Have a flip through the open war pack, most of them have a no mans land of less than 18".
Even if you can deploy your entire army out of range, you are going to have to move, so your just delaying the inevitable.
We could sit here and talk deployment tactics, but I really have to ask how you dealt with long-range shooty armies in any other edition, because nothing has changed to make life harder for assaulty armies really at all.
Fast assaulty armies now usually get first turn, can make first turn assaults, can assault after deepstrike, and are blessed with the edition with the absolute most durable, assault-friendly transports in the history of the game (which can contain more than one unit). If an extra 6" on a Demolisher Cannon is what knocks you out of the running, I'm not sure what I can say.
I don't really like games where its just seeing who can drop the nuke first.
When
hasn't this been the case, exactly? 40K has always been about positioning your forces to make a killing blow. 8th Edition has made it so that such killing blows occur about a turn earlier than before, yes, and yeah, alpha strike is a concern. But it has always always been a concern. Do you remember the Leafblower? The Rhino Rush? Thunderwolf shenanigans? The Lysander Wing? Farsight Bomb?
And, if I may say so, it seems odd that a thread about the Imperial Guard has you freaking out about alpha strike, considering that, by the current iteration of the rules, Imperial Guard armies pretty much never, ever go first. You just alpha strike them before they beta strike you (and yeah, Conscripts suck--no argument there). Get up in their face. Snipe their officers.
So far, I haven't seen anywhere close to as many abusive builds in this edition than in almost any other edition I've played (and I've played since 2nd). There's the stupid Imperial Assassin Screen, Conscript Blobs, and stupid Roboute Guilliman with his Imperial Soup, but past that?
This edition works just fine. It has some kinks, but for the first time (ever) GW is actively attempting to address them. I think, overall, elite armies got kicked in the teeth and hordes are on top right now, but I don't see that as a death knell to the game by any means.