Perhaps look at it this way....
Considerations such as what your opponent is playing faction wise (and by extension model wise), the terrain you are playing on, how your opponent likes to play the game... These are all things you can't control. So in all honesty, if you are fairly new - don't worry about them, you can learn as you go along. A great example of this is now using soulstone miners to hunt hollow waifs from now on.
What you can control however is:
* knowing which masters you like to take and why
* what models you like to take and why
* what the potential strategies you can face (is the book and gg15)
* what the potential scheme are
Hence what I did was create a 'cheat sheet' of models. Essentially its one page of a4 which I keep in my phones case, and when I have a spare minute on the bus I read through and refresh myslelf.
In short I went through all of the strats and schemes, looked at what I needed to do, but also what I would expect I would need to stop someone else doing it.
Let's take power ritual as an easy example.
You need to drop a scheme marker in a specific place in the board, but then you do not need to have that model about. Hence I am looking for models which are speed over staying or fire power, so to me that's watchers or guild hounds. However, I may want to include something shooty like riflemen or austringers to stop the opponent in case they decide to take the same.
Hence, when I get to a tournament, I have an idea right away what I want to take as soon as I can see the strats and schemes.
I also keep it very simple, as that is all my brain allows
The other thing I do is then randomly generate a set of schemes ( via the breach or @malifaux schemes ) and then practice while the missus is watching something awful like east enders constructing a crew.
Hence, now I have confidence I can get a crew on the table which has the right things. If only I could play better
Hope that helps?
Sorry for the need to re edit quite a bit. Long posts and tablets don't mix!