Warmachine: What makes a unit good?

The title of this article is a very heavy question. Everyone has opinions on what units are good, bad, or their favorites. I tend to look at units with a list of qualities in mind.

Cost/Unit Size/Survivable
-Is the model count low or high vs the cost?
-Is it a multi-wound unit?
-Are the arm/def above or below average?
Role
-What can the unit deal with, such as other weak infantry, heavy arm/def infantry, light/heavy jacks?
-Do I get any special abilities/rules/advantages that help me control the flow of the game?
-Advance Deploy, Stealth, Pathfinder, Magic Weapon, Tough.
Lacking
-Can other units/models fill this role better or offer things that my army lacks?


So for an example I willl break down Khador WinterGuard
Cost/Unit Size/Survivable
Winter Guard are cheap and a large unit. Their arm/def isn't anything special but you make up for it in bodies.
Role
Winter Guard are very flexible in their roles thanks to CRA. They can threaten light and hard targets but can't really dent heavy jacks/beasts that well.
Lacking
While they are all around a solid unit Winter Guard do not have anything that special to add to your army without unit attachments/weapon attachments. You might find that they are bland.

Warmachine: Khador Comfort Zone

I've been playing warmachine for about a year now and I began to fall into a list slump. I would always field one of two lists and didn't really want to branch out because of money or my "Comfort Zone". I either used Karchev with heavy jacks or ESorscha with winterguard spam. Latly though I was fortunate to buy some used models and trade off some excess gaming crap for credit. So I just started ordering up Khador models and I put together the following 25 pt list


PVlad
Drago
Greylord Ternion
Doom Reavers + UA
IronFang Pikemen (min)
Great Bears

Holy crap! I've never had such an in your face list before. I am currently 4-1 with it and loving it. My one loss was to a tight menoth list that had Avatar/Kreoss/Cleansers/jacks, it was a natural counter to my list but still a fun match. At first I almost didn't want to field the UA on the Doom Reavers but I've found out that with advance deploy they are usualy the first in the battle and I tend to use them as jammers alot. I am not completely sold on the IronFangs but I don't see a good replacement as they are kinda my buffer/second wave unit. The Greylords have been awesome for 3 out of the 5 games and still weren't bad the other 2, they help the brick advance versus non-aoe ranged and helped mop up tarpits quicker.

Lastly with Signs and Portents, Drago's affinity, plus free charge/run I don't ever have to allocate focus unless I have a REALLY hard target.