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In examining an occurrence from my latest two games, I find myself guilty of something that's always made me scratch my own head.

In the first game, I was playing Necrons vs Space Marines. My opponent dropped a bare-bones MM dreadnought (~130 pts) behind my lines turn 1 and shot and exploded a Ghost Ark, along with several warriors caught in the blast. I had to devote fire to the dread from two gauss toting units and the pod continued to pester me for the rest of the game. All told the unit probably cost me 160-175 points of models and a lot of turn 1 momentum, but I didn't have any problem with that.

In my second game, my opponent fielded a Riptide (190ish? I'm not a tau player) against my orks. It took out two Trukks and several of the occupants before fire from my Big Gunz brought it down on my turn 3. It took out around 130 points of Orks, didn't significantly impact my momentum as I ignored it in favor of a Hammerhead turn 1 with all my anti tank strength, and yet at the time it just felt so unfair. It was crushing my boyz without a second thought! The game ended in a victory for me with my Meganobz getting off a great long distance charge against a Farsight Star to lock them down and it was basically all over.

The phenomenon I've noticed is this: things actually feel more unfair in 40k when we're facing an enemy unit punching below its weight class than above. A Lascannon team crippling a tank? Fine. A Deathstar unit shredding a basic cc unit in melee? OP. Why?

Because it seems relatively easy to take down that Lascannon team, but a Riptide is much harder to destroy, even if it's only killing some infantry.

I don't know whose Lascannons you've been up against friend, but when I see them they're strapped to abooooout 50 wounds.

Or on an AV12 plane.

Psycologically, I think a bit of it may have to do with the simple practicalities of losing units in game. You will, whether you realise it or not, think more in game about how many units you've got left/have lost rather than looking at it in terms of points, so losing mutiple units to one of the enemy's units will still feel like you're losing out on the deal even if that unit is 3x the price of those you lose to it.

Practically, this is true as well; for principles like board control, cover, area dominance and the like, you'll look at an infantryman as an infantryman, whether he's a Space Marine or a Guardsman, so losing a load of guys, even when they are 5-pointers, can impact a battle plan a lot.

Ether above or the hate for riptides and drop pods have been subconsciously engraved into your brain through the interwebs.

If an anti tank unit destroys your tank, but you know that you can counter it with this or that unit the destruction hurts less. But when 3 NKDs and 2 drop pods come down turn one on your IG army and blow up 50% of all your stuff, and you know there is nothing you can do about it, then it doesn't feel right.

Same goes when you know that mathematicly speaking your unable to destroy enough of your enemy army before he tables you. It is way worse then, let say a serpent taking shoting from 1000pts of models and getting off with a hull point down. When that happens you can only laugh at dice. When the serpent has 5+ brothers with him, it is far less fun.

 Desubot wrote:
Ether above or the hate for riptides and drop pods have been subconsciously engraved into your brain through the interwebs.

My point was that I didn't hate the drop pod dread. Because it was an "anti-tank unit" it was A-OK for it to instantly make up its points.

But the fact that the Ripinpepperontide was pimp slapping 6 point ork boyz left and right felt OP even when it ended up not being points efficient as the dread.

Twas a joke but ok.

Personally i feel its just a stigma against certain armies or list archetypes.

The amount of complaining i hear the second 1 riptide is mentioned or 1 serpent is mentioned, weather or not it does anything.

the second something dies to it in any amount it might confirm there bias against it.