assault an enemy unit. The objective is to hold back more of the enemy army than you are using to hold them up. This can mean that the unit will be sacrificed, but not necessarily, depending on the capabilities of your unit and the enemy unit or units. One extra effective delaying action is to charge a nearby unit, which will then slow down units that are farther away because they'll have to maneuver around or join in the combat. That way one unit can delay multiple enemy units, while the rest of your army gangs up on a small portion of the enemy army.

Maneuver
As mentioned before, you can use maneuver to achieve local superiority. One of the classic ways to do this (if you don't have a fully mobile force) is to place your units in a spread out line, as most players tend to do anyway. However, place your units in order of their mobility. Let's say you place your slowest units on your right hand side. Then place your slightly faster units in the middle and your fastest units on the left hand side. On your first turn, you can have your mobile units all move toward your right hand side. You can also feint by pushing directly toward the enemy (so they expect a frontal attack) then move away from them rapidly. If you have done this to a unit that has less mobility than yours, you have pulled them away from the place you are actually planning on being your main combat. Using the movement of your units to concentrate on one area of the enemy line or force is the classic Flanking maneuver. When you flank the enemy, not only does it concentrate most of your force on a small part of theirs, it also gives you other advantages. By concentrating to one side, you may leave units at the other end out of range to affect you, or by engaging some of their units, you may prevent the rest from getting line of sight to your army. In addition, their own units now are in the way of the reinforcements, which further slows the enemy response.

Force Differential
While most people focus on numerical superiority, local superiority comes in a variety of different packages. The most common variant is point differential. Much like the Space Marine versus Dark Eldar example above, if you have 500pts in one area and the opponent only has 300pts, you have a huge advantage. Another variant is style differential. 500pts of Assault Marines against 500pts of Devastator Marines will be a lopsided battle, depending on whether they are at shooting range or are mixed up in assault. The trick is to make sure that the forces are engaged in the way that benefits your side. That doesn't necessarily mean that your assault units have to all work together, or that your shooting units have to all work together. You can have a shooting unit work with an assault unit. As the assault unit closes in on it's target, the shooting unit fires on the same target, softening it up for the assault unit's attack. Once the assault unit hits the target, the shooting unit shifts it's fire to the enemy unit nearest the assault. An online friend referred to this as "isolating by fire." Basically, you injure the unit enough that it cannot effectively reinforce the target unit. Then your assault unit will come out in better shape, and can take on the injured unit, potentially continuing down the line with fire support, as long as your fire support has the range to help out your assault unit.

Range
Effective range is another way to concentrate your force. This is more obvious in terms of shooting. If you have two units of Devastators with Lascannons, their 48" range will overlap a great deal, so they can both target a single unit. However, assault units also have ranges. This range is a function of their movement potential. A unit of Assault Marinese can use their jump packs to move 12 inches, then assault for another 6", meaning that anything within 18 inches of them at the start of the turn is a potential target. A very effective way to think of this is to mentally draw a circle around the unit with a radius of it's range. (18" for the Assault squad, 48" for the Lascannon Devastator squad.) Any units that have overlapping circles can work together.

Deployment
At the beginning of the game, you may be able to deploy your models in such a way that you start with local superiority, much like the wedge or Castle formation listed above. It can also take advantage of terrain. Perhaps the opponent has a large terrain feature in their deployment zone, and they deploy to either side of it. If you put the bulk of your forces on one side of it, they may have difficulty reinforcing that side, giving you local superiority.

The Split Deployment
An interesting method of achieving local superiority (for shooting armies) is the Split Deployment. The idea is to place half of your army on each side of your deployment zone, with a relatively open area between them and overlapping range and fields of fire. If the opponent splits to match your forces, you concentrate your firepower on one side -focusing on fast units and transports first. They will kill off the side that isn't being supported, but they then have to walk through your firepower to get to the other side. If they don't split, they've just chosen the sacrifice side for you. The way it works is by your forces concentrating their fire (achieving local superiority) while preventing the opponent from effectively concentrating their forces.

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