Super heavy's and Gargantuan Creatures

As anyone paying attention will know, I simply do not like the inclusion of the Super Heavies and Gargantuan Creatures into the Warhammer 40K meta.

This isn't borne of some unreasoning dedication to the old ways, although I have little trouble accepting people who LIKE the old ways.  Why shouldn't they?  This is also not due to the prohibitive cost of them in dollars which puts purchasing them beyond the means of some gamers, although that is a 100% legitimate competitive imbalance in its own right.

Here's the thing:  no one likes the idea of being a donor at tournaments.  It's real bad for attendance.

What I detest about the units is that they are (in most cases) poorly balanced.  Here you have a platform upon which in the case of the Imperial Knights, that it becomes your anti-air, anti-horde, anti-TEQ, anti mech and board control all in one.  It doesn't even have to choose like other units.  For 400 points, you can box up all those basic list needs into one model and that model can be slotted into any army and immediately you have a highly effective and nearly indestructible platform to do all of it for a price that is in no way commensurate with its utility.  It can even apply those excellent weapon options to different targets!  So it being one model isn't even a limiting factor.  Its durability makes it more than worth having the eggs in that basket and unlike tanks, it cannot have its chassis shaken and/or stunned.

I say indestructible because the weapons that kill such beasts tend to get blocked by cannon fodder of no consequence in points or efficacy.  So while you might rightly point out that EVENTUALLY enough meltas MIGHT reach them, the majority of games won't include a melta-dedicated army like that which is willing to ignore imminent threats to make a kill run on just one model anyways!  Plus, it isn't as if the player playing the big boys can't recognize the threats to its big boys and prioritize those few first.  Once they are dead, the enemy has no way to stop such ferocious beings.  Many all comer armies are simply not going to specialize that much.

I fought a 12 Hull Point Stompa with the It Will Not Die rule on it and in one round it threatened to wreck 25% of my army in one g.  It would have been more had I been any less skilled at deployment. I ended the game with a whopping seven hull points done to that thing.  It killed 1,000 points of my army.  I won, but my God.  Not only did it not die, it was never truly in danger of it.

Similarly a single 300+ point Wraith Knight killed over 800 points of my army in a recent tournament.  I stopped him from getting half the main objectives so it was a close game, but here again, most armies simply won't have units that could weather it as well as I did.  Let that statement soak in.  I weathered it well, and it killed 800 points!

That they can be defeated has been demonstrated.  No one here is questioning that.  The sky isn't falling.  What we should be questioning is whether or not they even belong in normal games of 40K.  Should Tournament organizers be inviting this kind of potentially lopsided result into their events.  People pay money to be in the hobby and money to go to tournaments; they lovingly paint some beautiful armies and it's a real shame for them to have to simply sigh, look across the board and mentally check the "acceptance of loss mode" switch. Even the worst normal match ups don't equal the futility of the worst Super Heavy/Gargantuan matchups, by a great order of magnitude.

Making the matter worse is the cavalier disregard for balance that Forge World is regularly guilty of.  I know in some far off world, the logic makes sense to them.  However, in this world, it just creates more ridiculous outcomes.

The Pandoras box is opened.  We really can only limit, not exclude them, now that they are in codex's.  However, for those T.O.'s who will listen, be aware:  clubbing baby seals generally isn't fun for either participant.  It's one thing to get beaten and get beaten hard.  Most can accept it if they at least had a chance before the game started and skill as well as match up was the issue.  Foregone conclusions are just not fun.

With Super Heavies and Gargantuans, they are hard counters to many things and thus no reasonably built army can be guaranteed a fighting chance at all.  Balanced armies will fail.  Fun still matters to me.

I have seen some movement in codex's to deal with the threats so I am unwilling to doom all Super Heavies to purgatory.  One in an army at least represents that they are rare and expensive artifices.  I've come to the point of acceptance on that.  When I see more than one I feel that I'm playing an apocalypse army without an answer.

Maybe I'm wrong.