I think the issue is back to themes. Themes create gear checks by rewarding spamming one type of model. This is either troopers or jacks/beasts. The way free points work rewards people to build these absurd skews, which is what has created this situation. You see this in a lot of factions, Ret has Halberdiers that move 1800 gobzillion inches per turn or Vyros 2 with a bunch of High Arm light jacks. Khador has jacks with Harkevich or lots of dudes. Cryx is the same.
It seems that the days of building two "all around" type lists, one to handle some amount of dudes and another favoring armor, are gone. Like, yes, they sort of did the same things, like the old Haley2/Stryker2 pair, but the skews they were intended to handle were not nearly as wild. Stryker2 might have taken the B13 to handle dudes, and Haley took vanilla gun mages, and each had a jack or two. Hell, at the start of MKiii I had three different lists I played:
Maddox: With 3 heavies, stormlances, and devil dogs.
Darius: 3 heavies, Sword Knights, and utility solos
Haley2: With either a colossal or heavy, stormlances, and thorn.
^^^^Those lists are very similar. They
did different things, sure, but if you wanted to fight against me you wouldn't be shut out. Here's my lists now:
Haley3: Stormlances, a heavy, thorn, and stormblades.
Haley3: Trenchers and light jacks
Nemo1: Four heavies, 4 lights, 4 solos
And I don't think that's as bad as what other factions present. Nemo throws 200+ boxes on the table that are basically immune to shooting. My Haley lists are all dudes, but Cygnar doesn't really have spammable dudes like Cryx or Mercs does. Even trolls seems suddenly abusive with the new Champs. People are creating this wildly divergent lists because you can't go into all your games with one game plan. Cygnar does Heavy Metal a little differently, usually creating a shooting list (Caine3, all the chargers) and a melee force (Haley2, 3 Stormclads). And even then, when you are facing a similar amount of boxes, fighting those forces is completely different.
I found this problem when I dropped Nemo1 into what I swore was a Sevvy2 matchup and instead I got Vinny, I found myself in a nearly unwinnable position.
And, again, the problem stems not from the models themselves, but the fact that players are rewarded for building these skews and hurt when they do not.
Do you want to play a more balanced force? Well, you'll play 15 points down from your opponent.
Do you want to play wild skews? Well, you or your opponent might lose at list selection.