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Made in us
Douglas Bader






 MajorWesJanson wrote:
The people who called for him to be fired should be ashamed.


Why? Even if he wasn't evil he was still an incompetent game designer (like everyone else GW employs) and should have been fired a long time ago (also like everyone else GW employs).

There is no such thing as a hobby without politics. "Leave politics at the door" is itself a political statement, an endorsement of the status quo and an attempt to silence dissenting voices. 
   
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Los Angeles

Has /tg/ exploded after this news?

   
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[MOD]
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Cozy cockpit of an Archer ARC-5S

Hate to be the (gaming) company who hires him, the community will turn against them straight away.



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Fiat justitia ruat caelum

 
   
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 BrookM wrote:
Hate to be the (gaming) company who hires him, the community will turn against them straight away.


Kinda like when an actor is unfortunate enough to be part of a terrible movie and his reputation is tarnished enough that it ruins his career.

It will be interesting to see if he pops up again.
   
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Gathering the Informations.

 Grimtuff wrote:
And there was much rejoicing across the land....

Right.

Because it's so much better that we keep Phil "Wolf Wolfborn" Kelly and Robin "I Brought Hotshot Lasguns Back" Cruddace.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
 Peregrine wrote:
 MajorWesJanson wrote:
The people who called for him to be fired should be ashamed.


Why? Even if he wasn't evil he was still an incompetent game designer (like everyone else GW employs) and should have been fired a long time ago (also like everyone else GW employs).

The High Elf, Dark Elf, and Wood Elf books all beg to differ.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2014/08/11 21:10:55


 
   
Made in gb
Insect-Infested Nurgle Chaos Lord






 Kanluwen wrote:
 Grimtuff wrote:
And there was much rejoicing across the land....

Right.

Because it's so much better that we keep Phil "Wolf Wolfborn" Kelly and Robin "I Brought Hotshot Lasguns Back" Cruddace.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
 Peregrine wrote:
 MajorWesJanson wrote:
The people who called for him to be fired should be ashamed.


Why? Even if he wasn't evil he was still an incompetent game designer (like everyone else GW employs) and should have been fired a long time ago (also like everyone else GW employs).

The High Elf, Dark Elf, and Wood Elf books all beg to differ.


Internet contrarian until the bitter end as usual Kan....


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Gathering the Informations.

 Grimtuff wrote:

Internet contrarian until the bitter end as usual Kan....

Or maybe I just liked Matt Ward better than I did the pathetic writings of Phil Kelly(y'know, the guy who wrote an Ork driving a warbike through a Titan's head for example as fluff...) and the crap that Cruddace spews.
   
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He was hands down the only guy who actually seemed to be able to make an internally balanced with lots of options books for 40k. Hate his fluff if you can work up to it but you really should at least awknowledge his books have held up best over the course with diversity. Then again i never went in for the Ward hate since the fluff has always been a bit bad from any normal sci-fi perspective.

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Made in us
Wraith






Hey, I'm usually on the "hate train" too, but I grew to like Ward for his rules. They usually made for good armies and there were minimal boat anchor or useless units.

They should have leveraged that strength and just let Black Library folks write fluff. Vetock is the only good one left?

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Somewhere in south-central England.

I don't believe Ward got so sick of criticism he upped and left.

First, he clearly has not get a new job yet and you don't resign until your next situation is secured.

Secondly, I find the timing significant. He left GW in May, before the end of their financial year, allowing them to roll his redundancy payment into the £ 4.5 Million of exceptional expenses incurred last year.

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 Kanluwen wrote:
 Grimtuff wrote:

Internet contrarian until the bitter end as usual Kan....

Or maybe I just liked Matt Ward better than I did the pathetic writings of Phil Kelly(y'know, the guy who wrote an Ork driving a warbike through a Titan's head for example as fluff...) and the crap that Cruddace spews.

An Ork driving his...I'm glad I don't know what you're talking about.



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Made in gb
Insect-Infested Nurgle Chaos Lord






 BrookM wrote:
Hate to be the (gaming) company who hires him, the community will turn against them straight away.


The man is the Vince Russo of the wargaming world.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
 MWHistorian wrote:
 Kanluwen wrote:
 Grimtuff wrote:

Internet contrarian until the bitter end as usual Kan....

Or maybe I just liked Matt Ward better than I did the pathetic writings of Phil Kelly(y'know, the guy who wrote an Ork driving a warbike through a Titan's head for example as fluff...) and the crap that Cruddace spews.

An Ork driving his...I'm glad I don't know what you're talking about.


Wazzdakka. An excellent piece of fluff and appropriate for the manic humour of Orks. He drives his bike off a cliff to take out a Warlord titan by crashing through it's main bridge in the head after he caught fire due to going straight through the titan's void shields.

This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2014/08/11 21:19:58



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Edmonton, Alberta

 Red Corsair wrote:
 MajorWesJanson wrote:
If Ward has left, I hope they get someone new who is good at writing cool, fluffy rules like Battle Focus. Neither Ward nor Cruddace are very good at balanced rules, and Vetock is still somewhat uneven.

If he was pushed out, I feel sorry for him. The amount of vitriol spewed at him by people online was insane. He was a game designer, not someone who worked at Haliburton or Bain Capital. The people who called for him to be fired should be ashamed.



Of all the authors there Kelly should have been axed. That guy has no idea how to balance a book and he has no excuse having been there as long as he has. Lets not forget he is the guy responsible for the SW naming convention not ward.

Think about it. Kelly did the eldar, demons and chaos, three of the most horrible books ever.


Don't forget also that he wrote Space Wolves in 5th ed, one of the most OP armies of that edition untill Grey Knights came out towords the end. I'd rather get Matt Ward books now adays then phil kelly.
   
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 Grimtuff wrote:
Internet contrarian until the bitter end as usual Kan....


Except he's absolutely correct in this instance. Rules wise, he was one of the best they had on the team and the fluff stuff I blame on the studio Fluff Monger who's in charge of keeping the team pointed in the direction the studio wants the setting to head.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2014/08/11 21:21:20


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 Red Corsair wrote:



Of all the authors there Kelly should have been axed. That guy has no idea how to balance a book and he has no excuse having been there as long as he has. Lets not forget he is the guy responsible for the SW naming convention not ward.


Wow, Phil Kelly has access to a time machine and he's wasting it use to go back and write the 2nd ed. SW codex?

Space Wolves "Wolf" prefix nomenclature predated Kelly by a long time. He simply expanded on it. YMMV whether this was good or not.


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 Grimtuff wrote:
 Red Corsair wrote:



Of all the authors there Kelly should have been axed. That guy has no idea how to balance a book and he has no excuse having been there as long as he has. Lets not forget he is the guy responsible for the SW naming convention not ward.


Wow, Phil Kelly has access to a time machine and he's wasting it use to go back and write the 2nd ed. SW codex?

Space Wolves "Wolf" prefix nomenclature predated Kelly by a long time. He simply expanded on it. YMMV whether this was good or not.


He's also written 4th edition Eldar, another broken Skimmerspam army back in it's day.

Kelly's dex's mostly don't hold up well when it comes to edition changes, and he's got tons of units that aren't viable in what he writes, his internal balance is horrendous.

Though I will miss Ward, I actually liked his fantasy rules (Daemons not withstanding).

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2014/08/11 21:26:05


 
   
Made in gb
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In the Chaos Wastes, Killing the Chaos scum of the north

I admit, Wards fluff is appaling, like seriously, and at times his armies can seem stupidly broken, but then comes the next update for the rules and his army suddenly seems a lot more balanced, and in his books no army has particularly useless units or auto-includes, each unit or model is as viable as the others, which isn't the same for some other books written by the others.

End of the day, I'm glad he wont be ruining anymore fluff, but I'm sad he wont be writing anymore Army Books or Codices, I think it will be a shame he has left, and if he does get a new job with another company, I hope they keep him well away from the fluff

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TBH I don't read the fluff, I haven't ever bothered to take note of who wrote which codex, and anyway most of them always have suffered from some crappy rules and bad internal balance as well as bad balance against the meta -- which nearly all of us would recognise and admit.

Singling out any one writer for all this seems rather unfair and actually unrealistic.

However, Ward apparently had written more than his fair share of recent codexes. We know that codexes recently have not been selling so well, no doubt due to having been doubled in price; perhaps Ward merely carried the can for management's mistake in pricing books so high.

I'm writing a load of fiction. My latest story starts here... This is the index of all the stories...

We're not very big on official rules. Rules lead to people looking for loopholes. What's here is about it. 
   
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 Hulksmash wrote:
Then again i never went in for the Ward hate since the fluff has always been a bit bad from any normal sci-fi perspective.

This. All of the fluff reads like bad fan fiction to me.

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Bobug wrote:
 MajorWesJanson wrote:
If Ward has left, I hope they get someone new who is good at writing cool, fluffy rules like Battle Focus. Neither Ward nor Cruddace are very good at balanced rules, and Vetock is still somewhat uneven.

If he was pushed out, I feel sorry for him. The amount of vitriol spewed at him by people online was insane. He was a game designer, not someone who worked at Haliburton or Bain Capital. The people who called for him to be fired should be ashamed.


Actually, matt ward did write the battle focus rule, he suggested kelly include it while he was writing the eldar dex. To be fair wards rules really arent bad as things go, grey knights were hella OP yes but they were clearly written for 6th ed which severely toned them down to a very mid-tier army. Other than that id say hes not a bad rules writer at all, all units in his codexes are useful somewhat (theres no riptides, wave serpents, dark talons or mandrakes in his books) but his fluff is just aweful.


I know about Ward and battle focus. I was trying to say that, but wrote Ward and Cruddace instead of Kelly and Cruddace like I meant. Ward had some poor parts of the fluff, but many of the most popular examples have been so blown out of proportion by internet rage hyperbole that they have become cases of "I can see Alaska from my house!" where the parody becomes attributed to the original source
   
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 Sigvatr wrote:
I...I...words cannot express the joy I feel. Genuine joy. I am so, so, so happy right now. Genuinely happy. I am overwhelmed by my feelings.

Screw you Ward. Screw you. I hope you never get employed ever anywhere again. This is fair justice for ruining Codex:Necrons. For pooping all over our race. This is fair. This is what you deserve.

In the name of all TruCron players, of all Necrons, of all Necrontyr and all C'Tan...be gone. All the worst for you. Bye. Forever.



Someone has a resentment......

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 MajorWesJanson wrote:
Bobug wrote:
 MajorWesJanson wrote:
If Ward has left, I hope they get someone new who is good at writing cool, fluffy rules like Battle Focus. Neither Ward nor Cruddace are very good at balanced rules, and Vetock is still somewhat uneven.

If he was pushed out, I feel sorry for him. The amount of vitriol spewed at him by people online was insane. He was a game designer, not someone who worked at Haliburton or Bain Capital. The people who called for him to be fired should be ashamed.


Actually, matt ward did write the battle focus rule, he suggested kelly include it while he was writing the eldar dex. To be fair wards rules really arent bad as things go, grey knights were hella OP yes but they were clearly written for 6th ed which severely toned them down to a very mid-tier army. Other than that id say hes not a bad rules writer at all, all units in his codexes are useful somewhat (theres no riptides, wave serpents, dark talons or mandrakes in his books) but his fluff is just aweful.


I know about Ward and battle focus. I was trying to say that, but wrote Ward and Cruddace instead of Kelly and Cruddace like I meant. Ward had some poor parts of the fluff, but many of the most popular examples have been so blown out of proportion by internet rage hyperbole that they have become cases of "I can see Alaska from my house!" where the parody becomes attributed to the original source


What parts of the Draigo fluff and the GK slaughtering the SoB have been "exaggerated by the internet?"

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So fluff trumps rules?


3000
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DC



12 years too late if you ask me.

 WrentheFaceless wrote:
So fluff trumps rules?


Fluff to me is far more important. Then again, I haven't played 40k in years and only buy books from them anymore.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2014/08/11 22:02:38


 
   
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Meanwhile at GW HQ, Ward's replacement has been found.




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 DarkTraveler777 wrote:
Has /tg/ exploded after this news?



They have... they sure have....

Spoiler:


   
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And yet people seem to forget Ward didn't kill 6th or 7th.. Hmm, selective memories it seems.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2014/08/11 22:13:54


 
   
Made in ca
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Montreal, Quebec

I still beleive to this day that the credited authors were there only for the fluff part and that the rules were written as a collective.

So I beleive that, with his departure, we will still see brokenly OP codices, dismally poor ones and some rarelly well balanced. The design team really seems to have no consistency in their production output.

* I have to say that NewGW impresses me a lot... 
   
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DC

 ZebioLizard2 wrote:
And yet people seem to forget Ward didn't kill 6th or 7th.. Hmm.

I just don't like Ward for what he did to Necrons fluff. I honestly don't know enough about the rules to know if he broke anything.
   
 
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