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So the very mention of Matt Ward is enough to make many of us froth at the mouth.

But, after some reading and thinking on the issue, I wonder if it's worth giving him the schtick he gets.

I'll point out that I started 40k with 5th ed two years back and that, of Ward's works, I've only read C:SM and C:GK, so my views are narrow... I also don't play Fantasy so I am unable to fully empathise with those people who still despise the man for writing C:CD.

But anyway, although I'm not massively clued up on the tabletop game itself, it seems to me that if Ward's done anything right with the codices that's immediately apparent, it's that he gives you lots of options; something that older books (C:CSM anyone?) are totally lacking. The GK book gives you scope to make all kinds of forces and tailor your own custom inquisitorial retinue, C:SM's Chapter Tactics and special characters are great for tailoring that themed army of yours. Take bikes as troops? You can! Vulkan He'Stan? Yep! It's great.

As for the allegation that his books are incredibly overpowered, I can't help but wonder if they're just previews of sixth... people are already saying it's going to be around for a long time to allow codices to remain balanced; I can't help but feel that eventually this new bar he's set will all settle down.

Beyond his butchering of SoB, I don't really see what we have to hold against him in term of the codices (rules-wise), the guy's given us options that the game apparently hasn't seen since 2nd ed and that, in my eyes, can only be a good thing. I was actually rather impressed by the scope and flavour available in codex: GK.

The problem with Ward? Fluff. It's cliché to say it, but it's oh-so-true. The guy almost put me off my GKs. His writing style is abysmal, usually a statement being like: 'Dealing with Chaos would be impossible, fortunately the Grey Knights have resilience beyond compare, such is what the tyrant of yaddy yadda found out'. So dry and ever expanding with commas going on Mary Sue style about how epic his pet project is. The guy's got a lot of energy and creativity that shows in his actual rule-making, but boy, the fluff reads like fan fiction (the 'Khornate Knights' and Draigo are what set me off).

Anyhoo, my two-cents, I felt the guy isn't stuck up for much and to be honest I feel sorry for him. Although it may come across as arrogance, I think GW have a very creative and energetic designer in Matt Ward. If anyone has let us down, it's GW by not 'restraining' him enough or editing him more or, hell, having someone else write the fluff.

I don't know a lot about how Games Workshops handles their business - but my main complaint is that they don't do a good job of supporting and updating their product. I don't think you can blame any one writer for that.

As a corporation, they need to ensure the products they deliver are fair and balanced. That is a team responsibility. It seems as if more frequent updates of their codices would be a better fit for their business model. This would ensure continued revenue, allow them to correct for unbalanced armies, and also ensure no army gets left behind.

As far as the fluff goes - it seems every army touts itself as the best and the most perfect - and is arrogant in that belief. I don't think it's great writing....but the little I've read of Ward seems to fit into the universe just as well as anything else.

Henners91 wrote:

But anyway, although I'm not massively clued up on the tabletop game itself, it seems to me that if Ward's done anything right with the codices that's immediately apparent, it's that he gives you lots of options; something that older books (C:CSM anyone?) are totally lacking. The GK book gives you scope to make all kinds of forces and tailor your own custom inquisitorial retinue, C:SM's Chapter Tactics and special characters are great for tailoring that themed army of yours. Take bikes as troops? You can! Vulkan He'Stan? Yep! It's great.

Without a doubt, Ward is a man of options.

The new Necron codex is chock full of them. The special characters all have unique and creative abilities. The Royal Court is one of the most obscenely customizable aspects of any army in any codex. The ability to tailor 0-5 Crypteks with anything from leadership-based flamer template weapons to str 8 ap 2 assault weapons AND 0-5 Lords with warscythes, res orbs, and mind shackle scarabs AND THEN split those characters up among your troops gives the Necrons almost unparalleled flexibility in army composition.

That said, the fluff can be a little too epic at times.

I've only played against the new Necrons once and I've not read their fluff; only heard about it... Not a fan of the changes (to said fluff) but the army seemed fun to play with.

However, Imhotekh is just... eurgh. And Crypteks pweened my 750pt Paladin list as they tried to walk across the table; using those earthquake staves or whatever they were, they killed 5 Paladins to difficult terrain tests...

I don't mind Ward's game mechanics. It's his fluff that is horrible ass, imo. Yes, all codex's are biased toward the topical faction, but Ward takes it to a new level.

Ward gets way more crap than he deserves. Even the Draigo fluff, IMO, is good. And the rules and codexes he turns out are great.

would it matter?

1) If Mattward made the army book over powered to help GW sell the latest army, then its still a fact.

2) If Mattward make the stories for kids to help them appeal to the kids and sales, its still a fact.

Even if Matt ward did it all for the sake of GW, then he is still responsible as a representative of GW.

So the people instead of saying " OH CURSE YOU GW CORPORATION !!"
they go "woo look it has a name, and its Matt Ward! curse you Matt ward!"

Ugh, you should have seen the fluff for the Necron codex. I swear I could make up a drinking game for the number of times he starts a sentence with "Thus did so and so do this" or "So it was that yadda yadda", though I probably would end up in the obituaries if I did follow through. The story that he tries to tell is good, but the delivery wasn't as spectacular. This chiefly is the reason why I wish GW didn't have just the one guy writing EVERYTHING.
Don't get me wrong, though. Much as I hate to admit, the guy did do a great job making my beloved zombie robots competitive with lots of choices. And from your opinion, maybe he deserves a bit of slack here and there.

Henners91 wrote:So the very mention of Matt Ward is enough to make many of us froth at the mouth.

(snip)

Beginning of rant.

Matt Ward has almost single-handedly convinced me to get the heck OUT of GW products altogether. He has personally destroyed my interest in two of my 40K armies, namely Necrons and Sisters of Battle (and btw: his co-conspirator in the latter effort, Robin CRUD-ace, is also responsible for destroying my interest in Tomb Kings). His GK product needs no further comment. And his fluff is the gaming equivalent of ipecac.

If IG and SM (OK, even a broken clock is right twice a day) are revised in ANY WAY like the foregoing codices, that will be it, and E-Bay will see a whole heck of a lot of activity by me as a seller.

Matt Ward puts out utter crap, and GW is obviously happy to let him do so as part of their marketing philosophy of targeting 9-year-old brats with ADHD and fathers with too much money.

End of rant.

Matt ward doesnt deserve the nasty things we throw at him, i like his style of telling stories. and as a story writer i see the good and bad
things about his "fluff". and the fact is that GW changed theyre polices to the 9 year old adhd kid with a father that has lots of money.
my local GW is overunned by these deamons.
i think we should look witha blind eye to him and hope for GW to change theyre policies

Draigo
At-least they could of use Alaric from the Ben counter Novels.
He would of been the best Supreme Grand Master.
Plus before they were democractic in dealing with the grey knights and there was 3,000 of them.....
so that means that when they lost the 100 grey knights when facing the Daemons at Armaggeddon they lost 1/10 of their chapter......

I don't like him. My starting foray into the 40k universe was with necrons, which I played because I really liked the idea of them. Now that that's changed, I honestly don't like them that much anymore, fluff wise. I don't own a copy of the new codex. Some of the models I find ridiculous, eg necron paddle boat, others I really like eg immortals.

And Draigo defeated my favourite demon primarch, which I just find unrealistic and ridiculous. As for Ward's rules, I've been out of gaming for a while now, so I have nothing to say there.

I'm sure opinions vary from person to person, and while it was the bandwagon to insult the gak out of him before, the bandwagon is now to defend him and act as peacekeepers. I'll be keeping my opinion.

I'm fine with his rules for the most part, he writes interesting army lists and makes them customizable enough. I mean it's a pain to play against his books with 4th ed. armies (Chaos/Eldar) bur that's more because they're older books. Fluff wise...yeah he needs a lot of work there but imho I'd rather have bad fluff with good rules than the other way around.

I think most people hate him for what he's doing to the fluff but I usually hang out on the fluff forums

No, feth Blood Angels, death to Mat Ward.

Joey wrote:No, feth Blood Angels, death to Mat Ward.

Can't tell if trolling.........

That's a bit harsh isn't it. He's dedicated a part of his life to trying to please us notoriously unpleaseable nerds. He deserves some credit for that surely. At the end of the day all it is is little plastic men, saying someone deserves death for writing a bit of an OP codex just shows how pathetic is nerds really are.

LordOfTheSloths wrote:If IG and SM (OK, even a broken clock is right twice a day) are revised in ANY WAY like the foregoing codices, that will be it, and E-Bay will see a whole heck of a lot of activity by me as a seller.

Matt Ward puts out utter crap, and GW is obviously happy to let him do so as part of their marketing philosophy of targeting 9-year-old brats with ADHD and fathers with too much money.

LordotSloths, you do realize that Ward wrote the C:SM.

And by all accounts, no one had ever said it was broken. Pretty much everybody embraced it as a decent book.

And I'm with Henners91. Ward's fluff is ridiculous, we all agree on that, but ...

Between the C:SM, BA, GK & Necrons, he's put out 4 books that *do* give us multiple builds per codex, that are pretty hard hitting. If he was directed to rachet up the game, that's exactly what he did.

To compare, Venom spam seems to be DE's only good build. SWs of course, have several great options.

We all lament the decision to not have Sandy Mitchel write the fluff. Heck, Even Thrope's tripe is decent in comparison.

The real problem with Mat Ward's writing is that he doesn't follow nearly the same template as the other writers.

It wouldn't be so bad if books like Dark Eldar and Orks got the same treatment as BA, GK and SM did when they got rewritten.

A good analogy would be if you played a match of CoD, say, and every single person in the match is using one of the overpowered guns (let's say the UMP and ACR, because I don't know the FotM for the latest game). Sure, everyone's virtually on equal terms, and player skill is a bit of a distinguishable feat, but them someone stumbles along with their favorite gun that isn't one of those and suddenly there's a real noticable power gap. That one guy has his own gun that he lovingly chose and crafted out of his own will and uses with his own playstyle, and he's gonna get stomped by everyone else with their recoilless death cannons. Suddenly player skill isn't that big of a deal because those death-cannon wielders are able to provide easy hardcounters to his favorite weapon. If every single gun in the game was a recoilless death cannon, there wouldn't be such a problem, but apparently one of the game designers was on cocaine at the time when he developed his share of the weapons and no one else was.

In terms of his fluff writing, I can't blame him that much. Have you ever looked at the steaming piles of fanwank some people produce for their own fandexes? Space Marines by nature are supposed to be ridiculous, and as much as it pains me to say it, he's not that far off in that respect.

My problem with Ward is his writing style. I just find it unbearably pretentious.
The content is good and all (well, mostly. Still pissed off that he made the crons webway dependent, but then again that was prolly due to the design team or whetever), its just the execution is...blegh.

The rules I think people give him way too much crud for as I feel they're pretty good all in all. But I will agree with keeping his hands out of the fluff especially with bs such as every space marine wants to be ultramarines , draigo's general fluff , the whole grey knight are 100% incorruptible but purifiers are even more so incorruptible etc. , the Necron bit of fluff saying that the c'tan were immortal and could only be broken and then have one c'tan pretty much killed , etc.

And then the whole Necrons using the webway irks me. I liked the whole inertia-less drive and would like to have my necrons keep it. (hence why I whited out the dolmein gate part about Necrons relying on the webway)

My problem with his codexes is they're all too super-elite. He just takes an army, gives it no combat weaknesses and gives them a circus of zero-risk super weapons.

CuddlySquig wrote:My problem with his codexes is they're all too super-elite. He just takes an army, gives it no combat weaknesses and gives them a circus of zero-risk super weapons.

Necrons would like to have a word with you.

My problems with Ward:

In Fantsy he's only;
a) Publicly stated in WD that he doesn't like orcs & gobbos and wasn't enthused about having to work on that project during 7th ed. And guess what? It showed - badly and all those poor greenskin players were left the game's worst army for about 5 years before getting a 'proper' army book!
His attitude alone should have been cause for dismissal imho. You don't have to like everything you do at work, but you keep your fething trap shut and promote your product even if you personally think army 'X' is crap!

b) Wrote that obnoxious monstrosity of a Daemon army book. Utterly and completely destroyed the entire game!!!
Even with 8th editions nerfs to them, Daemons are still a top contender with a high level of filth, it's just that everyone else for the most part can play that game now too. But in 7th? The army was idiot proof with the right lists and it damn near killed the game off completely in alot of areas.

c) 8th ed overall is pretty awsome, but yet again, Ward just add go 'herp-durp' on the magic phase. Lore of Life is obscene, Lore of Shadows is just plain stupid-good and Lore of Death can auto-win vs Lizzies, Ogres, Vampires, Tomb Kings & Dwarfs. Spells like purple sun, pit of shades, mindrazzor, throne of vines, dwellers, final trans need to be really tonned down!
Look at the first 4 army books for 8th - all the #6 spells are pretty tame by comparrison and there's no 'remove from play because you flubbed 1 dice roll' spells there either. At the very least, Ward should have given characters some protection from those mega spells, because for some armies, losing 1 character can be a game-ender. (ie: undead who lose their hierophant/general, though their new army books have helped to reduce that pain!)


In 40k? I can ignore his fluff and just go with older versions of those armies. To me, Necrons will always be the jealous & embittered gits who sold their souls for immortality and desire nothing more than to exterminate all remaining reminders of the hated Old Ones!

But his rules writing is way off. Codex: Space Marines & Codex: Necrons are pretty damn good overall. Lots of viable unit choice and variety, and the internal balance is pretty solid too, along with the external balance! There's very few 'bad match-ups' with those books against other armies, so even with the power builds, outside of wonky dice it's typically a good game that's decided more on who plays the better game than who wrote the better list.

But Codex: Blood Angels? Ha! The only units I ever see in BA armies are; Dante, Mephiston, Sanguinor, Honour Guards, Sanguinary Guard, Assault Squads, Razorbacks, Blendernaughts + minimum Death Company, Sanguinary Priests giving army-wide FnP, Stormravens, Baal preds & Vindicators. looks like pretty bland internal balance to me if those choices are so miles ahead of everything else, plus it leads to boring games facing the same gak over and over again.

Don't get me started on Codex: Grey Knights... let's just leave it at, I play Daemons. Oh, and I get to face multiple warp quakes almost every damn game.

I've been resigned to the fact that if I want sweet minis and rulesets then it's better to look elsewhere for a long while now; but if I wanted superb lore then I look(ed) to GW.

So the rules don't bother me much one way or the other (though whatever rules magic he may have didn't seem to be much in evidence in the WD SoB Codex...). I see the main problem being that bad rules might make your main faction/s not much fun to play with for a while, but bad fluff can make you ditch an army entirely, and bad fluff can be forever - he's just a bit too casual and arrogant in massively contradicting and retconning the enormous body of previous lore written by far better people (and his writing style is appalling).

When you're stood on the shoulders of giants, it's out of order to answer the call of nature whilst you're up there.

King Pariah wrote:

CuddlySquig wrote:My problem with his codexes is they're all too super-elite. He just takes an army, gives it no combat weaknesses and gives them a circus of zero-risk super weapons.

Necrons would like to have a word with you.

As you can see from my signature, I've already given them a good stomping.

But seriously, I'm a little sick of super-elite codexes.

Brothererekose wrote:

LordOfTheSloths wrote:If IG and SM (OK, even a broken clock is right twice a day) are revised in ANY WAY like the foregoing codices, that will be it, and E-Bay will see a whole heck of a lot of activity by me as a seller.

Matt Ward puts out utter crap, and GW is obviously happy to let him do so as part of their marketing philosophy of targeting 9-year-old brats with ADHD and fathers with too much money.

LordotSloths, you do realize that Ward wrote the C:SM.


And by all accounts, no one had ever said it was broken. Pretty much everybody embraced it as a decent book.

Obviously. Hence my "broken clock" take.

Brothererekose wrote:

And I'm with Henners91. Ward's fluff is ridiculous, we all agree on that, but ...

Between the C:SM, BA, GK & Necrons, he's put out 4 books that *do* give us multiple builds per codex, that are pretty hard hitting. If he was directed to rachet up the game, that's exactly what he did.

"Multiple builds" do not excuse destroying the very nature of the army (in the case of Necrons as one example), among other of Ward's failings.

Brothererekose wrote:
To compare, Venom spam seems to be DE's only good build. SWs of course, have several great options.

We all lament the decision to not have Sandy Mitchel write the fluff. Heck, Even Thrope's tripe is decent in comparison.

Indeed.

The "very nature of the army"(in the case of Necrons) was garbage.
Seriously. The army had no real nature. It was just...there. That's not really a good thing.
And guess what? If you like the soulless automatons, they're still in.

By the by: having Sandy Mitchell write the fluff would be "better"?
Really? Mitchell writes the same over the top, laughably ridiculous material as Ward--except worse.
At least Thorpe's material has improved over the years, starting out rough and dramatically improving.
Mitchell just churns out the same stuff, time and time again.

Kanluwen wrote:The "very nature of the army"(in the case of Necrons) was garbage.
Seriously. The army had no real nature. It was just...there. That's not really a good thing.

Agreed. Before the new codex, I thought of the necrons as sideshow villains. I do appreciate the new fluff. Unfortunately, fluff and rules are different things.

King Pariah wrote: draigo's general fluff ,

I know it's fashionable to hate on Draigo, but when you get down to it it's an interesting story. I like the idea of a once-and-future king trapped in the realm of Chaos, who can return to help his people, only to be sucked back into the warp.

the whole grey knight are 100% incorruptible but purifiers are even more so incorruptible

Some grey knights can resist temptation. Some do it more easily than others. For some, it is a constant battle. For others, the temptation simply doesn't exist. It's like being on a diet. Some people struggle to stay away from cheeseburgers, but some people don't even want a cheeseburger to start with.

Kaldor wrote:

King Pariah wrote: draigo's general fluff ,

I know it's fashionable to hate on Draigo, but when you get down to it it's an interesting story. I like the idea of a once-and-future king trapped in the realm of Chaos, who can return to help his people, only to be sucked back into the warp

I read his story before I even heard all the Grey Knights are OP and the Draigo hate, and immediately found him to be OTT and interesting is perhaps one of the last words i'd call him and his story. Sure nothing he does matters as it is all reversed, but his story hardly focuses on that rather it's more like, "look at me! I'm draigo! I'm herp da derp OP! I wreck face! Nothing I do matters... But it don't matter cuz I still pwn chaos!"