Has anyone had success with multiple lists in the advanced document template sma

You should be able to use a CDT-like structure to hold the sub-list. So, for instance, if you have a list of objects called "projects" and each "project" has a list of "developers", you could create an XML structure to mirror it.

Similar to the example document given on the shared components page. However, your top-level would be something different.
<projectteam>
<department>engineering</department>
<project name='Document Templating'>
<developer name='John' lastEmail='Smith' mail='smith@email' day='10-10-2014' />
<developer name='Frank' lastEmail='Brown' mail='frank@email' day='10-10-2014' />
</project>
</projectteam>

Within the actual template, you would use the regular dot-notation to access the fields.