I have only been paying 40K for about 5-6 years now... (but have been wargaming since 1985). ANd recently i have seen on here and on facebook, just slamming this guy, And i have wanted to ask WHY or WHAT he has done that made people mad. And i want to ask that WITHOUT people yelling or screamign at ME for asking it!

Overpowered rules with fluff that is just painful to read. Matt Ward embodies the worst fanboy stereotypes, except that somehow he managed to get a job writing official material instead of just fanfiction.

Actually for me it's the waistcoat and smarmy grin, but also the above mentioned.

The guy can't write fluff to save his life, and his hard-on for marines (and Necrons - his other army) is a tad too obvious

To speak with a certain degree of (biased) detail, Matt Ward writes what we in the writing biz call "Mary Sue Literature." That is to say, he has a habit of making characters that are grossly overpowered lore wise (Draigo and Calgar come to mind), without any major character flaws or failings to counter balance it. He has a not-so-subtle preference for Ultramarines which is especially visible in the Vanilla codex on page 24. According to Master Ward, every chapter that isn't an Ultramarine wishes they were Ultramarines, or is otherwise genetically flawed. Chapters that do not follow Rowboat Girlymans Codex Astartes to the T are abherrants, apparently.

Furthemore, he has a way of.....not...paying attention to existing lore. This can be good or bad. While up for debate, the Necrons got a much needed new coat of paint lore wise. I don't know enough about the other codices he's written to be able to comment further on that though.

Also, he has some real issues with the Sisters of Battle for some reason. Every chance he gets, someone is killing them or wearing them as scarves....even other Imperials (actually, especially other Imperials).

His codices typically come out pretty powerful and borderline the overpowered. There's always plenty of room for cheese in it and they quickly become the Flavor of the Month army. Necrons went from "Who the hell plays 'crons?" to "Holy hell, I'm tired of playing necrons" in like a month.

He's gotten better as time has passed, I believe. But yeah, so there you have the grievances with the one we call Ward

To speak with a certain degree of detail, no one author is responsible for each book.

To speak with a certain degree of (biased) detail, Matt Ward writes what we in the writing biz call "Mary Sue Literature." That is to say, he has a habit of making characters that are grossly overpowered lore wise (Draigo and Calgar come to mind), w

The problem is, I don't understand why the other two get no issues from this.

Kelly wrote Vect in this exact same way, never doing wrong, always pulling off perfection, everything's never done wrong, killing people with BLACK HOLES.

Kelly wrote the 4th Edition Eldar, which at the time with Skimmerspam was the most powerful army ingame bar none, then wrote space wolves later on. He's probably the best of the lot, but that aint saying much because his internal costs for units in general are crap, sure they'll be balanced or OP, but the other half of the book will be useless, or they'll be better than everything (Space Wolves)

Robert Cruddance Wrote IG, the original OP book of 5th edition, then nids, underpowered, then SoB, which had everything cut from it nearly and has horrible costs. He's the worst writer overall when it comes to balance, whether internal, external. His wargear costs are probably the WORST of the the three.

Nobody calls Space Marines an OP codex, blood angels was just marines +1, but it wasn't OP. All the hate generally started from overall space marine fans who disliked his fluff, and came up with more reasons over time, sure GK was OP, and necrons are quite above tier, but those came long after the already sizable hatedom for Ward.

Honestly, I don't have a whole lot of beef with him. I find the hate train somewhat funny. I'm fairly happy with what he's done with Necrons and think the Blood Angels dex is pretty good. That said, I think it's the fact his stuff is coming up in a time when little details like GKs slaughtering Sisters for their blood and all the Spiritual liege nonsense spreads like wildfire. 40k has some truly absurd lore going around, much it dating back quite a while, so it's not really that these things are particularly absurd or out of left field, it's just that they are so obviously so. Moreover, he did 4 codices in 3 years....as well as BRBs. He's getting a lot of facetime, which means a lot of time for people to notice trends and habits.

Superficially, he dresses like a victorian giggalo.

Mainly because Kelly and Cruddace have done it on occasion.

OP units , once in a while. OT fluff occasionally.


For Ward it's the default.

Vect, for example, isn't perfect. He is a bit OT fluffwise, but then he is the ruler of the entire DE race. He'd better be OT. He does have flaws though. He is becoming more and more erratic, and is losing his grip on Commoragh, not wandering the warp b-slapping greater daemons and turning them into holy weapons with his bare hands On the table he's decidedly meh, especially when you compare him to some of the other SC out there..

Cruddace is erratic. as mentioned above. Some of his codexes are a bit powerful and some of the fluff is a bit gonzoed. What he was thinking with the Vendetta pts cost (beyond 'this should make those kits sell' ) is anyone's guess..

For me the SM codex was solid. 2+ 3++ termies were a bit much when they first hit, since a SS used to only give a 4+ inv against one target in CC, but hey. The Tardis LR that could suddenly magically hold more men and the UM Forever fluff wasn't THAT bad, though it grated on non-UM SM players.

The BA codex was a bit more OP, but still bearable in an annoying kind of way. Couple of OP units, some bad fluff blown way out of proportion by the gaming community. An AV 12 meltaproof fast skimmer landraider that can carry dreads and infantry and Blenderdreads that could mince an entire boyz mob without them getting to swing were a bit much, and Mephiston was cheesy as hell, but whatever,

GK in 5th were dirty cheesy, and the fluff stank on ice. In 6th they are less abusively cheesy, slightly, but the fluff is godsawful still.

Necrons - well yeah... plenty of threads on those guys. Massive fluff rewrite that PO'd a lot of Necron players, and in 6th the flyerspam cheese is unreal...

Ward's principal problem lies in power level, both in lore and in rules.

That being said, his codexes have offered a great deal of modularity; there's the optimum lists where you use his "favourite" units which are a tad powerful, but aside from them, they've got solid internal balance and lots of choice.

And I'd say that as far as balance goes, his biggest problem is characters; they're incredibly powerful and perform well beyond their cost. Mephiston is a rape train, as is Draigo, and Imhotek. Without these key units (and the flyerspam of doom from the 'crons, though I don't think that's Ward's fault, more of GW wanting to sell expensive fliers), his codexes are pretty solid.

If they'd just keep him the feth away from the lore and ICs, I wouldn't have a problem with him. Besides, if you're playing with friends, how hard is to just avoid the one or two cheese units per army, and enjoy what are otherwise enjoyable codexes? I've got a mate who runs a great oldschool Daemonhunters list using the Grey Knights codex; lots of henchmen, specialist troops, and usually only a single unit of standard termies. We've got a bunch of 'Cron players, and the most croissants I've ever seen on the table is 3, which is hardly game-breaking.

For the friendly crowd, his rules aren't a huge deal, though the fluff remains irritating, but his armies really have screwed up the competitive scene. GK-Necron tourney lists get tiresome after the 7th round.

 Kanluwen wrote:
To speak with a certain degree of detail, no one author is responsible for each book.

They're the one with their names on the book as the author, they're the ones that are interviewed in WD as the sole authors, etc. Mat Ward had enough autonomy when he wrote C:SM that nobody noticed the drop pod and land raider transport capacity changes until it had already gone to the printers and couldn't change it back.

Ward's problem is that he writes fluff like you'd expect from bad internet fanfiction and makes super gimmicky rules, while some people are all into that, it *really* honks off others in a way that no other author has yet managed. Yes, other authors have made their mistakes, but it's not out of nowhere or for no reason that Ward has the reputation he does.

What I don't get is how every week or so, someone posts a thread with more or less this title. They then warn us that we're jerks if we give them a hard time... And we give them the exact same answers, again.

It's not the Ward haters or apologists that get me, it's the same tired question coming up again and again and again.

 Lobukia wrote:
What I don't get is how every week or so, someone posts a thread with more or less this title. They then warn us that we're jerks if we give them a hard time... And we give them the exact same answers, again.

It's not the Ward haters or apologists that get me, it's the same tired question coming up again and again and again.

A lot of Dakka thread topics are just rehashes of old ones, I'm afraid. You can chalk it up to the steady influx of newbies.

 Lobukia wrote:
What I don't get is how every week or so, someone posts a thread with more or less this title. They then warn us that we're jerks if we give them a hard time... And we give them the exact same answers, again.

It's not the Ward haters or apologists that get me, it's the same tired question coming up again and again and again.

Well like i said in my opening statement, i just started playing 40K a couple years ago, and have recently been seeing his face on facebook pages and on here, and had NO IDEA what people were talking about,, Maybe OTHER people are like me and that is whyyou see these questions oer and over again. But for me I DID NOT see any explantions like you guys are doing a good job of!


Automatically Appended Next Post:

TheCustomLime wrote:

 Lobukia wrote:
What I don't get is how every week or so, someone posts a thread with more or less this title. They then warn us that we're jerks if we give them a hard time... And we give them the exact same answers, again.

It's not the Ward haters or apologists that get me, it's the same tired question coming up again and again and again.

A lot of Dakka thread topics are just rehashes of old ones, I'm afraid. You can chalk it up to the steady influx of newbies.

UGh hate that term newbies. I am SORT of new to 40K onlybeen playing about 5-6 years. but i have been platying tabletop war games for over 30 years...so i am hardly a newb mate!

 Vaktathi wrote:

 Kanluwen wrote:
To speak with a certain degree of detail, no one author is responsible for each book.

They're the one with their names on the book as the author, they're the ones that are interviewed in WD as the sole authors, etc. Mat Ward had enough autonomy when he wrote C:SM that nobody noticed the drop pod and land raider transport capacity changes until it had already gone to the printers and couldn't change it back.

Ward's problem is that he writes fluff like you'd expect from bad internet fanfiction and makes super gimmicky rules, while some people are all into that, it *really* honks off others in a way that no other author has yet managed. Yes, other authors have made their mistakes, but it's not out of nowhere or for no reason that Ward has the reputation he does.

Ward's problem is that people see his name on it and start crying foul. The author of the rules is generally not the one doing the fluff.

See the fluff i can see why it angers people. I have been play Dungeons and Dragons since 1985. About as long as i have been playing table top war games...And 4th edition was HoRRENDOUS to me.. MAJOR fluff.... 3 and 3.5 were a little better but still had fluff. So i can understand why people get mad. I also hate it when people dont respect estalished storylines. JOE QUESADA the fat douche from Marvel Comics along with BRIAN MIACHEL BENDIS have single handedly destroyed marvel with making crappy comics and ignoring established storylines or canon. I have roughly 25-26,000 comics. Been Collecting since 1977. And i hate too much fluff, and ignoring canon, or not respecting the source material

NAme me over powered Ward units.
Please.

I'll open with Mephiston

Daemon Prince stats travel-sized for your convenience to a marine sized package.

Even at his admittedly high points cost, he's still OP.

My orks would like to put in an honorable mention for Cleansing Flame as an OP ability. Orks charge in. Half of them just die, GK then swing first and kill the rest.

Yes i know you can shoot them instead, but even so it's a touch much...

Shuntquake autokilling entire Daemon armies on turn one, no save.

Blenderdreads with near-infinite CC attacks if you are rolling well... Other units by other authors that garner additional attacks stipulate that these extra attacks don't generate more additional attacks IIRC

Some of these are less OP depending on the army you play. Cleansing Flame isn't that big a deal if you are playing Marines, for example, but not everyone plays Marines.

Necron death rays- mounted on fliers (hard to shoot down) with S 10 AP 2 (or is it one) lines they can draw behind the flier...

Don't know much about GK, but Mephistion is NOT overpowered. He is 250 pts. Just bait him or focus fire, and he is gone.

Everytime someone complains about Ward a cute little puppy dies. Let's see if that will work.

Because it's what the kids think is cool these days.

Le epic Mat Ward thread lol XD
omg matt ward suxx lol xD
hey guise i think ward sucks am i col yet xP

Repeat ad nauseum

You can pour a whole army into him to kill him, sure. Better kill him turn 1 though, because after that he'll be in CC wiping whole units on his tod. This also assumes that he is visible to be shot before he flies over and mauls whatever unit he has a hard-on for.

Not everyone has S6 or better, AP 2 up the wazoo. Sure, he can be killed. You'll likely lose more than 250 pts doing it though, unless you are lucky enough to have the right tools in range to deal with him.

If you think the guy's rules/fluff are all perfectly reasonable, it likely follows that you play one of his codexes or the folk you fight don't run their ward-dexes cheesy

There's an excess of puppies in the world, but i'd rather a TFG died each time instead. Puppies are cuter.

They feel that they gotta nuke something.

There are legitimate complaints against him. His fluff is god-awful and his rulesets often spawn overpowered armies.

 thenoobbomb wrote:
Don't know much about GK, but Mephistion is NOT overpowered. He is 250 pts. Just bait him or focus fire, and he is gone.

No, he's pretty silly. Yeah, he's 250pts. He's got a statline second only to those of a Primarch, the speed of jump infantry with a psychic power, and can hide behind/in almost anything to avoid fire, not to mention being one of the most potent psykers in the game.


Digging through 5 T6 2+sv wounds is not easy for most armies. If he dives headlong into an IG veteran gunline with 12 plasma guns or a full unit of TH/SS termi's, yeah, he'll die. If your opponent isn't playing an IG gunline, chances are they can't focus enough firepower to bring him down in a reasonable manner.

Peolle whine about Mat Wadd for lack of anything intelligent to complain about. In the Dark Angels rumor thread, a sidetrack started when, after the author had been revealed, an idiot still jumped on the Ward bandwagon (as the previous rumors had conjectured) and stayed on even after being informed of his error otherwise.

Best advice, so jump on the Ward bandwagon.

I has a hat!

Me and my friend make Ward jokes as he plays Necrons, but it's light-hearted. If I ever actually met the guy I'd probably buy him a beer, even if I'd give him crap over some stuff I've seen from him.

Two codexes - Grey Knights and Blood angels - had models and rules that were simply more powerful versions of ones found in other armies, for no apparent reason. This is what people find irritating.

Blood Angels in 5th were a bastard to play against. Basically everything the vanilla marines get, plus Furious Charge and Feel No Pain and Fast vehicles, all more or less for free. Things like this irritate people.

 SoloFalcon1138 wrote:
Peolle whine about Mat Wadd for lack of anything intelligent to complain about.

Or...get this... it could be that there are in fact legitimate issues with his work.

The hate didn't come from nowhere

 Vaktathi wrote:

 SoloFalcon1138 wrote:
Peolle whine about Mat Wadd for lack of anything intelligent to complain about.

Or...get this... it could be that there are in fact legitimate issues with his work.

The hate didn't come from nowhere

Except he's gotten hate every since it became popular to hate on him. Despite the other two providing poor, if not just as bad examples as he could.

Didn't read the thread. But I've always wanted to post this!

Inb4lock

 ZebioLizard2 wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:

 SoloFalcon1138 wrote:
Peolle whine about Mat Wadd for lack of anything intelligent to complain about.

Or...get this... it could be that there are in fact legitimate issues with his work.

The hate didn't come from nowhere

Except he's gotten hate every since it became popular to hate on him. Despite the other two providing poor, if not just as bad examples as he could.

It's become practically a meme at this point.

 Vaktathi wrote:

 SoloFalcon1138 wrote:
Peolle whine about Mat Wadd for lack of anything intelligent to complain about.

Or...get this... it could be that there are in fact legitimate issues with his work.

The hate didn't come from nowhere

it's certainly rare from the players of his codexes...

 SoloFalcon1138 wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:

 SoloFalcon1138 wrote:
Peolle whine about Mat Wadd for lack of anything intelligent to complain about.

Or...get this... it could be that there are in fact legitimate issues with his work.

The hate didn't come from nowhere

it's certainly rare from the players of his codexes...

My friend jokes about putting a sharpie to the first page of his Necrons codex.

 ZebioLizard2 wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:

 SoloFalcon1138 wrote:
Peolle whine about Mat Wadd for lack of anything intelligent to complain about.

Or...get this... it could be that there are in fact legitimate issues with his work.

The hate didn't come from nowhere

Except he's gotten hate every since it became popular to hate on him. Despite the other two providing poor, if not just as bad examples as he could.

Other authors aren't as consistent about it. Kelly had some awful fluff and rules with Space Wolves, but otherwise hasn't gotten particularly derpy. Cruddace is bad at rules but his fluff, while not particularly inspired, doesn't read like bad internet fanfic either. Not only are Ward's balances often off, his rules are really very gimmicky, and he's rather consistent in his work with gimmicky rules and bad fluff, other's have their moments but not all the time.

 SoloFalcon1138 wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:

 SoloFalcon1138 wrote:
Peolle whine about Mat Wadd for lack of anything intelligent to complain about.

Or...get this... it could be that there are in fact legitimate issues with his work.

The hate didn't come from nowhere

it's certainly rare from the players of his codexes...

When you're getting a slew of new ridiculous toys, there's probably a reason. That said, you will hear complaints about the fluff even from players of Ward books, I know I have certainly heard and read them with not uncommon regularity.

Other authors aren't as consistent about it. Kelly had some awful fluff and rules with Space Wolves, but otherwise hasn't gotten particularly derpy.

You havn't played 4th edition Eldar Skimmerspam armies then have you? Back when they were the GK of the 4th edition. Not to mention his White Dwarf update to Chaos Codex with some completely asinine rules.

Cruddace is bad at rules but his fluff, while not particularly inspired, doesn't read like bad internet fanfic either. Not only are Ward's balances often off, his rules are really very gimmicky, and he's rather consistent in his work with gimmicky rules and bad fluff, other's have their moments but not all the time.

Cruddace only has rules, he has never been consistant in ANY sort of balance, worse then ward. Either they are top tier (IG) or low tier (SoB, Tyranids). His rules could be called quite gimmicky as well, considering what he turned Acts of faith into, and how he butchered Tyranids link to each other. Not to mention his wargear costs are bar none the worst, considering SoB still have to live with 20 point H.flamers, and tyranids with some gack wargear costs on their MC's and even basic troops.

Considering you can honestly only say Ward has it all the time. Because he's had mid tier dex's, (BA, SM), while Cruddace can't even call one to his name that is even halfway balanced with any sort of internal or external consistency.

 SoloFalcon1138 wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:

 SoloFalcon1138 wrote:
Peolle whine about Mat Wadd for lack of anything intelligent to complain about.

Or...get this... it could be that there are in fact legitimate issues with his work.

The hate didn't come from nowhere

it's certainly rare from the players of his codexes...

The people benefiting from his rules aren't complaining about them? My word!

 ZebioLizard2 wrote:

Other authors aren't as consistent about it. Kelly had some awful fluff and rules with Space Wolves, but otherwise hasn't gotten particularly derpy.

You havn't played 4th edition Eldar Skimmerspam armies then have you? Back when they were the GK of the 4th edition.

I very much have and very much remember, but Kelly's book wasn't too different in terms of skimmer capability from what came before it, the vehicles and wargear didn't really change from the older books, and in large part was a symptom of the core rules for skimmers of the time. Could he have done better? Yes, but the 4E skimmer rules were also stupid.

Not to mention his White Dwarf update to Chaos Codex with some completely asinine rules.

Which one would that be? I honestly don't remember

Cruddace only has rules, he has never been consistant in ANY sort of balance, worse then ward. Either they are top tier (IG) or low tier (SoB, Tyranids). His rules could be called quite gimmicky as well, considering what he turned Acts of faith into, and how he butchered Tyranids link to each other. Not to mention his wargear costs are bar none the worst, considering SoB still have to live with 20 point H.flamers, and tyranids with some gack wargear costs on their MC's and even basic troops.

When it comes to the SoB list, I have a hard time counting that one as every WD list has basically been awful no matter who wrote it be it SoB, BA's, Warriors of Chaos, etc. GW just seems to have no interest in making those lists playable. Had Ward wrtitten it, I'd give him a pass on it too.

Now, I never said Cruddace was perfect by any means, and his internal balance is awful, but his rules rarely are gimmicky in the way Ward's are. You don't have the army-wide abilities for what amounts to a 20 or 30pt points premium on a single HQ or silly things like the Stormlord's "I can hit anything anywhere and it doesn't matter if I'm dead or not, it just happens!" or Purifiers "all I need is one dude to get in contact with your ork mob and half of them die!".

Considering you can honestly only say Ward has it all the time. Because he's had mid tier dex's, (BA, SM), while Cruddace can't even call one to his name that is even halfway balanced with any sort of internal or external consistency.

BA are only mid tier now because of the changes in the core ruleset, they certainly weren't mid-tier last edition and had a lot of ridiculous stuff going on. SM's only got outdone because following SM books were "SM's+1", for a while it was All Vulkan, All Thunderhammer Termi's, All the Time. After the SM book came out I literally did not play against an SM army that did not include Vulkan basically up until Space Wolves came out a year later.

 Vaktathi wrote:
When it comes to the SoB list, I have a hard time counting that one as every WD list has basically been awful no matter who wrote it be it SoB, BA's, Warriors of Chaos, etc. GW just seems to have no interest in making those lists playable. Had Ward wrtitten it, I'd give him a pass on it too.

Actually, the best codex for SOB was the 3rd edition WD SOB codex which was collected in Chapter Approved 2001. Most flavorful, best faith acts, TWO troops choices. It was crazy fun and good.

It's easy to score cheap internet points by doing what others do, and saying how much you like the things that other people like. So people get all warm and fuzzy by joining in the Mat-Ward-hate circle-jerk.

Oh, they come up with all sorts of reasons, but those reasons always apply equally to every other piece of background lore and every other codex writer. The only reason the Mat Ward hate is so visible is because it's attained such momentum. By now, anyone defending him is literally hitler and everyone who rabidly froths at the mouth about how terrible he is, and how his writing gave them cancer, gets a round of internet high-fives and pats on the back.

The whole thing really grinds my gears.

The level of vitriol, the personal attacks and the pure hatred directed towards him are entirely embarrassing.

 Kaldor wrote:
literally hitler

I lol'd right before I exalted your post.

 pretre wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:
When it comes to the SoB list, I have a hard time counting that one as every WD list has basically been awful no matter who wrote it be it SoB, BA's, Warriors of Chaos, etc. GW just seems to have no interest in making those lists playable. Had Ward wrtitten it, I'd give him a pass on it too.

Actually, the best codex for SOB was the 3rd edition WD SOB codex which was collected in Chapter Approved 2001. Most flavorful, best faith acts, TWO troops choices. It was crazy fun and good.

WD was a lot different then as well in early/mid 3rd edition, the tail end of 3rd/beginning of 4th was when it went to total pot and in the last 8 or 9 years they just haven't particularly cared too much.

 Kaldor wrote:
It's easy to score cheap internet points by doing what others do, and saying how much you like the things that other people like. So people get all warm and fuzzy by joining in the Mat-Ward-hate circle-jerk.

Oh, they come up with all sorts of reasons, but those reasons always apply equally to every other piece of background lore and every other codex writer. The only reason the Mat Ward hate is so visible is because it's attained such momentum. By now, anyone defending him is literally hitler and everyone who rabidly froths at the mouth about how terrible he is, and how his writing gave them cancer, gets a round of internet high-fives and pats on the back.

The whole thing really grinds my gears.

The level of vitriol, the personal attacks and the pure hatred directed towards him are entirely embarrassing.

Perhaps there's a reason it's gotten to the level it has? People have complained about codex authors before, virulently even. It's difficult to believe it's simple inertia here. Kelly, Johnson, Thorpe, Cavatore, etc never got as much hate even when botching things badly (e.g. the 4E CSM book).

No, simply ascribing it to bandwagon behavior is...disingenuous.

 Kaldor wrote:
It's easy to score cheap internet points by doing what others do, and saying how much you like the things that other people like. So people get all warm and fuzzy by joining in the Mat-Ward-hate circle-jerk.

Oh, they come up with all sorts of reasons, but those reasons always apply equally to every other piece of background lore and every other codex writer. The only reason the Mat Ward hate is so visible is because it's attained such momentum. By now, anyone defending him is literally hitler and everyone who rabidly froths at the mouth about how terrible he is, and how his writing gave them cancer, gets a round of internet high-fives and pats on the back.

The whole thing really grinds my gears.

The level of vitriol, the personal attacks and the pure hatred directed towards him are entirely embarrassing.

And yet, by attacking the arguers, aren't you dropping yourself down to the same level?

This is why we're never going to have an actual debate about this, because the bandwagon and the counter culture it spawned will attack each other at any moment, drowning any legitiment point with "Your opinion is bad and you should feel bad for having it"

Because fluff-wise he is terrible, while your mileage might vary concerning his crunch, his fluff is nigh-universally considered a pile of manure (The Necron codex occasionally gets an exception to this), except by certain individuals.

Considering Necrons are his most recent creation, it may mark a gradual improvement in his fluff.

I'm still not totally sold on a complete rewrite of a faction, and it's a trifle too egyptian for me, but it isn't a pile of manure and bad fanfiction like Grey Knights, Blood Angels and Ultramarines.

The only redeeming parts of the fluff in those codexes are what was kept from previous authors and established lore that he simply couldn't overturn.

In fact, I'd say the Marine codex's focus on the UM is probably my biggest complaint, but then that was also his first codex, so the trend is improvement, even if it is slower than I'd like, and will not expunge the mistakes which preceded it.

I havent seen the new necrons codex, but i can speak for grey knights. the units, they can be over powered and when done right (wrong?) they can be unbeatable. Game comes to mind shortly after i picked up the new codex i used 5 paladins to wipe out 500+ points of chaos in a very short period of time. but that's forgivable. what isnt is what he did in their fluff. the most pure warriors in the galaxy butchered some SoB and basically bathed in their blood to become more pure. i could get past the perfect people and i could get past the op, but contradicting the fluff on the most basic level. It just aint right

Which brings up a possible compromise, since he obviously brings in huge sales in his new armies, and some of the units that come in are pretty cool i say, keep him for the rules but get someone else for the fluff. you know solid compromise get good fluff and maybe not the best rules but still good fluff

gh05tdemon wrote:
the most pure warriors in the galaxy butchered some SoB and basically bathed in their blood to become more pure

Don't even go there.

Re: Kelly & 4th edition Eldar.
Most people don't know this, but the 4th ed Eldar codex was completely re-writen on Phil while he was on sabatical for 3 months. He was actually quite shocked and not too pleased that this had happened, but it was Jervis' call and it was ment to shift all codicies into the short-lived and god-awful Eldar-CSM-DA style set-up. Limited options, 0 wargear and overall tastesless, barebones armylists.
As for Skimmers being OP, that's hardly Kelly's fault, considering he couldn't alter the core rules which were the main problem. Just like how all Razorbacks & Chimeras were OP in 5th, due to how forgiving the glancing hits table was combined with a super cheap pts cost that allowed over-saturation in every Imperial force.



As for Ward...

He sucks because he only killed an entire edition of Fantasy with that disgusting pile of fecal matter, Chaos Daemons.
That book was so brokenly over-powered a developmentally challenged 6 year old could pilot the army while blindfolded.

Yes, VC's had the gimmick of a single Deathstar unit and could play the very boring pts denial game, and Dark Elves had the 'unkillable Dreadlord', double Hydras & Shadestar, but even those got b slapped and raped through eye by a competitive Daemons list.

Then he wrote 8th edition which was ment to nerf Daemons and make them sane... Except, the rules only brought them (almost) down to the level of everyone else, but Undead got so hienously screwed over GW had to rush the Tomb King & VC books to the front of the re-writes pile!
Oh, and the rulebook Magic Lores he wrote break the game... Lore of Shadows & Life are 'I-win' buttons, while Death isn't far behind. (it's lost some due to the outright nerfing of the Power Scroll)


On the 40k front, he gave Codex: 'Marines +1' with Blood Angels. Mephiston, Blendernaughts, adding Meltaguns to TROOP Assault Squads AND 'free' asscan/las+plas turrets to their Razorbacks... Army-wide FnP + Furious Charge, Deep Striking land raider silliness...
BA's weren't much fun to fight in 5th, and the army left almost all Vanilla players feeling kicked in the teeth just because they didn't paint their marines red. The only reason to even stick with Codex Marines once BA's hit was because you played; a) A Vulkan list. b) A biker list. c) A Pedro/Sternguard list. Everything else BA's did better and cheaper.

Grey Knights became to 5th edition what Daemons of Chaos were to 7th edition. Basically, GK's in 5th had a hard-counter to everything, and combating their three main playstyles, (Draigowing, Crowewing, Hencemen spam), required a very, very different type of list.
Thus, non-GK players had pretty much no hope of building a TAC list because at least one of the three main archetypes of the GK powerlists would easily trash you. Meanwhile, GK's had easy answers to everything under the sun.

And us poor Daemon players still can't even deploy against GK's due to how obsurdly broken Warp Quake is. A 10 man Strike Squad can pretty much auto-win if they go first against any Daemon army if you're smart about it...

Too late.

He did

Wow. Exaggeration.

We hate Matt Ward for many reasons, he is a fairly easy target.

I personally hate him because he took the Grey Knights, which I started back in 3e when we had all metal models and required 50pt Justicars, and made them into the chosen punching bag for everyone to gripe about. I am very happy with some of the rules changes. I play Grey Knights in a friendly manner, I do not use Special Characters, I have one Paladin squad and no Purifiers, yet people I have never met and never played decide I'm a fanboyish bandwagon-jumping munchkin from the start just based on the name of my army.

And that's before going into the absurdities of his fluff. Matt Ward is welcome to write his characters however he wants, but when he starts telling us that we all must adore his characters as the paramount examples of all we should be, that is where things start to go wrong. It is far from where they stop.

I could go on for days, but I've covered the important parts and anyone who's paying attention to this post would get fairly bored, so I'll stop here.

So you hate Matt ward because of the action of other people who hate Matt ward? Good times.

 pretre wrote:
So you hate Matt ward because of the action of other people who hate Matt ward? Good times.

Not exactly. He built a list and fluff that attracted obnoxious munchkins to my army, thereby harming my credibility as a gamer, and he writes really, really bad fluff. The actions of the other people are rational responses to Matt Ward's sins, which put him at the root cause.

Well, Because we need a focus for our anger, Matt ward isnt that bad, he is just the focus for ALL our hatred at GW. He is our Meg.

 pretre wrote:
Wow. Exaggeration.

Who, me?

 AnomanderRake wrote:
We hate Matt Ward for many reasons, he is a fairly easy target.

I personally hate him because he took the Grey Knights, which I started back in 3e when we had all metal models and required 50pt Justicars, and made them into the chosen punching bag for everyone to gripe about. I am very happy with some of the rules changes. I play Grey Knights in a friendly manner, I do not use Special Characters, I have one Paladin squad and no Purifiers, yet people I have never met and never played decide I'm a fanboyish bandwagon-jumping munchkin from the start just based on the name of my army.

And that's before going into the absurdities of his fluff. Matt Ward is welcome to write his characters however he wants, but when he starts telling us that we all must adore his characters as the paramount examples of all we should be, that is where things start to go wrong. It is far from where they stop.

I could go on for days, but I've covered the important parts and anyone who's paying attention to this post would get fairly bored, so I'll stop here.

I started with the demonhunters codex, first army i ever touched, and honestly my first introduction to 40k. it was like he punched my love of them in the gonads. i still love grey knights, just wish this codex never happened. this isnt fanboy hate. i would hate him even if they rest of the world loved him. he made grey knights horrible

(yes i realize they werent the friendliest army before and the anti demon rules where kinda cheese but still)

If they'd just keep him the feth away from the lore and ICs, I wouldn't have a problem with him. Besides, if you're playing with friends, how hard is to just avoid the one or two cheese units per army, and enjoy what are otherwise enjoyable codexes? I've got a mate who runs a great oldschool Daemonhunters list using the Grey Knights codex; lots of henchmen, specialist troops, and usually only a single unit of standard termies. We've got a bunch of 'Cron players, and the most croissants I've ever seen on the table is 3, which is hardly game-breaking.

Yeah, but that is level-headed thinking doesn't let anyone complain about the OP cheese, lol.

I in fact love the Eldar codex other than it has several units that are over-costed (like Shining Spears). My Eldar army was always incapable of Skimmerspam, too, with only two possible grav tanks and one Vyper.

I'm going to start my own phil kelly hate band wagon every time he is rumoured to start a new book, see how far we can get that train going (sarcasm over)

But in all seriousness, long fang spam has screwed me over way more than any of the ward dexs, and vendetta spam.

I agree with what kaldor had to say, and he summed it up nicely.

Fluff you can change, rules you cant. If you look at all his codexs in a vacuum, they are all pretty much balanced against each other, maybe he should write every codex from now on, just get someone else to write the fluff, and we would have a balanced game

It's not just the "facts" of the fluff (which, can be pretty awful as well), but the way he writes it. It reads badly, like it was written by an over-excited 12 year old with an internet connection. Kelly had this issue with Space Wolves as well and as a result that book has also gotten a lot of it's fair criticism.

Notice however, for all the complaints about other books, people don't bitch about the Black Templars fluff, or the Imperial Guard fluff, or the Dark Eldar fluff (aside from a couple things about Vect), Ork fluff, Chaos Daemon fluff, Eldar fluff, etc.

This doesn't come from nowhere. Ward's writing style is more akin to bad internet fanfic than anything else, and that's why he (and Kelly with SW's) get a lot of flak for it.

That and in some places he has gone over the line even for 40k, past the point of "hey this is cool" and into "ok, now this is starting to read like something I'd see on 4chan"


Again, lets face it, the hate didn't come from nowhere, and it's not like others writers haven't gotten bad reactions before either. Trying to merely chalk it up to bandwagon behavior and the like is being disingenuous.

It's also hard to say all his books are balanced against each other, compare C:SM to C:GK and you'll see what I mean.

Ok, well vanilla marines is an old book, but Necrons, grey knights, blood angels are all relatively balanced.

But again, this is a sci-fi game with pretty much anything goes, so the fluff is expected to be like that. I dont want to sound like a mat ward fan boy, becasue I'm not, and I agree that some of his work is not ver good. I just feel that all the writers are as bad as each other, and he is just the scapegoat.

 GimbleMuggernaught wrote:

The people benefiting from his rules aren't complaining about them? My word!

That's a bit unfair. Players are often reluctant to exploit obviously OP rules and stats. I have a friend who simply didn't play GK in 5th because they were that OP. Similarly I played a couple of games with the new Flamer units and quickly got bored because they're so obviously overpowered.

 Vaktathi wrote:
Trying to merely chalk it up to bandwagon behavior and the like is being disingenuous.

Insisting that it's deserved and merit based is more so.

The background he writes is no worse than anyone else in the studio.

I do have an honest question and i do hope someone can answer it for me, why doesn't Black library authors do the fluff? they are actual authors not game makers. they are used to putting together a coherent story. so why not have those guys make up like the rules and stuff and have the authors make the fluff? The op units can be avoided and if everyone is op it makes it kinda interesting, in my opinion at least. (i haven't played against enough of a variety to say that its all balanced so),

To be realistic, the Black Library fluff often isn't much better than the GW stuff, lol.

Because 98% of what they write is IOM bolter-porn

The books in which any other faction looks competent are few and far between,

 Kaldor wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:
Trying to merely chalk it up to bandwagon behavior and the like is being disingenuous.

Insisting that it's deserved and merit based is more so.

How so? Simply stating so doesn't make it so. There's no evidence of a bandwagon effect and we have plenty of feedback that shows people don't like his works. The reaction speaks for itself. Plenty of authors have gotten bad rap from players, simply there's no evidence that simple bandwagon effect (which wears off quickly usually, by definition) is at work here. Yet release after release, people find the same things in each of his books that irk people. While other authors make the same mistakes, they don't do it every single time, and thus don't have the consistent level of vitriol directed at them.

It's not like one day everyone decided "Hey, lets hate on this Mat Ward guy forever!". No, he has consistently and repeatedly produced works that people take exception to.

The background he writes is no worse than anyone else in the studio.

Very obviously it is, because nobody else gets the some reaction on a consistent basis. Simply stating he doesn't write any worse than anyone else so doesn't make it so, and given consistent negative response, we have evidence that, yes, Mat Ward does in fact write background worse than others in the studio.


Looking at it, we have a consistent reaction based on a string of releases that all have the same features that generate the same ire amongst players. Thus we get consistent irritation. Other authors do this once in a while or do different things, and thus get different reactions.


So yeah, the "bandwagon" train has little room to stand on. That doesn't just sustain itself or appear from nowhere, there's a very real reason for it.

gh05tdemon wrote:
I do have an honest question and i do hope someone can answer it for me, why doesn't Black library authors do the fluff? they are actual authors not game makers. they are used to putting together a coherent story. so why not have those guys make up like the rules and stuff and have the authors make the fluff? The op units can be avoided and if everyone is op it makes it kinda interesting, in my opinion at least. (i haven't played against enough of a variety to say that its all balanced so),

They have had BL dudes writ fluff and sometimes game rules. Gav Thorpe for example did both.

 Kaldor wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:
Trying to merely chalk it up to bandwagon behavior and the like is being disingenuous.

Insisting that it's deserved and merit based is more so.

The background he writes is no worse than anyone else in the studio.

The funny part about the Mar Ward hate is that he often gets hated for fluff he didn't even write. Just stuff that already existed which he put into the Codex for continuity's sake.


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 Ascalam wrote:
Because 98% of what they write is IOM bolter-porn

The books in which any other faction looks competent are few and far between,

40K is about the humans. I hate to break it to you.

The other armies only exist in order to give the Space Marines something to shoot at. It's always been that way, pretty much all the way back to Rogue Trader. /shrug


And the reason why the books focus on humans, is that we, the readers, are humans. So the characters are written so that readers can identify with them to whatever degree. Plus, the writers are all humans too, so they know, more or less, how humans behave.

As opposed to functionally immortal magical space people. Or functionally immortal, soul eating space fetishists. Or biomechanical space termites. Or warmongering sentient space fungus obsessed with constantly recreating the Mad Max movies. Or Anime Mecha wearing Space Utilitarians (well, they might be easy. Read Brave New World, watch anime, write book, lol).

didnt know that vak, well that gav thorpe did game rules. but ya atleast make sure that new fluff matches up with old fluff. lookin at you mr SoB for a hat.

 Veteran Sergeant wrote:

 Kaldor wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:
Trying to merely chalk it up to bandwagon behavior and the like is being disingenuous.

Insisting that it's deserved and merit based is more so.

The background he writes is no worse than anyone else in the studio.

The funny part about the Mar Ward hate is that he often gets hated for fluff he didn't even write. Just stuff that already existed which he put into the Codex for continuity's sake.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Ascalam wrote:
Because 98% of what they write is IOM bolter-porn

The books in which any other faction looks competent are few and far between,

40K is about the humans. I hate to break it to you.

The other armies only exist in order to give the Space Marines something to shoot at. It's always been that way, pretty much all the way back to Rogue Trader. /shrug


And the reason why the books focus on humans, is that we, the readers, are humans. So the characters are written so that readers can identify with them to whatever degree. Plus, the writers are all humans too, so they know, more or less, how humans behave.

As opposed to functionally immortal magical space people. Or functionally immortal, soul eating space fetishists. Or biomechanical space termites. Or warmongering sentient space fungus obsessed with constantly recreating the Mad Max movies. Or Anime Mecha wearing Space Utilitarians (well, they might be easy. Read Brave New World, watch anime, write book, lol).

There was the game from the Tau perspective: Fire Warrior.
If you ask me, Warhammer is about a receeding empire, and the story will occasionally take different looks into the views of other races.

 Testify wrote:

 GimbleMuggernaught wrote:

The people benefiting from his rules aren't complaining about them? My word!

That's a bit unfair. Players are often reluctant to exploit obviously OP rules and stats. I have a friend who simply didn't play GK in 5th because they were that OP. Similarly I played a couple of games with the new Flamer units and quickly got bored because they're so obviously overpowered.

wow... they're not? I played two GK armies at a tournament the day 6e was released and both were power net-builds...

 Vaktathi wrote:

 Kaldor wrote:

The background he writes is no worse than anyone else in the studio.

Very obviously it is, because nobody else gets the some reaction on a consistent basis.

I posit that this is the result of bandwagoning, not objective evaluation of his work.

 Kaldor wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:

 Kaldor wrote:

The background he writes is no worse than anyone else in the studio.

Very obviously it is, because nobody else gets the some reaction on a consistent basis.

I posit that this is the result of bandwagoning, not objective evaluation of his work.

Agreed. There was no gnashing of teeth when Cruddace made more unique Tyranids... also its the wonder power of the internets: mindless screaming and crying is easier when effectively anonymous...

 SoloFalcon1138 wrote:
Agreed. There was no gnashing of teeth when Cruddace made more unique Tyranids

Yes there was.


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 Veteran Sergeant wrote:
The funny part about the Mar Ward hate is that he often gets hated for fluff he didn't even write. Just stuff that already existed which he put into the Codex for continuity's sake.

This is true. I have seen many people whine and bitch about Tigurius making psychic contact with the Hive Mind and gak, when that fluff was present at least an edition prior, in McNeill's Spehss Mehreen codex. As an example.

40K is about the humans. I hate to break it to you.

The other armies only exist in order to give the Space Marines something to shoot at. It's always been that way, pretty much all the way back to Rogue Trader. /shrug

And the reason why the books focus on humans, is that we, the readers, are humans. So the characters are written so that readers can identify with them to whatever degree. Plus, the writers are all humans too, so they know, more or less, how humans behave.

As opposed to functionally immortal magical space people. Or functionally immortal, soul eating space fetishists. Or biomechanical space termites. Or warmongering sentient space fungus obsessed with constantly recreating the Mad Max movies. Or Anime Mecha wearing Space Utilitarians (well, they might be easy. Read Brave New World, watch anime, write book, lol).

But 40k is ultimately about the inevitable doom of mankind, how the Imperium is slowly dwindling and fighting a losing war for survival, which can come across as a bit of an artificial theme when they win all but like 2% of their battles.

The way i'm seeing this as going is A) some people are spouting what they hear. B) people defending him and pointing out that though not the best he isn't the worst. C) People bringing up points about him that they don't like but also admitting that things could be much much worse (lets face it they could be).

Kaldor your right a lot of the authors are about as bad as him and he is just unlucky enough to catch the hate.

so guys i propose we do look at this the way kaldor brought up, objectively. no emotions nothing lets figure out where he is good and where he could use improvement. so if this idea catches on we can make a list of this. anyone willing to agree?

(p.s. by objective i do think we should look at other codex's and other writers not just his.)

 Kaldor wrote:
I posit that this is the result of bandwagoning, not objective evaluation of his work.

Or it could just be bad fluff.

 Void__Dragon wrote:

 Kaldor wrote:
I posit that this is the result of bandwagoning, not objective evaluation of his work.

Or it could just be bad fluff.

I'm not going to deny he is probably the worst with the fluff (Not counting necrons, they already had horrible fluff and the new stuff is far more tolerable) , but not the worst when it comes to rule making. (Even if he badly needs an editor for some of the books wording)

Void__Dragon wrote:But 40k is ultimately about the inevitable doom of mankind, how the Imperium is slowly dwindling and fighting a losing war for survival, which can come across as a bit of an artificial theme when they win all but like 2% of their battles.

Eventually, all of those two percents add up.

That's why the decline is slow.

 ZebioLizard2 wrote:
I'm not going to deny he is probably the worst with the fluff (Not counting necrons, they already had horrible fluff and the new stuff is far more tolerable) , but not the worst when it comes to rule making. (Even if he badly needs an editor for some of the books wording)

I'd frankly disagree on the notion that Codex: Emocrons had better fluff than Codex: Necrons, but hey.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Veteran Sergeant wrote:
Eventually, all of those two percents add up.

That's why the decline is slow.

But see, they don't just win the majority of their defensive actions, they win the majority of their offensive/crusading actions as well.

Kaldor wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:

 Kaldor wrote:

The background he writes is no worse than anyone else in the studio.

Very obviously it is, because nobody else gets the some reaction on a consistent basis.

I posit that this is the result of bandwagoning, not objective evaluation of his work.

And again, based on what, simply re-iterating that stance doesn't add to anything here. We've had other authors receive lots of criticism before and outright hatred in some quarters, that often has lasted for some time, and yet...

SoloFalcon1138 wrote:

Agreed. There was no gnashing of teeth when Cruddace made more unique Tyranids... also its the wonder power of the internets: mindless screaming and crying is easier when effectively anonymous...

There was quite a bit of problems with Cruddace's work, but his work was written sufficiently such that these things weren't seen as unstoppable, do-no-wrong demigods. The Doom of Malantai was a purpose-built psychic WMD but isn't portrayed to be anything particularly derpy and had believable explanations around it's feats, the Swarmlord was described as a stress induced response to extreme resistance and has been shown to fail and be killed, etc. It's the manner in which these things are written an introduced, not simply that they exist.


You can't just handwave "bandwagon" and discount it.

Kaldor out of curiosity when did you start playing grey knights? not going to attack you if you say 5th just curious.

Most people tend to have a problem with the Swarmlord's alleged independence from the Hive Mind, as well as the alleged sentience among the Hive Tyrants in general.

Also occasionally Maugan Ra, lol.

 Kaldor wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:
Trying to merely chalk it up to bandwagon behavior and the like is being disingenuous.

Insisting that it's deserved and merit based is more so.

The background he writes is no worse than anyone else in the studio.

The GK fluff/Background is possibly the worst I have ever read. I think that others tend to agree, while I like the rules and how the army plays, the fluff is quite terrible. Overall I give it a C- .

Warhammer Fantasy: Daemons. That's pretty much all I need to say.

If you need more on that subject, the 7th edition Daemon book single-handedly broke 7th edition and required 8th edition on its own. When asked about its power, Ward just stated that they're daemons-they deserve to be broken. That's a big reason people hate him-his douchebag "I don't care what anyone thinks" attitude.

Mostly unrelated to the current set of data points on the issue, but I'll throw a few chips down on this table. I could never get used to the way the current SM and necron codexes were laid out. Surfing through 100 pages to gather together the rules for one freaking unit is getting annoying. Look here for the stat line and load out, then here for explanation of the special rules, then here for a different special rule, then here for some of the gear, then back there for other gear. Then I pause and look around to make sure I'm still in Kanssas. So formatting is my beef. Though there really is no excuse for necrons. AKA the army that starts at one cost and ends up with 10~20% more points by the end of the game. Its weird when you play 'points killed' as a house rule and your tally says you killed 450pts in a 650pt game, and he still has a 350pts on the board. (weird games, dont ask.)

Mind you, I've been made to understand that GW makes no attempt to balance the game so that point is moot. Then, what in the name of is going on with the 40k universe anyway? NONE of the fluff ever makes any sense so why care as long as its 'cool' to someone right? Beer and pretzels anyone?

I thought up a neat solution though. GW continues to make products as they do now. But every year they release a 'Master' edition that is a still shot of the current game where everything is rewritten to a balanced state, and a compendium of buildable 'maps' that are balanced are released. It will never happen but the idea was entertaining for a while. maybe not explained well.

jdjamesdean@mail.com wrote:
The GK fluff/Background is possibly the worst I have ever read. I think that others tend to agree, while I like the rules and how the army plays, the fluff is quite terrible. Overall I give it a C- .

It's certainly no worse than any other codex out there.

 Kaldor wrote:

jdjamesdean@mail.com wrote:
The GK fluff/Background is possibly the worst I have ever read. I think that others tend to agree, while I like the rules and how the army plays, the fluff is quite terrible. Overall I give it a C- .

It's certainly no worse than any other codex out there.

It really is though. Perhaps you like it, fine, it's very subjective, but that book got a lot of hate for it's background for a reason, and not just because Mat Ward wrote it. It's reads like bad internet fanfiction to many and its characters and events do some things that break the suspension of disbelief even for 40k for many more.

Again, the hate didn't come from nowhere and I'd be more than comfortable putting cash down on the wager that most people do consider it noticeably worse than other codex books. It's certainly provoked more negative controversy than any other Codex has between the Tide of Blood thing, its writing style, Draigo, etc, and blaming that all on a bandwagon won't explain it away.

Ward on any technical level is a terrible writer, even by codex standards.

Kelly can release some goofball gak like Space Wolves, but also good fluff like that of the Dark Eldar, and his writing is just so much less awkward to read than Ward's. Ward's writing style is pretty bad.

Other than a few lines in Nids that some might take issue to, Cruddace's fluff isn't particularly bad, it's just kind of barren and rife with mediocrity.

Ward creates actively offensive fluff, and the GK codex in particular from any objective standpoint is a pile of Bloodthirster dung.

 Vaktathi wrote:
it's very subjective

Exactly. I'd never argue that people don't like it. But that doesn't make it objectively bad or even objectively worse than the other codexes.

but that book got a lot of hate for it's background for a reason

He writes like a teenager, it's hard to read without being ashamed for him. He also pushes 40k into blatant in your face fantasy herohammer in space direction.

Well, I'm not complaining about Ward, fluff aside.
The Necron codex is really nice. All units are useful in some way, even in a competitive setting.
I'm more complaining about other codex writers like Kelly. His CSM codex contains units or upgrades that are not well thought.

Plumbumbarum wrote:
. He also pushes 40k into blatant in your face fantasy herohammer in space direction.

To it's origins then.

 thenoobbomb wrote:

Plumbumbarum wrote:
. He also pushes 40k into blatant in your face fantasy herohammer in space direction.

To it's origins then.

Not really, Rogue Trader was not some GW fantasy in space, it was a massive multiple way ripoff from many sources, mainly from 2000AD comics like Gothic Empire (fantasy), Rogue Trooper (SF), ABC warriors (SF) , Judge Dredd (SF) also Moorcock obviously (fantasy) then they added bits from Dune, Rambo, Lovecraft, Star Wars, Conan, fantasy, Star Trek and later Aliens, Predator, Terminator, B class SF movies etc. Fantasy for sure wasn't the biggest trope there, that Emperor is Conan in spaace and you have orks and elves doesn't mean you have to mold it into a blatant cosmic equivalent of WHFB, it draws from so many sources that it can go in many directions. As for herohammer, looking at RT artwork it was mostly dystopian not heroic.

What Bombastic Mat does is bringing back the ridiculous in a bad way parts from RT like orangutans and furry cat people then mix it with herohammer boyhood fantasy stories. He has it all wrong.

 Kaldor wrote:

jdjamesdean@mail.com wrote:
The GK fluff/Background is possibly the worst I have ever read. I think that others tend to agree, while I like the rules and how the army plays, the fluff is quite terrible. Overall I give it a C- .

It's certainly no worse than any other codex out there.

I agree with you Kaldor, to a point, the actual direction he takes the background I am fine with, but I think his execution is flawed, take the whole Mortarion thing for example, it reads as if Draigo just kinda whistled his way up to Mortrarion and did a little scribble on his heart.
Is this what actually happened? Probably not, perhaps if he used a little prose to set the scene of the battle it would have turned much better, in my opinion anyway.

The bloodtide incident is similar in its poor execution, he tells us what the bloodtide did, but not how it did it/what it was, which makes people who haven't read the Hunt for Voldorius/been on lexicanum automatically assume its some warp based phenomenon when it is in fact a relic from the dark age of technology.

 Krellnus wrote:

 Kaldor wrote:

jdjamesdean@mail.com wrote:
The GK fluff/Background is possibly the worst I have ever read. I think that others tend to agree, while I like the rules and how the army plays, the fluff is quite terrible. Overall I give it a C- .

It's certainly no worse than any other codex out there.

I agree with you Kaldor, to a point, the actual direction he takes the background I am fine with, but I think his execution is flawed, take the whole Mortarion thing for example, it reads as if Draigo just kinda whistled his way up to Mortrarion and did a little scribble on his heart.
Is this what actually happened? Probably not, perhaps if he used a little prose to set the scene of the battle it would have turned much better, in my opinion anyway.

The bloodtide incident is similar in its poor execution, he tells us what the bloodtide did, but not how it did it/what it was, which makes people who haven't read the Hunt for Voldorius/been on lexicanum automatically assume its some warp based phenomenon when it is in fact a relic from the dark age of technology.

yes it is poorly executed. very poorly to me. the whole point of the grey knights is doing what no others could do. i get that, i go back to the SoB story. Grey knights are the most pure warriors in the galaxy. They dont need the blood of the most pure nor can they be corrupted. So that leaves very few reasons for it. There was a justicar with a bone to pick with the sisters, or matt ward doesnt understand they grey knights.

Kaldor wrote:

Exactly. I'd never argue that people don't like it. But that doesn't make it objectively bad or even objectively worse than the other codexes.

If we're going that route neither is joe-neckbeards internet fanfic codex...

And that reason is (largely) the bandwagon. In my experience, most of the haters haven't even read the parts they hate, let alone conducted an objective analysis or comparison.

You keep blaming it on the bandwagon, yet we've never seen such with other authors despite getting as much negative feedback at times.

The key there is that they don't do such things consistently. Phil Kelly did Eldar, which became a metagame nightmare, but his fluff was ok. Orks then came out and everybody loved that book by and large. Then Space Wolves which was as bad as any Ward book and he's been thrashed for it, and then Dark Eldar which much like the Ork book was pretty universally liked, and finally CSM's which has been largely a non-event. A very mixed history.

Ward's work between Space Marines, Blood Angels, Grey Knights and Necrons has generated consistent negative feedback on the same 3 or 4 points every time. Fluff that reads like internet fanfic, fluff that breaks even 40k's suspension of disbelief, gimmicky rules and over the top army mechanics. When it comes to his Fantasy stuff, he did Wood Elves which for a while were very powerful and gimmicky and then stopped working very soon after a new edition, and then he did Daemons which *broke* an entire edition.

If it appears there's a bandwagon, it's because Ward keeps releasing material with the exact same issues, bad fluff, gimmicky and over the top rules, and thus keeps feeding the fire.

gh05tdemon wrote:
i go back to the SoB story. Grey knights are the most pure warriors in the galaxy. They dont need the blood of the most pure nor can they be corrupted. So that leaves very few reasons for it. There was a justicar with a bone to pick with the sisters, or matt ward doesnt understand they grey knights.

See, it's stuff like this that proves the bandwagon theory. Have you even read the codex, gho5tdemon? Because it sure doesn't sound like it.

 Kaldor wrote:

gh05tdemon wrote:
i go back to the SoB story. Grey knights are the most pure warriors in the galaxy. They dont need the blood of the most pure nor can they be corrupted. So that leaves very few reasons for it. There was a justicar with a bone to pick with the sisters, or matt ward doesnt understand they grey knights.

See, it's stuff like this that proves the bandwagon theory. Have you even read the codex, gho5tdemon? Because it sure doesn't sound like it.

I'd be curious to hear a justification, as I have read the story and it made me go O.O and put down the codex.

 Kaldor wrote:

gh05tdemon wrote:
i go back to the SoB story. Grey knights are the most pure warriors in the galaxy. They dont need the blood of the most pure nor can they be corrupted. So that leaves very few reasons for it. There was a justicar with a bone to pick with the sisters, or matt ward doesnt understand they grey knights.

See, it's stuff like this that proves the bandwagon theory. Have you even read the codex, gho5tdemon? Because it sure doesn't sound like it.

I have read it, I've got the book not 5 feet from me, and I still think it's a stupid, forced story.

 Evertras wrote:

 Kaldor wrote:

gh05tdemon wrote:
i go back to the SoB story. Grey knights are the most pure warriors in the galaxy. They dont need the blood of the most pure nor can they be corrupted. So that leaves very few reasons for it. There was a justicar with a bone to pick with the sisters, or matt ward doesnt understand they grey knights.

See, it's stuff like this that proves the bandwagon theory. Have you even read the codex, gho5tdemon? Because it sure doesn't sound like it.

I'd be curious to hear a justification, as I have read the story and it made me go O.O and put down the codex.

*sigh*

Grey Knights are not immune to the power of Chaos. They can die from Nurgle's Plague or be burned by the fires of Tzeench. This is why they wear the Aegis, pentagrammic wards, etc, to offer some protection from things like that.

When faced with the Bloodtide, they (quite sensibly) decided that extra protection would be a good idea, so this particular Chaos power would be less likely to overwhelm their Aegis and pentagrammic wards. One of the ingredients for that extra protection was the blood of innocents. So they took it. It had nothing to do with being 'pure' or 'corrupted' and just goes to show that gho5tdemon hasn't objectively evaluated this particular story, let alone the entire codex, and doesn't actually know what he's talking about.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Vaktathi wrote:

 Kaldor wrote:

gh05tdemon wrote:
i go back to the SoB story. Grey knights are the most pure warriors in the galaxy. They dont need the blood of the most pure nor can they be corrupted. So that leaves very few reasons for it. There was a justicar with a bone to pick with the sisters, or matt ward doesnt understand they grey knights.

See, it's stuff like this that proves the bandwagon theory. Have you even read the codex, gho5tdemon? Because it sure doesn't sound like it.

I have read it, I've got the book not 5 feet from me, and I still think it's a stupid, forced story.

Thats great. Now I'd like to see how it's more stupid and forced that Vect's background, or the exploding Void Whale from the Space Wolves codex.

Objectively, of course.

The void whale, and most of the SW fluff *was* stupid. I'm not denying that, the entire book was as awful as anything Ward has done. But, it's pretty much a one-off for Kelly, his other books aren't are pretty good fluffwise.



As for Vect, which particular aspect of Vect's fluff are you talking about?

 Kaldor wrote:

gh05tdemon wrote:
i go back to the SoB story. Grey knights are the most pure warriors in the galaxy. They dont need the blood of the most pure nor can they be corrupted. So that leaves very few reasons for it. There was a justicar with a bone to pick with the sisters, or matt ward doesnt understand they grey knights.

See, it's stuff like this that proves the bandwagon theory. Have you even read the codex, gho5tdemon? Because it sure doesn't sound like it.

I have but not in a long while. The fact something like that is even in there is my problem. i honestly dont understand why your attacking me though, im on your side with lets look at this with all others considered. Which brings me back to when did you join grey knights? they are based around absolute purity. attacking SoB for any reason shows corruption. i have one problem and one problem only and it is that one. maybe you have only taken up opposition because you are a no talent who cant even play without cheese. ever consider that?

and drop the band wagon bs if he is so good put up your every redeming trait of him. we have put up what we hate now put up what you love.

 Kaldor wrote:

jdjamesdean@mail.com wrote:
The GK fluff/Background is possibly the worst I have ever read. I think that others tend to agree, while I like the rules and how the army plays, the fluff is quite terrible. Overall I give it a C- .

It's certainly no worse than any other codex out there.

Oh but it certainly is.

 Kaldor wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:
it's very subjective

Exactly. I'd never argue that people don't like it. But that doesn't make it objectively bad or even objectively worse than the other codexes.

but that book got a lot of hate for it's background for a reason

And that reason is (largely) the bandwagon. In my experience, most of the haters haven't even read the parts they hate, let alone conducted an objective analysis or comparison.

 Kaldor wrote:
*sigh*

Grey Knights are not immune to the power of Chaos. They can die from Nurgle's Plague or be burned by the fires of Tzeench. This is why they wear the Aegis, pentagrammic wards, etc, to offer some protection from things like that.

When faced with the Bloodtide, they (quite sensibly) decided that extra protection would be a good idea, so this particular Chaos power would be less likely to overwhelm their Aegis and pentagrammic wards. One of the ingredients for that extra protection was the blood of innocents. So they took it. It had nothing to do with being 'pure' or 'corrupted' and just goes to show that gho5tdemon hasn't objectively evaluated this particular story, let alone the entire codex, and doesn't actually know what he's talking about.

Don't do the hipster sigh thing at me, please. It was an honest question. I read through the fluff, read that, went 'WOAH WHAT', read the rest, did not see the justification for it, and it hurt my brain. With what you provided above, it still hurts my brain.

Is it a big deal to me? No, but out of all the stuff I've read, that stood out to me pretty harshly. I'm not in the objective 'bandwagon', either. If you like it, great. I'm not going to convince you otherwise, nor you me. I'm in the subjective 'I dislike this fluff' camp and I think we're all reasonable enough to agree to disagree from there on.

jdjamesdean@mail.com wrote:
Oh but it certainly is.

Oh, but it certainly isn't.

gh05tdemon wrote:
they are based around absolute purity. attacking SoB for any reason shows corruption

Yep, you've definitely not read the codex.

Thanks for helping to illustrate my point, I guess.

"Needing a talisman of purity to protect against the bloodtide's taint, the grey knights turned their blades upon the surviving sisters of battle" Grey knights codex pg. 15, blodtide returns, opening line of paragraph 2.

This contradicts all existing fluff of the grey knights. If this works so well why didnt alric's squad do this in the book grey knight? why dont they do this for every single infestation? why not just skip the middle man and send these knew "more pure" forces after them? because its not who they are. They exist to fight demons because they are the most pure.there is no one more pure. and the only talismans earned in blood are those of khorne where no grey knight would turn, let alone a combat force. (and dont bother bring up alric accepting it in hammer of demons. if you read it you would understand why he accepted and ultimately rejected it.)

A rebuttal I've heard is that their minds are pure but their flesh is not, hence the pentagramic wards and need for the sisters blood.

Still doesn't improve the quality of ward's writing

 Hlaine Larkin mk2 wrote:
A rebuttal I've heard is that their minds are pure but their flesh is not, hence the pentagramic wards and need for the sisters blood.

Still doesn't improve the quality of ward's writing

Thank you for the explanation . That does do a lot to redeem them in my eyes. not enough to play them again but still explains the story. (would have been nice to have that in the book though lol)

gh05tdemon wrote:
"Needing a talisman of purity to protect against the bloodtide's taint, the grey knights turned their blades upon the surviving sisters of battle" Grey knights codex pg. 15, blodtide returns, opening line of paragraph 2.

This contradicts all existing fluff of the grey knights. If this works so well why didnt alric's squad do this in the book grey knight? why dont they do this for every single infestation? why not just skip the middle man and send these knew "more pure" forces after them? because its not who they are. They exist to fight demons because they are the most pure.there is no one more pure. and the only talismans earned in blood are those of khorne where no grey knight would turn, let alone a combat force. (and dont bother bring up alric accepting it in hammer of demons. if you read it you would understand why he accepted and ultimately rejected it.)

What do you even think purity means, in this context?

well, ive explained my dislike of ward so im gonna get off this one now. closing words, better/better explained fluff would go a long way. have fun everyone and remember the golden rule of the internet, DONT FEED THE TROLLS.

Kaldor wrote:
Yep, you've definitely not read the codex.

Thanks for helping to illustrate my point, I guess.

"zomg you're not interpreting it the way I like it, you obviously didn't read it then, thanks for illustrating my brilliance!"

This sort of post is worthless, you explain nothing of your position, and just commit and ad-hominem attack without any knowledge of it they actually read it or not simply because you do not like how the other person is portraying it. It's the fallback of a lost position.


Responding to other posts with vague questions and ad-hominems doesn't make you right or advance your position, it just kills the discussion or keeps it going in circles.


Ultimately, regardless of the specifics, blood rituals are generally the territory of Chaos, slaying allies to use their blood in a ritual is *very* khornate and not something readers will generally like seeing in their GK fluff because it just doesn't fit the role. Yes we get it, it's to show they'll go to any lengths and the sisters blood would help the GK's accomplish victory, yadda yadda, it's still a bad story that doesn't fit the character or place of the GK's in the story. It's an act more appropriate to the GK's enemy's than themselves and that's what irks players.

The more I read the thread, the more I find it hilarious that it's a GK fanboy with a GK avatar whiteknighting for Ward.

Let's put it this way: it's generally accepted that 40k fluff was meant to be a joke in the first place and shouldn't have been taken (too) seriously. But the problem is that some of us have standards and demand at least a semblance of quality in what we read, especially if we're going to pay $35-40 for a book as opposed to $15 for your typical fantasy/scifi novel.

Ward writes like a mouth-breathing neckbeard teenager - there's no getting around it. It's almost as bad as Stephenie Meyer's rape of vampire fiction with Twilight, and I don't see how anyone would want to defend Ward. Trying to dismiss widespread criticism of Ward as "bandwagoning" is just dishonest, because no writer should ever be let off the hook for simply bad writing.

 NEWater wrote:
Ward writes like a mouth-breathing neckbeard teenager

Again with the needless vitriol.

Another perfect example of the bandwagon.

 Kaldor wrote:

 NEWater wrote:
Ward writes like a mouth-breathing neckbeard teenager

Again with the needless vitriol.

Another perfect example of the bandwagon.

Then the burden of proof lies on you to show that my accusation is false. There is no reason to assume that it is not so just because you say so.

 NEWater wrote:
The more I read the thread, the more I find it hilarious that it's a GK fanboy with a GK avatar whiteknighting for Ward..

If Kaldor was whiteknighting for Ward he would be trying to say its better than any other author's fluff.
Go back.
Read the thread again.

...

Good you're back, now as you should probably have just read, Kaldor hasn't done that.
All he has done is point out that the actions described by Ward in the Grey Knights codex are on the whole, no more, or no less worse than others such as Asdrubael "Black Hole in a bawks" Vect.
That is not whiteknighting.

@OT I personally think that Ward is just the unfortunate victim of the Twilight Effect, where, yeah sure his writing is bad (don't pretend it isn't, but its not particularly worse than other codices) but due to being picked out seemingly at random and driven into oblivion and hyperbole by the unmatched power of the internet hate machine.

 Krellnus wrote:

 NEWater wrote:
The more I read the thread, the more I find it hilarious that it's a GK fanboy with a GK avatar whiteknighting for Ward..

If Kaldor was whiteknighting for Ward he would be trying to say its better than any other author's fluff.
Go back.
Read the thread again.

...

Good your back, now as you should probably have just read, Kaldor hasn't done that.
All he has done is point out that the actions described by Ward in the Grey Knights codex are on the whole, no more, or no less worse than others such as Asdrubael "Black Hole in a bawks" Vect.
That is not whiteknighting.

@OT I personally think that Ward is just the unfortunate victim of the Twilight Effect, where, yeah sure his writing is bad (don't pretend it isn't, but its not particularly worse than other codices) but due to being picked out seemingly at random and driven into oblivion and hyperbole by the unmatched power of the internet hate machine.

You're welcome.

What I have learned from this thread is that apparently all of the 40K fluff is awful, but that there are degrees of awful.

 NEWater wrote:

 Kaldor wrote:

 NEWater wrote:
Ward writes like a mouth-breathing neckbeard teenager

Again with the needless vitriol.

Another perfect example of the bandwagon.

Then the burden of proof lies on you to show that my accusation is false. There is no reason to assume that it is not so just because you say so.

Oh please. If you want to play the 'burden of proof' card you're going to need to come up with a community approved process for evaluation of written works, an objective, community approved standard as to exactly what constitutes a 'mouth breathing neckbeard teenager' and then perform a thorough comparison and provide your conclusive findings.

Otherwise you're just pissing in the wind.

I'm not going to stand up and say Ward writes excellent fluff. As a whole, 40K fluff is pretty dire. The setting is great, but many of the stories told within it leave a lot to be desired and Ward is no exception. That's my whole stance on the issue. He's no exception, and yet is treated as though he is the bastard love child of Stalin and Osama Bin Laden. The volume and intensity of hatred directed towards him is embarrassing. Watching you all pat each other on the back about it and congratulate each other on being so clever is to watch one of the biggest circle-jerks in internet history.

 NEWater wrote:

 Krellnus wrote:

 NEWater wrote:
The more I read the thread, the more I find it hilarious that it's a GK fanboy with a GK avatar whiteknighting for Ward..

If Kaldor was whiteknighting for Ward he would be trying to say its better than any other author's fluff.
Go back.
Read the thread again.

...

Good your back, now as you should probably have just read, Kaldor hasn't done that.
All he has done is point out that the actions described by Ward in the Grey Knights codex are on the whole, no more, or no less worse than others such as Asdrubael "Black Hole in a bawks" Vect.
That is not whiteknighting.

@OT I personally think that Ward is just the unfortunate victim of the Twilight Effect, where, yeah sure his writing is bad (don't pretend it isn't, but its not particularly worse than other codices) but due to being picked out seemingly at random and driven into oblivion and hyperbole by the unmatched power of the internet hate machine.

You're welcome.

Thank you.
Now are you actually gonna try and refute what I have said or are you just going to continue these pointless ad hominem attacks?

 Kaldor wrote:

jdjamesdean@mail.com wrote:
Oh but it certainly is.

Oh, but it certainly isn't.

GK's fluff is easily one of the 3 worst reads out of all the codexes.

SW's and GK's are possibly the worst. At least the part about the Void Whale had me LoLing hardcore.

jdjamesdean@mail.com wrote:

 Kaldor wrote:

jdjamesdean@mail.com wrote:
Oh but it certainly is.

Oh, but it certainly isn't.

GK's fluff is easily one of the 3 worst reads out of all the codexes.

SW's and GK's are possibly the worst. At least the part about the Void Whale had me LoLing hardcore.

Gonna be honest, have you read the Poetic and Prose Eddas? If you haven't, I suggest you do. Suddenly the SW codex becomes that much more lolwhatamIreading?.

 Vaktathi wrote:
The void whale, and most of the SW fluff *was* stupid. I'm not denying that, the entire book was as awful as anything Ward has done. But, it's pretty much a one-off for Kelly, his other books aren't are pretty good fluffwise.

So if kelly is allowed a one of for awfull fluff with wolves, then surely Ward is allowed a one off for greyknights. That is only fair right? I mean, all the ward hate is to do with grey knight fluff more than anything, so how about you give other examples of other fluff, otherwise there is no reason to say he is worse than the others. I mean, the majority say he did a good job with Necrons.

My main dislike for the GK book is actually the page of paladin fluff. It's just silly. There are these incredibly long-winded complex and asinine names for various locations that really serve no purpose and have no meaning. Also the idea that there are what, eight grueling quests, of which the first three and last one are explained, and the middle four are entirely skipped, replaced with a line that basically reads "oh, there are another four quests, but I'm not gunna tell you what they are. But trust me, they are all harder than a petrified horse cock at a bachelor party."

The first quest is really silly, because it's supposed to be a test of mental resistance to corruption. But no grey knight has ever been corrupted. So, what, does everyone just auto-pass that one or what? It's supposed to be super hard, but it's evident
that no one ever failed or else we would have a few corrupted
grey knights around.

The last quest needs some more explaining as well. You go after one of the 666 most powerful daemons with just a sword and the thing's true name. But obviously we aren't going after the really powerful ones, because then, if a nekkid grey knight could handle one, they wouldn't be that powerful. And you probably can't go after just any single one, because it's unlikely that they have the true name of every single one of the 666 top daemons, otherwise they'd be able to have taken them out already. Because I feel like a true name should be a potent and rare weapon, something that you would take advantage of with a strike force, rather than sending out a shivering paladin-in-training to take care of. And if you are chasing the top 666, then wouldn't everyone just look out for the bottom one? What, do they all just kill that guy and wait for him to respawn?

jdjamesdean@mail.com wrote:

 Kaldor wrote:

jdjamesdean@mail.com wrote:
Oh but it certainly is.

Oh, but it certainly isn't.

GK's fluff is easily one of the 3 worst reads out of all the codexes.

SW's and GK's are possibly the worst. At least the part about the Void Whale had me LoLing hardcore.

Khm,yes but did you read BA codex? Bottom of the bottoms - SW codex is just dumb and not unrealistically OP-ed, but BA and GK codexes go aginst everything in 40k....Mephiston & Draigo - dumbest poorly writen characters ever....

 Garvy wrote:

jdjamesdean@mail.com wrote:

 Kaldor wrote:

jdjamesdean@mail.com wrote:
Oh but it certainly is.

Oh, but it certainly isn't.

GK's fluff is easily one of the 3 worst reads out of all the codexes.

SW's and GK's are possibly the worst. At least the part about the Void Whale had me LoLing hardcore.

Khm,yes but did you read BA codex? Bottom of the bottoms - SW codex is just dumb and not unrealistically OP-ed, but BA and GK codexes go aginst everything in 40k....Mephiston & Draigo - dumbest poorly writen characters ever....

I only listed 2/3 worst and in that just my opinions. Yea, though more wolf for the wolfieness is offset by more blood for the bloodyness guys.

The last quest needs some more explaining as well. You go after one of the 666 most powerful daemons with just a sword and the thing's true name. But obviously we aren't going after the really powerful ones, because then, if a nekkid grey knight could handle one, they wouldn't be that powerful. And you probably can't go after just any single one, because it's unlikely that they have the true name of every single one of the 666 top daemons, otherwise they'd be able to have taken them out already. Because I feel like a true name should be a potent and rare weapon, something that you would take advantage of with a strike force, rather than sending out a shivering paladin-in-training to take care of. And if you are chasing the top 666, then wouldn't everyone just look out for the bottom one? What, do they all just kill that guy and wait for him to respawn?

Too much logic for 40K!

 Kaldor wrote:
See, it's stuff like this that proves the bandwagon theory. Have you even read the codex, gho5tdemon? Because it sure doesn't sound like it.

You don't seem to actually know what "proving a point" entails.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 tuiman wrote:
So if kelly is allowed a one of for awfull fluff with wolves, then surely Ward is allowed a one off for greyknights. That is only fair right? I mean, all the ward hate is to do with grey knight fluff more than anything, so how about you give other examples of other fluff, otherwise there is no reason to say he is worse than the others. I mean, the majority say he did a good job with Necrons.

There is not a single Wardian codex that didn't have either outright garbage or lolderpy moments in fluff. The Blood Angels codex was marginally better than all the others, and the Grey Knights codex just happens to be the worst.

tuiman wrote:
So if kelly is allowed a one of for awfull fluff with wolves, then surely Ward is allowed a one off for greyknights. That is only fair right?

If it were only GK's, sure. But no, GK's are just the worst example, all 4 of his 40k books are fairly awful.

Necrons never had any hate when it was released apart from those that loved the old fluff, your just jumpin on the whole matt ward can't write good fluff band wagon all over again.

There is not a single Wardian codex that didn't have either outright garbage or lolderpy moments in fluff. The Blood Angels codex was marginally better than all the others, and the Grey Knights codex just happens to be the worst.

Every codex has its one part of garbage fluff, not just ward books

 tuiman wrote:
Necrons never had any hate when it was released apart from those that loved the old fluff, your just jumpin on the whole matt ward can't write good fluff band wagon all over again.

A lot of people loved the old fluff. Are we all just bandwagoners? Are we not allowed to be angry that an army that we played/played against for over a decade suddenly changed in such a huge way overnight?

djones520 wrote:

 tuiman wrote:
Necrons never had any hate when it was released apart from those that loved the old fluff, your just jumpin on the whole matt ward can't write good fluff band wagon all over again.

A lot of people loved the old fluff. Are we all just bandwagoners? Are we not allowed to be angry that an army that we played/played against for over a decade suddenly changed in such a huge way overnight?

And a lot of people love the new fluff, and if you are a former necron player then I respect your opinion, but there are others out there who will jump on the chance to complain who never played Necrons. A good example is that still people are right now complaining about dark angels being ward-broken, days after it being confirmed its not his book. This is simple band-wagoning.

You have fair reason to hate him fair enough, I hate kelly for long fang spam and poor wolves fluff. Its the ones who are moaning about stuff for the sake of it that is starting to get a bit old.

And regards to necrons, he probably did not have much choice in the matter, and was told to change the direction of them.

If anything, Matt has accomplished something more vile than fluff rape.

He made the word bandwagon become the go-to term for anyone who doesn't think his work is great.

I've honestly yet to meet someone who hated on ward just for the sake of being part of the cool kids. The actual idea of that is ridiculous. Honestly, all it takes is the slightest dislike of even the smallest fraction of the work he's done to make despising him justified.

Last time I will comment on this thread.

Again, there are threads and people here on dakka complaining about him making dark angels broken when he did not even write the darn book, this is jumping on the bandwagon. Hating on him for something he did not do because you to busy jumping the gun.

My opinion, for all that its worth, is yes he has had some silly moments, I'm not denying he hasn't, draigo fluff is bad, but generally his rules are solid, and all the writers are just as bad as each other.

At the end of the 40k universe can be as unbelievable as you want it to be, you can write your own fluff etc. Thats the beauty of 40k, if you dont like the fluff dont read it.

 tuiman wrote:
Again, there are threads and people here on dakka complaining about him making dark angels broken when he did not even write the darn book, this is jumping on the bandwagon. Hating on him for something he did not do because you to busy jumping the gun.

Sounds like a case of ignorance over falling in with any sort of group just because it's cool.

When such threads pop up, it is the duty of those in the know to explain the situation to those who do not know. If and when faced with evidence that their claims are wrong, and they wish to be stubborn and hold on to what they're saying while giving off signs of someone doing something only because someone else is doing it then yes, I would call that jumping on a bandwagon.

The worst people in the debate however, are not only the ones screaming about ward without fact checking, but also the ones screaming bandwagon without really knowing what that means.

Honestly, this thread shouldn't have gone past page one. Had someone just posted a link to the 1d4chan page about him, the thread could have been resolved in as little as a single reply, as that page goes not only into why people hate him, but also the concept of people wrongfully blaming everything on him.

Alas, twas not the case.

 Necroshea wrote:


Honestly, this thread shouldn't have gone past page one. Had someone just posted a link to the 1d4chan page about him, the thread could have been resolved in as little as a single reply, as that page goes not only into why people hate him, but also the concept of people wrongfully blaming everything on him.

Alas, twas not the case.

Agree, everyone has their own opinions, and you can't please everyone, these Ward threads are tiring, lets get back to talking about this hobby that we all love,

 tuiman wrote:

 Necroshea wrote:


Honestly, this thread shouldn't have gone past page one. Had someone just posted a link to the 1d4chan page about him, the thread could have been resolved in as little as a single reply, as that page goes not only into why people hate him, but also the concept of people wrongfully blaming everything on him.

Alas, twas not the case.

Agree, everyone has their own opinions, and you can't please everyone, these Ward threads are tiring, lets get back to talking about this hobby that we all love,

In the grim darkness of the future, there is no love.

Only WAR(D)!

 tuiman wrote:

djones520 wrote:

 tuiman wrote:
Necrons never had any hate when it was released apart from those that loved the old fluff, your just jumpin on the whole matt ward can't write good fluff band wagon all over again.

A lot of people loved the old fluff. Are we all just bandwagoners? Are we not allowed to be angry that an army that we played/played against for over a decade suddenly changed in such a huge way overnight?

And a lot of people love the new fluff, and if you are a former necron player then I respect your opinion, but there are others out there who will jump on the chance to complain who never played Necrons.

I am not a former Necron player and I despise Newcrons fluff, not only because metal Pirates of Caribean in spaaace but also because the awful fluff led to awful models and robots riding robots. On the table they went from omg menacing to lol silly, quite an achievement from Bombastic Matt.

 tuiman wrote:
Necrons never had any hate when it was released apart from those that loved the old fluff, your just jumpin on the whole matt ward can't write good fluff band wagon all over again.

Huh? There was lots of consternation over that, were you just wilfully not aware of that or what? It's probably the most readable of Ward's works, but it cause it's fair share of issues.


The "Bandwagon" seems to largely be something being desperately clutched to be people with Grey Knight forum avatars and Dakka join dates following that book's release.

I've played 40k for 6 years and started my knights with the old daemon hunters codex, so no. I did not jump on the gk bandwagon. The day I joined dakka is not the day I started playing, so no need to go there.

If you really care that much about fluff just go and take a book from the black library. Ward writes solid rules and thats a good thing.

 Vaktathi wrote:
The "Bandwagon" seems to largely be something being desperately clutched to be people with Grey Knight forum avatars and Dakka join dates following that book's release.

Way to attack the poster.

Some of us have join dates before and non-gk avatars. (Let's avoid making post count/start date/age/etc a central part of your argument, shall we?)

edit: I would also clarify that the bandwagon mentality is not about the opinion, but the behavior. Plenty of people dislike things. I dislike things that GW does in the fluff and rules. Doesn't mean I make them out to be the worst things ever. Do some of Ward's codexes leave things to be desired? Sure. Is the same true of other codex writers? Sure. Is Ward the worst person who ever lived because of it? No.

I mean, come on. What about that Gav Thorpe (I think it was him) story where the marines basically invade earth? That was a rich piece of our cultural treasure, right? Or what about the guys riding on the top of skimmers or land raiders and shooting multilasers? or Orks jumping their bikes through void shields? Or going back in time to kill themselves? or Kruella de Ville? or any of the other silly bits of 40k. What about inquisitor Obi-Wan Sherlock from Rogue Trader? 40k has always been about over the top stories and descriptions. Don't fool yourself.

All that being said, it is perfectly acceptable to dislike something without being distasteful about it. That's the problem that the Warders have.

And that problem largely stems from a second problem and that is that many perfectly reasonable people who dislike Ward have joined forces with the perfectly unreasonable folks who bandwagoned to hate him, haven't read the material well and make some pretty abysmal statements. Much like the real life Tea Party, I'm sure there are some smart people that dislike Ward but you'd never guess it for all the fools.

 tuiman wrote:
...Ward writes solid rules and thats a good thing.

Okay, if by "solid rules" you means rules that invalidate and render entire fething armies completely useless, then sure, he's very good at that! He even managed to kill an entire game with his "solid rules!"

Ward sucks because he's too OTT and doesn't ever think about how his newest, latest fanboy'ish project with work within the greater game. Not everyone wants to be shoehorned into playing a Ward army.
Unfortunately, his books are typically head-and-shoulders above the rest of the curve, thus the insane butthurt.

No one who suffered through 7th edition Daemons thinks he's a good rules writer.

Experiment 626 wrote:

 tuiman wrote:
...Ward writes solid rules and thats a good thing.

Okay, if by "solid rules" you means rules that invalidate and render entire fething armies completely useless, then sure, he's very good at that! He even managed to kill an entire game with his "solid rules!"

Ward sucks because he's too OTT and doesn't ever think about how his newest, latest fanboy'ish project with work within the greater game. Not everyone wants to be shoehorned into playing a Ward army.
Unfortunately, his books are typically head-and-shoulders above the rest of the curve, thus the insane butthurt.

No one who suffered through 7th edition Daemons thinks he's a good rules writer.

I don't think that anyone will argue against 7th ed Daemons being broken. This is the 40k forum, however.

The problem with 'Matt Ward makes the most broken codexes' is that everyone forgets history. 40k has always been about broken codexes interacting with the current ruleset to make crazy armies. 3rd ed Blood Angels? You lose. 4th ed skimmer spam? You lose. 3.5 Chaos Codex? You lose. None of which were written by ward. (Heck, weren't old Necrons broken for a while?)

C:SM? Not broken, although it was well played. C:BA? Powerful for a short time. C:GK? Powerful and possiibly broken until 6th hit. C:Necrons? Strong right now.

Before that? C:SW? Powerful and possibly broken (not Ward). C:IG? Powerful and possibly broken. (Not Ward) Dominated for a while there. C:Nob Bikers? (Not Ward) Dominated for a while there.

Ward hate is often about short memories. (with the exception of 7th ed daemons, which aren't even 40k)

 pretre wrote:
Way to attack the poster.

...

I would also clarify that the bandwagon mentality is not about the opinion, but the behavior.

...

And that problem largely stems from a second problem and that is that many perfectly reasonable people who dislike Ward have joined forces with the perfectly unreasonable folks who bandwagoned to hate him, haven't read the material well and make some pretty abysmal statements. Much like the real life Tea Party, I'm sure there are some smart people that dislike Ward but you'd never guess it for all the fools.

Way to attack the poster(s)!

The point, you missed it.

I complemented many of the posters in this thread, who have perfectly legitimate opinions about the material. They have, unfortunately, joined up with the teeming masses of uneducated bandwagoners who don't.

Also, there's a difference in saying 'The posters who disagree with me never voted in the gallery and joined in 2005 so have no valid opinion' and 'Some people are making baseless statements without referring to the fluff or reading the material.'

So yeah...

 snooggums wrote:

 pretre wrote:
Way to attack the poster.

...

I would also clarify that the bandwagon mentality is not about the opinion, but the behavior.

...

And that problem largely stems from a second problem and that is that many perfectly reasonable people who dislike Ward have joined forces with the perfectly unreasonable folks who bandwagoned to hate him, haven't read the material well and make some pretty abysmal statements. Much like the real life Tea Party, I'm sure there are some smart people that dislike Ward but you'd never guess it for all the fools.

Way to attack the poster(s)!

The difference being that he backed his statement up, instead of just claiming it to be true "because I say so".

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
The difference being that he backed his statement up, instead of just claiming it to be true "because I say so".

Well, I guess there's that as well.

Really, I think that the entire discourse about Ward (and GW, in general) has been distorted by the horrible discussion techniques on the internet. If people just said 'You know, I'm not a fan of Ward's fluff and think that he needs to spend more time on balance.' I would have a completely different reaction from 'OMG WARD IS THE WORST CODEX WRITER EVER!!!!111!!!!ELEVEN'. A look at 40k in general shows that it has never been balanced and Ward is not the first to make an unbalanced, broken, OTT or silly book. He just happens to be either the most recent or the one that people have grabbed on to as a kind of totem for everything they dislike about GW.

Matt Ward threads remind me of train wrecks. You know it's going to be bad but you look anyways.

Plumbumbarum wrote:

 tuiman wrote:

djones520 wrote:

 tuiman wrote:
Necrons never had any hate when it was released apart from those that loved the old fluff, your just jumpin on the whole matt ward can't write good fluff band wagon all over again.

A lot of people loved the old fluff. Are we all just bandwagoners? Are we not allowed to be angry that an army that we played/played against for over a decade suddenly changed in such a huge way overnight?

And a lot of people love the new fluff, and if you are a former necron player then I respect your opinion, but there are others out there who will jump on the chance to complain who never played Necrons.

I am not a former Necron player and I despise Newcrons fluff, not only because metal Pirates of Caribean in spaaace but also because the awful fluff led to awful models and robots riding robots. On the table they went from omg menacing to lol silly, quite an achievement from Bombastic Matt.

The oldcrons fluff was an abomination most wanted to get rid of, considering they seemed to be taking "ULTIMATE EVIL ULTIMATE EVIL" to a high level, bypassing chaos, when in reality they were just tyranids with a robotic skin, they had nothing going for them except for gods which were almost at godlike powers screwing the entire universe and plotting everything and being unable to be defeated by anything yet are able to actually fight mortals... They were pretty much mary sue incarnate.

I don't think oldcron fluff was very bad, just sparse and underdeveloped.

 Vaktathi wrote:

tuiman wrote:
So if kelly is allowed a one of for awfull fluff with wolves, then surely Ward is allowed a one off for greyknights. That is only fair right?

If it were only GK's, sure. But no, GK's are just the worst example, all 4 of his 40k books are fairly awful.

This is pretty much it. Everyone screws up and makes stupid mistakes once in a while. But when an author does it EVERY codex...that's not a mistake or screw up, it's fan-spank. And arguing with Kaldor over a thread that discusses the crap that is Grey Knights is like pissing into a tidal wave. It might be entertaining for a bit, but eventually you'll realize you made a mistake, and it may cause you irreparable damage to your brain.

Lol. That analogy is causing irreparable damage to my brain.

 pretre wrote:

 Vaktathi wrote:
The "Bandwagon" seems to largely be something being desperately clutched to be people with Grey Knight forum avatars and Dakka join dates following that book's release.

Way to attack the poster.

Some of us have join dates before and non-gk avatars. (Let's avoid making post count/start date/age/etc a central part of your argument, shall we?)

It was an observation based on the posting trends in this thread and the reasons why they may be so inclined

edit: I would also clarify that the bandwagon mentality is not about the opinion, but the behavior. Plenty of people dislike things. I dislike things that GW does in the fluff and rules. Doesn't mean I make them out to be the worst things ever. Do some of Ward's codexes leave things to be desired? Sure. Is the same true of other codex writers? Sure. Is Ward the worst person who ever lived because of it? No.

I mean, come on. What about that Gav Thorpe (I think it was him) story where the marines basically invade earth? That was a rich piece of our cultural treasure, right? Or what about the guys riding on the top of skimmers or land raiders and shooting multilasers? or Orks jumping their bikes through void shields? Or going back in time to kill themselves? or Kruella de Ville? or any of the other silly bits of 40k. What about inquisitor Obi-Wan Sherlock from Rogue Trader? 40k has always been about over the top stories and descriptions. Don't fool yourself.

Nobody is saying that 40k hasn't had dumb things, and quite often, they work, if set up well. With Ward, it's the combination of dumb things, and an awful writing style that create the atmosphere around him that there is. The story of Kaldor Draigo could have been very interesting had it not been written like "Kaldor Smash!" and instead more like "the tragedy of Draigo".

Gato has gotten *TONS* of hate, but hasn't written anything for 40k in years, his last book 40k book was published almost 6 years and two editions ago, and you can't even buy half his books anymore as they're out of print. As for Gav, I'm not quite sure exactly which story you're talking about so I can't comment.

The point is that Ward's fluff isn't any different from the bulk of 40k fluff. It is over the top, silly and sometimes dumb. We love 40k anyways though.

I'll try to remember that story's name. It's been a while. Almost all early fluff / BL books read like fanfic. There's a dirty secret though. It is all fanfic.

Goto just pushes the point home even more. This has been going on much longer than Ward and will go on after he is gone.

 pretre wrote:
I don't think oldcron fluff was very bad, just sparse and underdeveloped.

exactly, there was only one codex IIRC

Ward completely disregarded it and rewrote them leaving basically their naming and deity origins and the war in heaven and made them metal humans in SPHES

 Hlaine Larkin mk2 wrote:

 pretre wrote:
I don't think oldcron fluff was very bad, just sparse and underdeveloped.

exactly, there was only one codex IIRC

Ward completely disregarded it and rewrote them leaving basically their naming and deity origins and the war in heaven and made them metal humans in SPHES

Which is good. The old background with the C'tan being behind everything and everyone was just silly.

In one sense, yes, you're right, it's all "fanfic" because the people writing the stuff are fans of the universe, but that doesn't mean that some of it can't read like a 12 year old twilight fans fantasy story while others read like a professional story writer wrote them.

There's a reason Cruddace gets hate for his rules but not really his fluff, there's a reason Kelly gets womped on for SW's but not for Orks or Dark Eldar largely, and there's a reason Ward gets womped on for most of his work, and chalking it all up to a Bandwagon effect is essentially simply handwaving it away without really looking at the reasons why that may be.

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:

 Hlaine Larkin mk2 wrote:

 pretre wrote:
I don't think oldcron fluff was very bad, just sparse and underdeveloped.

exactly, there was only one codex IIRC

Ward completely disregarded it and rewrote them leaving basically their naming and deity origins and the war in heaven and made them metal humans in SPHES

Which is good. The old background with the C'tan being behind everything and everyone was just silly.

Eh, it took the menacing aspect out of them and made them Tomb Kings in Space. They're more comprehensible now, but not really any more interesting. The C'tan aspect was silly, but basically making them tomb kings with lots of very human-like personalities really took away from their mysterious and menacing aspect.

 Hlaine Larkin mk2 wrote:

 pretre wrote:
I don't think oldcron fluff was very bad, just sparse and underdeveloped.

exactly, there was only one codex IIRC

Ward completely disregarded it and rewrote them leaving basically their naming and deity origins and the war in heaven and made them metal humans in SPHES

I think you'll find that the studio disregarded it and gave a much needed rewrite for a codex that was pretty lackluster and old, but that's all subjective and hard to prove.

Outside of 40k, Ward did a pretty good job of killing WFB with demons in 7th and that rulebook in 8th.

Not got a major problem with him myself, I wish he'd write all of the army books. At least it'd be some sort of consistent design ethos.

I mean say what you want about the tenets of Wardian design, dude, at least it's an ethos.

 ZebioLizard2 wrote:
The oldcrons fluff was an abomination most wanted to get rid of, considering they seemed to be taking "ULTIMATE EVIL ULTIMATE EVIL" to a high level, bypassing chaos, when in reality they were just tyranids with a robotic skin, they had nothing going for them except for gods which were almost at godlike powers screwing the entire universe and plotting everything and being unable to be defeated by anything yet are able to actually fight mortals... They were pretty much mary sue incarnate.

They were never just "Tyranids with a robotic skin", the main issue of the oldcron codex was that the Necrons as a faction's character wasn't gone into with enough detail. The higher echelons of the Necrons always had personas, and a few sparse bits of fluff proved that, but the direction the new codex went in (Tooooooooooooooomb Kiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiings) effectively erased the bulk of the actual established facts of the Necrons, but more importantly, the thematic elements making up the core of their faction (Their status as the most fully anti-Chaos faction and the ultimate symbol of order, truly stagnant order, in the galaxy, their looming, cosmic horror appeal, and, not quite a thematic but something that detracts from the feel of the army, but the Necrons used to be unique in that they went to war and fought with the silence of the grave. In a universe like 40k, where everyone is a hammy greek hero or cartoon villain or a bug, this made the Necrons far more intimidating and unsettling than any amount of screaming. When a Necron spoke, it used to be a signifigant occurrence. Now, they hammily twirl their mustaches and shout their orders onto the battlefield, even when they could transmit their orders directly to the minds of their soldiers). The C'tan should never have been fieldable in their true incarnations, but the Avatar of Khaine treatment sucks. Also, they never bypassed Chaos. It was only sort of the reason they went to sleep the first time.

I can't agree with the notion that totally retconning an army to the point that they are almost unrecognisable in every way except physically is good codex design. Gone are the silent, alien-minded race who sold their souls for the sole purpose of fulfilling their hatred, in comes the army of metal men with feelings that can be broken. 5e was Codex: Emocrons.

That said, I personally have trouble imagining that Ward was the mastermind responsible for the radical fluff upheaval of Necrons, so I find it hard to blame him for that specifically.

Edit: Also, let me just say that I don't "hate" Ward. This is a fething boardgame. There are far more deserving targets of my prodigious hatred than the designer of a boardgame.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 pretre wrote:
The point is that Ward's fluff isn't any different from the bulk of 40k fluff. It is over the top, silly and sometimes dumb. We love 40k anyways though.

I'll try to remember that story's name. It's been a while. Almost all early fluff / BL books read like fanfic. There's a dirty secret though. It is all fanfic.

Goto just pushes the point home even more. This has been going on much longer than Ward and will go on after he is gone.

Frankly, I can't agree with the notion that Ward's fluff is no different from the bulk of contemporary (Seriously, Rogue Trader fluff isn't relevant anymore) fluff. It's more over the top than is usual for this setting (Think of what this means), it is badly written on any technical level (Cruddace by comparison is "okay" in terms of writing style, and Kelly is pretty decent), it's not so much silly as it is stupid. It contradicts itself (All Grey Knights are 100% pure, Purifiers are EVEN MOAR pure, and Crowe makes normal Purifiers look like Eldar-violating Slaaneshi cultists).

Goto is a better writer than Ward. Oh yeah, I said it. Goto's accuracy towards the setting and subject matter might be lolwut, but on any technical level, he is the better writer.

Also, an unfortunate fact of the business is that it is easy to ignore Goto's works, being comprised of a few BL novels. Ward? He writes codices for the main gameline, upon which all other fluff is based. That's honestly my biggest problem with his fluff. It enforces a change upon any works licensed by GW, such as BL or FFG RPGs (Though Tome of Fate's Necron fluff is awesome, seriously, they took the best aspects of both codices and combined them).

More OTT than void whale, driving through the cockpit of a warlord Titan, going back in time to defeat yourself, defeating a whole invasion of de with 5 SW, Vect, wolfy wolferson, decapitator who decapitates with decapitator, etc so on...

Yeah, all 40k fluff is OTT. Don't blame ward because 40k is OTT.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
And previous fluff, RT to now, is important. You can't say they shouldn't have change necron fluff but Goto and RT are too old. Heck Goto is more recent than oldcron fluff.

It's all the same universe and the studio moves it in the direction they want, not ward.

Want non OTT fluff? Try a different game. 40k had always been OTT and it is unlikely that will change.

 pretre wrote:
More OTT than void whale, driving through the cockpit of a warlord Titan, going back in time to defeat yourself, defeating a whole invasion of de with 5 SW, Vect, wolfy wolferson, decapitator who decapitates with decapitator, etc so on...

Yes, to all. Draigo is several times more OTT than all of that combined. And it helps that Ward's fluff is more badly written.

It isn't always the details that are necessarily the breaking point, I am sure Draigo could have been a workable concept for example (And indeed, I am brainstorming ideas for how to do so in the future for a Black Crusade campaign), but it was so badly executed.

Now, IMO the Void Whale story and the Wazdakka stories were pretty stupid, but the go back in time and killing yourself story was very fitting for Orks. I admittedly can't recall the 5 SW story, but no, it can't begin to rival Draigo gallavanting throughout the Warp, punching Bloodthirsters to death. Also, Space Wolf 5e fluff was also stupid and pretty crappy, but once more, you're using several, specific single examples from single codices to invalidate critique of Ward, when really, there isn't a codex he's released that hasn't had bad fluff, IMHO. Even the Necron codex had derpy gak like the Celestial Orrery.

Yeah, all 40k fluff is OTT. Don't blame ward because 40k is OTT.

Nowhere did I say or even imply that was the sole problem.

Automatically Appended Next Post:
And previous fluff, RT to now, is important. You can't say they shouldn't have change necron fluff but Goto and RT are too old. Heck Goto is more recent than oldcron fluff.

You're confusing me with Vaktathi. Nowhere did I refer to Goto's fluff as "too old".

RT was so radically different in so many ways, and frankly, back then the fluff was far more "skeletal", to borrow Veteran Sergeant's terminology, that you could get away with a lot more back then without being called on it.

It's all the same universe and the studio moves it in the direction they want, not ward.

I actually said that I don't blame Ward for the Necron shift in fluff. But it is Ward's pen who puts all of the details onto paper, and a lot of the time, the problem is Ward's own failing as a writer.

Want non OTT fluff? Try a different game. 40k had always been OTT and it is unlikely that will change.

Nowhere did I decry 40k for being OTT, but my point was that Ward still manages to break suspension of disbelief in this setting says a lot.

The problem here is that frankly, and in my opinion, you don't seem to take the fluff as seriously as some (Such as I), do. Which is fine.

My problem with Ward fluff is not the concepts. The concept of Dragio is out there. The concept of BA and Necrons working together is plausable in a stretch. Just like most of the other out there concepts that GW characters are put through with the different writers lucas' stasis bomb, Wazzdakka, etc. might be just as out there or improbable. However, the main problem with Ward IMO is just the way Ward writes. As others have stated, it reads like a 12 yr old fan fick. I swear my 8 yr old son makes his leader guys ever bit as invincible as Ward writes when listening to him play with his friends. Its the words he chooses, the exaggerations are in your face instead of gently implied. He feels the need to tell you those guys are bad ass instead of making you realize it for yourself. I think that if Kelly or Crudance wrote the same idea behind Draigo he would have a different feel to him than what Ward produced. Vect may be "the man" in the DE world, be he also has come across as vindictive, sullen, ruthless, and yet faltering. Yeah, he is top dog, but you can still feel the toll it has taken on him to get there and now something more may be happening.

They were never just "Tyranids with a robotic skin", the main issue of the oldcron codex was that the Necrons as a faction's character wasn't gone into with enough detail. The higher echelons of the Necrons always had personas, and a few sparse bits of fluff proved that,

Except by adding more fluff to the echeleons would dis-regard the whole "Silent and Mysterious Personas" that people enjoyed. It meant they would be slowly losing their silent touch over time regardless.

ut the Necrons used to be unique in that they went to war and fought with the silence of the grave. In a universe like 40k, where everyone is a hammy greek hero or cartoon villain or a bug, this made the Necrons far more intimidating and unsettling than any amount of screaming.

Except by giving personalities and various persona's to the Faction Character and the upper tier would prove to remove such silent and intimidation when you could figure out the thoughts behind them.

Also, they never bypassed Chaos. It was only sort of the reason they went to sleep the first time.

Aside from all the hints behind being an entire order of the Imperium (Admech) that worships their god, Giving gifts and causing trouble with the black fortress, not to mention potentially being behind several things chaos has been getting, as well as the fact that they've never been beaten, they can never be beaten, at least a Tyranid bioship can be destroyed back then, Necrons never suffered loss.

They were in essence, becoming the "Ultimate Evil" in the galaxy, overshadowing Tyranids (Which didn't attack them at all, or their planets and bypassed them even when the outer shell of a planet still would contain biomass in the soil..), to being a direct counter against the warp with all of their Technology and being anthema to daemons. Means that even chaos couldn't fight them properly, not to mention their gods put the fear in everything cept orks (What), several C'tan weapons were produced against them. Their gods could outwit others in a game of chess, but still actually come down and kill everything, and even if they weren't in the TT, they were able to interact with the world, devour stars and kill everything they see.

They were in essence, the ultimate race with no flaws, no issues, could never die, if a tomb world exploded or died they would all teleport to another.. They were the Ultimate Evil, with no flaws, no issues. They were the Mary Sue Race.

I have always wondered the same thing, and reading comments explains a lot. Seems like you could get more better ideas from not basing lore, but he really should get into the lore after doing what he does to correct his mistakes.

There is good grimdark OTT and silly OTT. The former is oldcrons as ultimate evil Egyptian terminators, the latter is Marneus Calgar. Ward does not understand 40k imo.

 Void__Dragon wrote:
They were never just "Tyranids with a robotic skin", the main issue of the oldcron codex was that the Necrons as a faction's character wasn't gone into with enough detail. The higher echelons of the Necrons always had personas, and a few sparse bits of fluff proved that, but the direction the new codex went in (Tooooooooooooooomb Kiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiings) effectively erased the bulk of the actual established facts of the Necrons, but more importantly, the thematic elements making up the core of their faction (Their status as the most fully anti-Chaos faction and the ultimate symbol of order, truly stagnant order, in the galaxy, their looming, cosmic horror appeal, and, not quite a thematic but something that detracts from the feel of the army, but the Necrons used to be unique in that they went to war and fought with the silence of the grave. In a universe like 40k, where everyone is a hammy greek hero or cartoon villain or a bug, this made the Necrons far more intimidating and unsettling than any amount of screaming. When a Necron spoke, it used to be a signifigant occurrence. Now, they hammily twirl their mustaches and shout their orders onto the battlefield, even when they could transmit their orders directly to the minds of their soldiers). The C'tan should never have been fieldable in their true incarnations, but the Avatar of Khaine treatment sucks. Also, they never bypassed Chaos. It was only sort of the reason they went to sleep the first time.

Yep.

Personally I found the old cron fluff boring and one dimsenional. It's great that they can be so versatile from evil, soulless killers to diplomatic and civilised relics of an old socety.

I think a lot of the Ward hate is undeserved. While most of his fluff is subpar, I really enjoyed the Necron rewrite. It went from Codex: C'tan and Friends, to Codex: Necrons.

As far as Balance goes, I honestly believe that Ward is the best of the current 40k Writers. Codex:SM has has aged well, and is a balanced book. Blood Angels got knocked down a peg, but is still a good competitive book. GK are fairly balanced now, and while Necrons are considered top dog, they were quite balanced in 5th, and as more codexes get Flyers, I think we will see the Necron codex balance out well enough.


My main problem with Kelly is, he writes codexes that are OP, don't age well, or both. Eldar were far too powerful in 4th, and did not age gracefully into 5th and 6th. Dark Eldar were a great army in 5th, and I almost picked them up. They did not age well at all. The Space Wolves codex was horrible from any standpoint. The Chaos codex was also poorly written, and felt very rushed. His best work has been the Ork codex, by far.

Cruddace either writes OP or UP books, with mediocre fluff. I personally consider him the worst writer, mainly because of his extreme internal balance issues, and poor costing for upgrades.

 Sasori wrote:
I think a lot of the Ward hate is undeserved. While most of his fluff is subpar, I really enjoyed the Necron rewrite. It went from Codex: C'tan and Friends, to Codex: Necrons.

As far as Balance goes, I honestly believe that Ward is the best of the current 40k Writers. Codex:SM has has aged well, and is a balanced book. Blood Angels got knocked down a peg, but is still a good competitive book. GK are fairly balanced now, and while Necrons are considered top dog, they were quite balanced in 5th, and as more codexes get Flyers, I think we will see the Necron codex balance out well enough.

Ward books are internally balanced, which is a good thing. The external balance on the other hand...

 Sasori wrote:
My main problem with Kelly is, he writes codexes that are OP, don't age well, or both. Eldar were far too powerful in 4th, and did not age gracefully into 5th and 6th. Dark Eldar were a great army in 5th, and I almost picked them up. They did not age well at all. The Space Wolves codex was horrible from any standpoint. The Chaos codex was also poorly written, and felt very rushed. His best work has been the Ork codex, by far.

Cruddace either writes OP or UP books, with mediocre fluff. I personally consider him the worst writer, mainly because of his extreme internal balance issues, and poor costing for upgrades.

Kelly didn't write Eldar! It was completely re-written on him while he was off on vacation!!!
It's really not his original work, and putting his name on it was a mistake since it was mainly a choice by the head of the studio to re-write the damn thing. He was actually quite upset by what happened, as alot of the options he built into the army list were removed in favour of the 'super streamlined' model that Jervis dreamed up for Eldar/CSM/DA before quickly dropping that design due to mass outrage from the community.
Jervis should have slapped his name on it in the end, just like how Andy Hore's name was replaced on the Beastmen book because Kelly finished it off.

And besides, saying "Kelly's Eldar book is OP because of skimmers in 4th edition" is like saying "GK's having Storm bolters is OP in 5th edition"
The basic game mechanics made those things broken. What the hell is Kelly supposed to do? Drop skimmers from Codex: Eldar because the main rules at the time favoured skimmers? That would have been like Ward dropping Storm Bolters from GK's simply because rapid fire weapons sucked in 5th.

Dark Eldar and Chaos Marines are both better balanced overall than Grey Knights of Necrons.
The former haven't yet forced players to shelve their entire army/s and/or made playing a game about as fun as having your toenails ripped out. The latter? I'm sure we're all well aware of the butthurt that's still going on...

Experiment 626 wrote:

And besides, saying "Kelly's Eldar book is OP because of skimmers in 4th edition" is like saying "GK's having Storm bolters is OP in 5th edition"
The basic game mechanics made those things broken. What the hell is Kelly supposed to do? Drop skimmers from Codex: Eldar because the main rules at the time favoured skimmers?

How about not adding Holo-Fields to the mess?

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:

Experiment 626 wrote:

And besides, saying "Kelly's Eldar book is OP because of skimmers in 4th edition" is like saying "GK's having Storm bolters is OP in 5th edition"
The basic game mechanics made those things broken. What the hell is Kelly supposed to do? Drop skimmers from Codex: Eldar because the main rules at the time favoured skimmers?

How about not adding Holo-Fields to the mess?

Holo-fields IIRC were a staple upgrade, it would be like removing Red Paint Job from Orky vehicle options. (and yes, lots of opponents conside RPJ OTT because it gives Orky assault units additional movement ---> charge range).

And they were only stupid-good because 4th ed was the las/plas edition and Holo-fields laughed at single-shot weapons. Come 5th once everyone started spaming the likes of autocannons or other multi-shot S6-8 weapons, guess what, Holo-fields crumbled due to sheer mass fire.
The only army that had a viable gripe about Holo-field skimmers being nearly impossible to shoot down were Tyranids... Marines got massed rending asscans out the wazoo, CSM & IG had autocannon spam, Eldar & Tau had more multi-shot S6 or better than they knew what to do with and 'Crons had the Gauss rule and simply laughed.

Notice that the final few months of 4th and come 5th edition, Holo-fields stopped curbstomping the masses because the meta had shifted to deal with them.

Experiment 626 wrote:

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:

Experiment 626 wrote:

And besides, saying "Kelly's Eldar book is OP because of skimmers in 4th edition" is like saying "GK's having Storm bolters is OP in 5th edition"
The basic game mechanics made those things broken. What the hell is Kelly supposed to do? Drop skimmers from Codex: Eldar because the main rules at the time favoured skimmers?

How about not adding Holo-Fields to the mess?

Holo-fields IIRC were a staple upgrade, it would be like removing Red Paint Job from Orky vehicle options. (and yes, lots of opponents conside RPJ OTT because it gives Orky assault units additional movement ---> charge range).

And they were only stupid-good because 4th ed was the las/plas edition and Holo-fields laughed at single-shot weapons. Come 5th once everyone started spaming the likes of autocannons or other multi-shot S6-8 weapons, guess what, Holo-fields crumbled due to sheer mass fire.
The only army that had a viable gripe about Holo-field skimmers being nearly impossible to shoot down were Tyranids... Marines got massed rending asscans out the wazoo, CSM & IG had autocannon spam, Eldar & Tau had more multi-shot S6 or better than they knew what to do with and 'Crons had the Gauss rule and simply laughed.

Notice that the final few months of 4th and come 5th edition, Holo-fields stopped curbstomping the masses because the meta had shifted to deal with them.

Holo-fields in 4th reduced the odds of a damaging hit (which was always a glance due to SMF and the way cover interacted with vehicles) destroying the vehicle from 1/6 to 1/36. On every single Eldar vehicle. It's not the multi-shot meta that ended that, it's SMF granting cover saves instead of downgrading penetrating hits to glances. Sure, it's a staple upgrade: make it do something else. Not a sixthfold increase in survivability for a really small amount in a game where survivability comes at a premium. It makes Psybolt Dreadnoughts look reasonable in comparison.

Kelly didn't write Eldar! It was completely re-written on him while he was off on vacation!!!

Can you pull up some actual proof of this? I would like to see it.

And besides, saying "Kelly's Eldar book is OP because of skimmers in 4th edition" is like saying "GK's having Storm bolters is OP in 5th edition"
The basic game mechanics made those things broken. What the hell is Kelly supposed to do? Drop skimmers from Codex: Eldar because the main rules at the time favoured skimmers? That would have been like Ward dropping Storm Bolters from GK's simply because rapid fire weapons sucked in 5th.

Yes, but points costs should balance these things out, right?

Dark Eldar and Chaos Marines are both better balanced overall than Grey Knights of Necrons.

The Internal balance in both of those books is atrocicous, compared to the Grey Knight and Necron books. The Grey Knight codex saw some major shifts with this edition, putting it down where it belongs, and the Necron codex saw some improvements. Most complaints from the Necron Codex have to do with Flyer spam in 6th, which is slowly being addressed with more flyers being added in every army book.


The former haven't yet forced players to shelve their entire army/s and/or made playing a game about as fun as having your toenails ripped out. The latter? I'm sure we're all well aware of the butthurt that's still going on...

 Peregrine wrote:
Overpowered rules with fluff that is just painful to read. Matt Ward embodies the worst fanboy stereotypes, except that somehow he managed to get a job writing official material instead of just fanfiction.

He's still writing fan-fiction. Problem is they keep publishing it...

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:
Overpowered rules with fluff that is just painful to read. Matt Ward embodies the worst fanboy stereotypes, except that somehow he managed to get a job writing official material instead of just fanfiction.

He's still writing fan-fiction. Problem is they keep publishing it...

Cause it is still light-years better than what all the other writers (past or present) produce.

Many people have shelved or ebayed their Dark Eldar Armies, as well as their Chaos Armies.

It is a bummer that the Webway Portal has been nerfed, and Wyches have been nerfed. But army wide Nightfight made my Stormlord opponent very sad.

archonisthebesthqever wrote:


Many people have shelved or ebayed their Dark Eldar Armies, as well as their Chaos Armies.

I have a friend with 3 monoliths,15 destroyers that would like to have a talk with you about shelved armies....and it was actually mat ward the one ruining cc armies with his new rules set.

I have 2 Monoliths, and over 15 Destroyers. Destroyers are actually a fairly solid choice in the Fast Attack slot, second only to Wraiths, so if your friend chooses not to use them, than that's his fault.

The Monolith, I will agree, is overshadowed by the rest of the Heavy support slot.

When an Army gets a massive reboot like the Necrons, you should expect changes to the balance of units. It happens to every codex, and it's not suprising in the least when gimmick builds like the Tri-Monolith are reduced in effectiveness. Of course, the entire need for 3 Monoliths in the old codex is a different topic altogether, anyway.

As far as "His" new ruleset ruining CC armies, there is no way you can pin an entire edition on a single person, and it makes you look silly by even suggesting it. Shooting was dominant in 5th, and it's still strong in 6th. Much has not really changed there, and it's not Mat Ward's fault.

To begin with,imo,scarabs are better than destroyers but thats not the point.You accussed kelly for writing codexes that force people to shelve their armies and i just answered you that it was mat wards rules that ruined assault armies,cause i really not see any other change that would make a de player selve his vehicles or a csm one.The only lists that ceased to exist were wych cult and berserkers spam.

Look, i really dont have a problem with Ward ,i like his work(imo the necron codex is superb and the people crying for scythewing really need to practise a bit more,i find flyers to be an awesome addition to the game) but i just can not tolerate false accusatios(you can accuse Kelly as much as you want for things like mutilators though ;D).

To begin with,imo,scarabs are better than destroyers but thats not the point.You accussed kelly for writing codexes that force people to shelve their armies and i just answered you that it was mat wards rules that ruined assault armies,cause i really not see any other change that would make a de player selve his vehicles or a csm one.The only lists that ceased to exist were wych cult and berserkers spam.

Explain to me how "Mat Wards rules" ruined assault armies. I answered you, that he isn't responsible for an edition, so how can you say he ruined it? The answer is, he didn't.

If you want to discuss the merits of the Necron FA slot, then I'd be happy to discuss it in a different thread.

Look, i really dont have a problem with Ward ,i like his work(imo the necron codex is superb and the people crying for scythewing really need to practise a bit more,i find flyers to be an awesome addition to the game) but i just can not tolerate false accusatios(you can accuse Kelly as much as you want for things like mutilators though ;D).

There are no false accusations. Several of Kelly's books have aged horribly, into new editions, and it's ground in fact.No one here can reasonably say that the Eldar and Dark Eldar books aged reasonably into their respective new editions. All four of Matt Wards codexes did just fine in the edition change.

DE have suffered a lot more than just the lost of Wychcult. The nerf to the Webway portal lists, hit a lot of Coven lists as well, Units like the Talos/Cronos/Beastmaster Packs. etc etc become useless. Dark Eldar were reduced from a multiple play style army, to one way to play them competitively.

The Chaos codex was poorly written all around, not just the loss of useful berzerkers, but the horrid internal balance.

Christ were to begin with.Random charge distances, overwatch,not being able to assault the turn you arive from reserves,the new wound allocation system...just use your brain.Now the most important part...Wards codex have aged well?Oh really.Tell that to a Blood angels player.From tier 1 to 3 in just a night.Have you ever played against 27 flamers, 27 screamers with ba?I guess not.Grey knights also went from the insane 9 / 16 finalists at the last adepticon to the 3/16 with allies at nova.

As a matter of fact wbb lists were buffed..reserve rolls are now 3+ and not 4+ from round 2.If your opponents were stupid enough to move inside the 12-21 inch radio threat of wbb then their fault.With de it happened exactly the opposite,at last something different from venom spam.You should check the de list that finished 6th on the last nova.Guess what it contained: talos,cronos and a huge beast pack.Crazy right?
With the addition of allies(great move from Ward) eldar and DE just got plenty of new viable builds.

On the last subject,i love the new chaos codex and i just finished my 1750 pts army list but i find it to be quiet interesting and balance,nothing cheesy or awful(except some cc units again like warp talon,mutilators).

archonisthebesthqever wrote:
Christ were to begin with.Random charge distances, overwatch,not being able to assault the turn you arive from reserves,the new wound allocation system...just use your brain.

You know that Ward didn't write 6th edition alone, right? It was the studio. In fact, Vetock and Troke, along with Ward, wrote it. Read the credits "WRITTEN BY: Adam Troke, Jeremy Vetock and Mat Ward"

This is the problem with Warders. Consistently plowing forward with complete disregard for the facts.

Now the most important part...Wards codex have aged well?Oh really.Tell that to a Blood angels player.From tier 1 to 3 in just a night.Have you ever played against 27 flamers, 27 screamers with ba?I guess not.Grey knights also went from the insane 9 / 16 finalists at the last adepticon to the 3/16 with allies at nova.

So Ward is now responsible for the Daemons update and the content of armies at Adepticon or Nova (two completely different types of events, imo). Oh and let's add in arbitrary tiers for codexes as well.

You know you should check my above post where i say that i do not have a problem with Ward...but unlike you guys i am gonna point his mistakes and not gonna pretend he is god just because he wrote my codex.And yes grey knights codex being broken in the end of 5th edition is exactly the reason that this particular codex dominated adepticon,although on 6th its pretty balance.Same thing is happening right now with deamons.Furthermore,i would like to point out something that none of you mentioned earlier.The game has become more balance imo and i would like to congratulate the rulesbook writers,now every army can compete for the top spots.

Christ were to begin with.Random charge distances, overwatch,not being able to assault the turn you arive from reserves,the new wound allocation system...just use your brain.Now the most important part...Wards codex have aged well?Oh really.Tell that to a Blood angels player.From tier 1 to 3 in just a night.Have you ever played against 27 flamers, 27 screamers with ba?I guess not.Grey knights also went from the insane 9 / 16 finalists at the last adepticon to the 3/16 with allies at nova.

I'm going to explain this, for the third time, so try to read it this time.

Matt Ward is not solely responsible for the changes in the edition. The rulebook is made by an entire development team. If you would read the credits at the end of the rulebook, you would understand this. So stop trying to blame him for it.

Yes, Matt Wards Codexes did age well. BA were never a Tier 1 codex, they never won any major tournaments, with any kind of consistency. They were always outclassed by Space Wolves and Imperial Guard, and then by Grey Knights and Necrons. They were middle of the Pack, and remained so, with the new Edition.

Bringing up a Hard counter for an army, is a silly argument, and holds little weight in this discussion. Have you ever Faced Shuntspam Vs Daemons? How about Venom Spam vs Tyranids? Most Armies have a hard counter in the form of some specific lists.

Grey Knights dropped from an Overpowered state, to a much more balanced state, which is a sign of aging well. You shouldn't have a single Army taking 9/16 finalist spots.

As a matter of fact wbb lists were buffed..reserve rolls are now 3+ and not 4+ from round 2.If your opponents were stupid enough to move inside the 12-21 inch radio threat of wbb then their fault.With de it happened exactly the opposite,at last something different from venom spam.You should check the de list that finished 6th on the last nova.Guess what it contained: talos,cronos and a huge beast pack.Crazy right?
With the addition of allies(great move from Ward) eldar and DE just got plenty of new viable builds.

WWP lists did not get buffed, not assaulting from reserve was absolutely crippling, it's not even arguable. You have one DE list that finished six, when they start taking top 5 consistently, you can get back to me. Eldar and Dark Eldar as of right now are weak armies. Eldar are only useful for being taken as allies for the Farseer, the rest of the army is pretty terrible. Dark Eldar are reduced to one build to be competitive, there is not plenty of new viable builds.

On the last subject,i love the new chaos codex and i just finished my 1750 pts army list but i find it to be quiet interesting and balance,nothing cheesy or awful(except some cc units again like warp talon,mutilators).

You may love it, but that doesn't mean it's not a terribly written mess. The Chaos codex feels like it was rushed and phoned in completely, with horrible internal balance, and lots of awful units, in addition to multiple things that don't make sense.

archonisthebesthqever wrote:
You know you should check my above post where i say that i do not have a problem with Ward...but unlike you guys i am gonna point his mistakes and not gonna pretend he is god just because he wrote my codex.And yes grey knights codex being broken in the end of 5th edition is exactly the reason that this particular codex dominated adepticon,although on 6th its pretty balance.Same thing is happening right now with deamons.Furthermore,i would like to point out something that none of you mentioned earlier.The game has become more balance imo and i would like to congratulate the rulesbook writers,now every army can compete for the top spots.

The problem with your statement is that you immediately refuted it by going off on how he caused all the woes of 6th edition, without any actual facts to back you up. Also, FYI, I don't play GK or have a Ward codex army.

As for Adepticon, it is unclear whether the impression of the GK codex being OP caused so many top players to bring it or the actual OP'ness caused players to get in the top spots with GK. Personally, I believe it was the former. Also, I think you'll find Daemons aren't dominating the competitive events quite yet.

The only thing more funny than people complaining about the crap Ward's written are the little brigade of apologists falling over one another to find excuses for why his stuff isn't crap, and, worse (and more hilariously), trying to assign far more meaning to his 12-year-old-esque fan-fiction-y nonsense than he ever intended.

"Draigo is a metaphor for the futility of the struggle against Chaos!!!"

No he's not. He's just badly written.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
The only thing more funny than people complaining about the crap Ward's written are the little brigade of apologists falling over one another to find excuses for why his stuff isn't crap, and, worse (and more hilariously), trying to assign far more meaning to his 12-year-old-esque fan-fiction-y nonsense than he ever intended.

"Draigo is a metaphor for the futility of the struggle against Chaos!!!"

No he's not. He's just badly written.

I fail to see how defending ones viewpoint with reasoning, makes someone an apologist for him. Just because I have a positive opinion of him, I'm now labeled an apologist? I make no excuses for his fluff, but I do prefer his rules over the other authors, and I stand by that.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
"Draigo is a metaphor for the futility of the struggle against Chaos!!!"

No he's not. He's just badly written.

Except he is, it is even written in the entry.

The quality of the entry has nothing to do with the fact that it clearly says that the chaos gods are erasing everything he does right after he does it and that he is stuck in the warp unable to make lasting change.

The reason GW doesn't typically have subtle fluff is simple-- when they actually write subtle fluff, even on an extremely basic level, people get mad and hate it.

No pretre. Everything in that wretched soulless Codex is terrible. It fluff reads like the worst excesses of adolescent/early teen fan-fiction. It is an abomination.

 Sasori wrote:
I make no excuses for his fluff, but I do prefer his rules over the other authors, and I stand by that.

And I don't care about his rules.

I do care when he destroys the fluff, and he's very good at doing that (Nemesis DOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM Fist).

Everything?

 Sasori wrote:
As far as Balance goes, I honestly believe that Ward is the best of the current 40k Writers. Codex:SM has has aged well, and is a balanced book. Blood Angels got knocked down a peg, but is still a good competitive book. GK are fairly balanced now, and while Necrons are considered top dog, they were quite balanced in 5th, and as more codexes get Flyers, I think we will see the Necron codex balance out well enough.


My main problem with Kelly is, he writes codexes that are OP, don't age well, or both. Eldar were far too powerful in 4th, and did not age gracefully into 5th and 6th. Dark Eldar were a great army in 5th, and I almost picked them up. They did not age well at all. The Space Wolves codex was horrible from any standpoint. The Chaos codex was also poorly written, and felt very rushed. His best work has been the Ork codex, by far.

I disagree about the whole aging thing.
Of course 5th edition powerhouses or entries that were made just near the 6th edition will "age" much better than 4th edition armies.

Let me talk about Eldar but all the pre-5th would look similar.
C:Eldar is weak not because of the 5th edition rules but because of the armies that were released in 5th edition. IG / BA / Necrons / SM / GK / SW are much better than their iterations before 5th.
It's not true that they aged well. They were simply made stronger and because of that they are still stronger.
Compare how Eldar looked in comparison to others just after the 5th was released.

Eldar and 5th edition is more similar to GK and 6th. They were one of the last codeci in the last edition. Considered very powerful or broken. Then next edition hits and suddenly their power level is much closer to the others. If every new codex in 6th will be much better than GK it's not because of GK aging but because of the released entries themselves.

Edition switch (5->6) did not create a major switch in who's at the top of the food chain. The quality of aging you talk about does not exist. Armies that were powerful in 5th are still powerful in 6th (at least the majority). If they had been at the similar level at their release date as the old ones then the edition switch would not change that (or at least would not make them as far apart as they are now).

He seems like a fanboy to me, but otherwise he's not half bad. Imo he made the necron and grey knight codexes way better than they used to be.

 Color Sgt. Kell wrote:
He seems like a fanboy to me, but otherwise he's not half bad. Imo he made the necron and grey knight codexes way better than they used to be.

Necrons were 3rd edition and Grey Knights never had a codex before, they were in Demon Hunters. Not hard to improve upon the old and non-existent. Demon Hunters were heavily utilized until they got FAQed to no longer function as allies. I would also argue one of the biggest draw backs to Grey Knight units before was their status as metal models, but I would need an old Demon Hunter codex to effectively make the argument. A plethora of new rules, improvements and a point drop on it's units (essentially the new strike squads and troop termies) didn't hurt it any though.

I for one dislike the newcrons because of breaking suspension of disbelief, heavily troped characters and good old robots riding robots. I liked the idea of the Star Gods, a lot. To see them pushed out so simply in the codex rather irked me. For necrons to simply rise up against their masters after being stripped of their souls doesn't make sense. For them to go further and break them apart and store them away or keep them as pets further hurt my ability to accept the story. I didn't like how they treated flayed ones or destroyers in the fluff. The new flayer models being the ugliest things didn't help.Flayed ones ended up being a sort of curse from the dying C'Tan and destroyers just being hateful because they do. I liked how it was hinted at in Fall of Damnos where they were degenerative processes of ancient tech. Viruses or errors popping up in the programming after eons, changing their nature and thought processes. These little niggles and others broke my ability to immerse in the new story line they concocted.

I didn't like how most of the characters that were created could be described to their core personality in a short sentence. This guy is a tinkerer. This guy protects that guy. This guy collects stuff. This guy wants to reunite his people and be king. I could get behind these guys a bit more if there was more development to them and more complexity. I liked that one insert where Trazyn is being cheeky to the inquisitor, but it played a bit too much towards his core description of collection things. I'll admit I like some trashy writing that is very similar to this style *cough* Bleach *cough* and it's hard to make characters given limited space, but I do not want to trade an entire mythos of mysterious lore for shallow characters.

Lastly, the models. Pretty much every necron driver would be directly linked into his machine imo. I want to see missing limbs replaced with wires coming out of the shoulders and lower torso. I want tubes coming through gaping mouths of emotionless necrons. I want them dehumanized. I want to see how much they gave up for immortality. The ghost ark has necrons weirdly posed on this and could be so much better with stiff poses locked in place, giving a restrained unnatural look to their transportation method.

I'd rant about the grey knights, but I'm tired now.

The Necrond never really came from a strong idea. They were just terminators in 40k, they looked like terminators and had a rule called 'we'll be back'. There was the suggestion of pyramids and ancient civilisations long dead, and I quite liked all that. They were just human-like people that were survived by machine people. It was mysterious and introduced a minor faction to 40k.

But they had to blow it up into a full army and it all looked forced. The Necrons were descended from people, so humanoid ones seemed fine, but they cooked all these other things up to look cool. The ones with a large snake tail, the ones that fly, the ones that cover themselves in flesh, etc. They were making stuff up just to create units for an army and most of it took them away from the idea of an ancient people and less human seeming, which I thought was a strength previously as they acted as a mirror for humanity gone wrong. The Tomb Spyders were my favourite new unit as I could see that they served a purpose floating around empty tombs guarding them for millennia, unlike everything else that was made just to excuse cool new models. The C'tan being the worst excess of this. The monolith looked pretty goofy too. I thought the Necrons just beamed in and out like the Borg, now they have to bring along a huge floating pyramid.

The rewrite didn't do any better. Got rid of some goofy units and put more goofy stuff in. The vehicles just have an awful aesthetic, if you're going to write how they become integrated and lost to their machines make them look more part of the machine than just positioned perching as they would riding on a scooter.

Most of this has nothing to do with Matt Ward. It's because the Necrons are gak. They were a nice mysterious footnote to the 40K universe that was artificially bloated up to be a full army which is why everything about them seems forced, their fluff and model range alike.

Wow. I think that may be another thread.

 Howard A Treesong wrote:
The Necrond never really came from a strong idea. They were just terminators in 40k, they looked like terminators and had a rule called 'we'll be back'. There was the suggestion of pyramids and ancient civilisations long dead, and I quite liked all that. They were just human-like people that were survived by machine people. It was mysterious and introduced a minor faction to 40k.

Yep.

I do agree that the Necrons were cooler as the mysterious Terminators in Spaaaace. But they were popular, and sold well, even when there were only rules for the two basic 2 models, lol. And that made it inevitable that they'd become an entire army.

And I agree they definitely should have stayed the way they were, even once fleshed out into an entire army. But the "problem" with the old Necron fluff was that it limited them. GW loves to sell all of those fancy character models that they can tack a few extra dollars/pounds onto simply because they gave it a name and cast it in resin. With a "personality", suddenly the Necrons aren't faceless legions of Egyptian Space Terminators. Now there is a ton of room to expand the model line and sell more toy soldiers. I don't like the Newcron fluff, but that's most likely the thought process behind them. Everything is ultimately a business decision with 40K. Hence why we've got fortifications and flyers in this edition, and a decrease in the survivability of vehicles, which dominated the previous edition. Your army isn't done yet.

 pretre wrote:

archonisthebesthqever wrote:
Christ were to begin with.Random charge distances, overwatch,not being able to assault the turn you arive from reserves,the new wound allocation system...just use your brain.

You know that Ward didn't write 6th edition alone, right? It was the studio. In fact, Vetock and Troke, along with Ward, wrote it. Read the credits "WRITTEN BY: Adam Troke, Jeremy Vetock and Mat Ward"

This is the problem with Warders. Consistently plowing forward with complete disregard for the facts.

Now the most important part...Wards codex have aged well?Oh really.Tell that to a Blood angels player.From tier 1 to 3 in just a night.Have you ever played against 27 flamers, 27 screamers with ba?I guess not.Grey knights also went from the insane 9 / 16 finalists at the last adepticon to the 3/16 with allies at nova.

So Ward is now responsible for the Daemons update and the content of armies at Adepticon or Nova (two completely different types of events, imo). Oh and let's add in arbitrary tiers for codexes as well.

Some men just want to watch the Ward burn.

Seriously though the dislike of Ward can be traced back to the Space Marines Spiritual Liege fluff. The brofisting of the necrons and mini-primarch draigo continue the fluff hatred. Then finally all those lists had super uber powerful lists and rules that seem a little unnecessary.

But all in all he's not so bad.

Hey Necrons seem like an alright, balanced army.

*sixth edition arrives*



WARD!

 captain collius wrote:
Seriously though the dislike of Ward can be traced back to the Space Marines Spiritual Liege fluff. The brofisting of the necrons and mini-primarch draigo continue the fluff hatred. Then finally all those lists had super uber powerful lists and rules that seem a little unnecessary.

But all in all he's not so bad.

You missed fantasy Daemons, which is really where the hate started.

The C:SM Spiritual Liege, Brofist and Draigo are all largely inflated by the internet. Fantasy Daemons was an actual problem.

Speak for yourself. I used to play against Blood Angels a lot, and while it wasn't over-powered per se, it's frustrating to play against an army that's essentially space marines but everything is simply slightly better.

 BryllCream wrote:
Speak for yourself. I used to play against Blood Angels a lot, and while it wasn't over-powered per se, it's frustrating to play against an army that's essentially space marines but everything is simply slightly better.

Well, if you are talking about your personal dislike, than that's different. You didn't indicate it. You used the words 'The dislike for ward' not 'my dislike for ward'. Factually, the dislike for Ward started with Daemons even if your dislike for Ward started with BA.

 pretre wrote:
Wow. I think that may be another thread.

Well it is relevant, because Matt Ward is the person who ultimately puts his name to these rule sets and fiction even if he works with a team. But it's got a lot to do with the demographic that GW go for by making their game both more 'grimdark' and adolescent. It's also their need to turn over product lines and sales by releasing new codices with a power creep and inventing new units and making others obsolete.

Matt Ward is just the name put to a wider approach in their products. The Necrons exhibit the same treatment as one of Matt Ward's other efforts...

The grey knights were a mysterious surgical strike team of terminators, super powerful but rarely seen on the tabletop, even in Space Hulk. But then they had to become s gaming regular on the table top in the demonhunters book, which effectively watered down the sisters of battle lists, and they were expanded to have marines and drednaut as well as terminators. Even then they lost what was special about them, suddenly becoming less mysterious and more like a regular marine chapter, and a common sight on gaming tables. But that wasn't enough, as the most macho and cool part of the demon hunters army they got their own book and its expanded again do they have lots of vehicles and a bloody stupid manga robot with a papoose and groan worthy special characters who float around in the warp writing on the heads of demons. Their fluff now expanded to contain borderline misogynistic tripe about them slaughtering women and painting themselves in their blood, the sort of 'kewl' sounding tosh that appeals to idiotic Tweens that think its grown up.

This is the market GW want and that Mat Ward writes for. Blame him all you like, but it's the company that guides it and publishes it. Dumbed down rules and fluff, no subtlety at all as things become ever more literal. Necrons become more and more just Tomb Kings in space, Blood Angels become more like vampires mad about blood and Space Wolves actually ride around on wolves, though the latter I actually find quite funny.

We're in agreement then. Ward isn't solely responsible for the codexes, GW is. It isn't like he is some rogue agent.

As for the 'other thread' comment, I meant that original 'upgrades' to necrons and GK, not the later bits. Looks like you tied it back though.

They key really is recognizing GW's business decisions are the reason Ward's mistakes exist.

It's not like GW is powerless to say, "No, that's a bad idea, go back and revise it in direction x and come back to us."

They have utilized him, and encouraged his poor fluff and ruleset because it serves their financial agenda; his codexes are great at getting pre-teens to part with their parents money, as well as getting the WAAC players with more money than sense to do the same.

They have made the decision to introduce a more distinct power creep and retcons to introduce more divergent armies, Ward is merely one the vehicles of that change, not the source of it. I don't know how long GW will travel in this direction, likely until the next change in leadership at least, but time will tell.

I'm incredibly curious to see what Ward does next, and the DA codex by Vetock; they'll be good markers of what direction GW will take with 6th, CSM was promising; little to no power creep, good internal balance, no fluff rape, but DA doesn't look nearly as restrained, and that's not a Ward book.

 MajorStoffer wrote:
They key really is recognizing GW's business decisions are the reason Kelly's mistakes exist.

It's not like GW is powerless to say, "No, that's a bad idea, go back and revise it in direction x and come back to us."

Fixed that for you

As funny as that is, it is really the reason that all of the codex mistakes exist. Writers don't write them in a vacuum.

 pretre wrote:

 BryllCream wrote:
Speak for yourself. I used to play against Blood Angels a lot, and while it wasn't over-powered per se, it's frustrating to play against an army that's essentially space marines but everything is simply slightly better.

Well, if you are talking about your personal dislike, than that's different. You didn't indicate it. You used the words 'The dislike for ward' not 'my dislike for ward'. Factually, the dislike for Ward started with Daemons even if your dislike for Ward started with BA.

I didn't use the words "the dislike for ward". I didn't even mention his name.

Bah, okay, you responded to my response to someone else. I assumed you were the first guy. There's the problem.

 pretre wrote:
So Ward is now responsible for the Daemons update and the content of armies at Adepticon or Nova (two completely different types of events, imo). Oh and let's add in arbitrary tiers for codexes as well.

I heard he was also responsible for Global Warming, the hole in the ozone layer, starving children in Africa, AIDS and the latest global recession.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
No pretre. Everything in that wretched soulless Codex is terrible. It fluff reads like the worst excesses of adolescent/early teen fan-fiction. It is an abomination.

 Sasori wrote:
I make no excuses for his fluff, but I do prefer his rules over the other authors, and I stand by that.

And I don't care about his rules.

I do care when he destroys the fluff, and he's very good at doing that (Nemesis DOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM Fist).

I don't care about the fluff, at all. I haven't even read all of the fluff in any of the books for the armies I play. It's all bad. I really only care about how the army plays on the table, and if the models are good looking and fun to paint.

I really have no issues with Ward or his rules.

 ZebioLizard2 wrote:
Except by adding more fluff to the echeleons would dis-regard the whole "Silent and Mysterious Personas" that people enjoyed. It meant they would be slowly losing their silent touch over time regardless.

To an extent? Of course it would. But the 5e codex went balls-out and made them hammy, mustache-twirling cartoon villains.

Except by giving personalities and various persona's to the Faction Character and the upper tier would prove to remove such silent and intimidation when you could figure out the thoughts behind them.

You can characterize a character, and still make their thoughts appear alien or mysterious. Sovereign from Mass Effect is a decent recent example of the type of characterization I am talking about.

Aside from all the hints behind being an entire order of the Imperium (Admech) that worships their god,

Explained by Mechanicum. The Dragon is a prisoner, it holds no true power over the AdMech.

Giving gifts and causing trouble with the black fortress,

Giving gifts?

And the Deceiver only managed to pull the Blackstone Fortresses from the Eldar's grasp, which isn't that big a feat, frankly.

not to mention potentially being behind several things chaos has been getting,

Like what? Abaddon's sword lol? Pure conjecture, the only thing the being really has in common with the Deceiver is golden skin.

as well as the fact that they've never been beaten, they can never be beaten, at least a Tyranid bioship can be destroyed back then, Necrons never suffered loss.

In 3e, Necrons had what? Two, maybe three battles detailed?

And this point loses all credibility when related to the 5e retcon, considering the losses sustained by the Necrons within other codices. Like when a horde of Mongolians rode them down with fething horses, lol.

They were in essence, becoming the "Ultimate Evil" in the galaxy, overshadowing Tyranids (Which didn't attack them at all, or their planets and bypassed them even when the outer shell of a planet still would contain biomass in the soil..),

I don't really agree with the Tyranid aversion to attack them myself, so point.

to being a direct counter against the warp with all of their Technology and being anthema to daemons. Means that even chaos couldn't fight them properly,

Yet you forget that Chaos is anathema to both the Necrons and the C'tan as well, they have no understanding of it.

not to mention their gods put the fear in everything cept orks (What),

This is an old Eldar legend about the Nightbringer, the source is in-universe. And it is fear of death, not fear in general.

several C'tan weapons were produced against them.

K, and?

Their gods could outwit others in a game of chess, but still actually come down and kill everything, and even if they weren't in the TT, they were able to interact with the world, devour stars and kill everything they see.

IMO the C'tan should not have just been roaming around in the 41st Millennium in their true incarnations, no.

They were in essence, the ultimate race with no flaws, no issues, could never die, if a tomb world exploded or died they would all teleport to another.. They were the Ultimate Evil, with no flaws, no issues. They were the Mary Sue Race.

There is no evidence that Necrons could teleport to other Tomb Worlds if they were destroyed. Or rather, there wasn't, until... The 5e codex. Oh.

I find it deliciously ironic that people decry the oldcrons for being overpowered, when, as it stands, if some Necron were to think "I'm gonna go destroy Terra with the push of a button", he could.

I don't find the 5e codex entirely bad. It was just overdone, it had some neat ideas, but was executed badly.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
And I don't care about his rules.

I do care when he destroys the fluff, and he's very good at doing that (Nemesis DOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM Fist).

I find the fluff vastly more important than the rules. Frankly, I can't imagine how people couldn't care about the fluff. The setting is the only thing that puts it above other games.

P.S. I recall you mentioning that you find that FFG RPG fluff is good at improving the fluff blunders of the codices without outright ignoring it, an opinion I share. If you've read it, what did you think of Tome of Fate's Necron fluff?

 Void__Dragon wrote:


I find the fluff vastly more important than the rules. Frankly, I can't imagine how people couldn't care about the fluff. The setting is the only thing that puts it above other games.

Agreed.

Which is why Ward's books are the by far most popular ones out there. He took 40K back to the golden 2nd edition glory days. It's largely his achievement that 40K became tolerable again after the abominable years of 3rd and 4th edition.

Which is also why Phil Kelly should just do Dreadfleet 2nd Edition or something and stop polluting 40K with his loony toons crap.

 Zweischneid wrote:

 Void__Dragon wrote:


I find the fluff vastly more important than the rules. Frankly, I can't imagine how people couldn't care about the fluff. The setting is the only thing that puts it above other games.

Agreed.

Which is why Ward's books are the by far most popular ones out there. He took 40K back to the golden 2nd edition glory days. It's largely his achievement that 40K became tolerable again after the abominable years of 3rd and 4th edition.

Which is also why Phil Kelly should just do Dreadfleet 2nd Edition or something and stop polluting 40K with his loony toons crap.

Hu?

The truth is the the fluff may be interesting, it may be cool stories, but the actual writing of it has ALWAYS, all the way back to Rogue Trader, been terribly written and off-putting. Just read a wiki, read some Black Library, and who gives a gak what specific person is writing the crap fluff in the codex itself? The rules are all the matters in the codex; the fluff has plenty of better places to live.

 Zweischneid wrote:

 Void__Dragon wrote:


I find the fluff vastly more important than the rules. Frankly, I can't imagine how people couldn't care about the fluff. The setting is the only thing that puts it above other games.

Agreed.

Which is why Ward's books are the by far most popular ones out there. He took 40K back to the golden 2nd edition glory days. It's largely his achievement that 40K became tolerable again after the abominable years of 3rd and 4th edition.

Which is also why Phil Kelly should just do Dreadfleet 2nd Edition or something and stop polluting 40K with his loony toons crap.

What is this hate for Kelly? He wrote the golden codex of 40k. Orks has withstood the change of two editions, has very few crap units, wonderful fluff, an incredible model range and is still strong competitively. Eldar and Dark eldar were largely ruined due to the current edition rather than the actual codex. 4th ed. eldar was one of his earlier 40k write ups, and skimmers were already absurd in that edition. 5th specifically had to nerf them, so you can't really say that it wasn't written to age well. The edition just came along and bunked it. Dark eldar were incredibly well done. Perfect glass cannon balance and multiple builds, with a great model line and great fluff. Once again, it was nerfed from the change of editions, which Kelly had no part in writing. And from my understanding, they aren't totally irrelevant now either. The recent chaos book has fantastic internal and external balance, and lots of different builds jumping around, and the fluff is uninjured. I think we can safely expect better things from him in the future. Wolves were silly, both in fluff and balance, but they were at least well-aging. He's getting better and better, and frankly, i consider him the best codex writer of the three current ones.

 loota boy wrote:

 Zweischneid wrote:

 Void__Dragon wrote:


I find the fluff vastly more important than the rules. Frankly, I can't imagine how people couldn't care about the fluff. The setting is the only thing that puts it above other games.

Agreed.

Which is why Ward's books are the by far most popular ones out there. He took 40K back to the golden 2nd edition glory days. It's largely his achievement that 40K became tolerable again after the abominable years of 3rd and 4th edition.

Which is also why Phil Kelly should just do Dreadfleet 2nd Edition or something and stop polluting 40K with his loony toons crap.

What is this hate for Kelly? He wrote the golden codex of 40k. Orks has withstood the change of two editions, has very few crap units, wonderful fluff, an incredible model range and is still strong competitively. Eldar and Dark eldar were largely ruined due to the current edition rather than the actual codex. 4th ed. eldar was one of his earlier 40k write ups, and skimmers were already absurd in that edition. 5th specifically had to nerf them, so you can't really say that it wasn't written to age well. The edition just came along and bunked it. Dark eldar were incredibly well done. Perfect glass cannon balance and multiple builds, with a great model line and great fluff. Once again, it was nerfed from the change of editions, which Kelly had no part in writing. And from my understanding, they aren't totally irrelevant now either. The recent chaos book has fantastic internal and external balance, and lots of different builds jumping around, and the fluff is uninjured. I think we can safely expect better things from him in the future. Wolves were silly, both in fluff and balance, but they were at least well-aging. He's getting better and better, and frankly, i consider him the best codex writer of the three current ones.

@Loota Boy: Don't bother trying to reason with Zweischneid... It would seem that in some past life, Mr.Kelly hunted him down and ruthlessly stomped all over puppies just to piss him off. It's the only logical explantion.
Or he's just being a Troll.


Thus far, in terms of outright killing an entire army or edition, the various authors has;
a) Cruddace;
- Wrote Tyranids which were generally below the curve all through 5th.

- Wrote Imp Guard which has horrible internal balance, but still has multiple highly competitive lists that make grown men cry big girls tears!

b) Kelly;
- Wrote Orks which is 2 entire editions old, yet still competitive. Solid internal balance with only a couple terd choices, (looking at you Flash Gits!) Wound allocation abuses made Nobz hienous in 5th, but overall the codex still has a few solidly competitive lists.

- Wrote Eldar which is 2 entire editions old. Then had the entire codex re-written on him when he went on sabatical for three months! Not really his work, but rather a Kelly/Jervis debacle due to a last minute shift in codex design ideals.

- Wrote Space Wolves. Some of the background wasn't the best, but then SW's have always been the 'silly viking marines'. Gets blamed for alot of the 'wolf' monikers which is silly since most of them were established in the 3rd ed codex! Wolf claws being new, along with Thunderwolves & Canis being the additional 'wolfy' items.
Codex is still considered OP/top tier.

- Wrote Dark Eldar which again has solid internal balance. (Mandrakes are a wtf? moment though). Beautiful model line, good competitive ruleset that kept the glass cannon aspect front and center. Not his fault the army got junk-punched by a new edition he didn't help write.

- Wrote the new Chaos Marines. Gets to be the 'test monkey' for a new edition and a new style of codex. (always fun - not!) Still, the book is overall decently balanced internally, and it's competitive level is likely high middle-of-the-road. (if every book can get to roughly this level, 40k will be in a golden age indeed!)
Gets flak from every old-school Chaos fanboy who wants special snowflake rules & units for every legion from specific & repetitive Cult Termie entries, to 2-5 specialist units per Legion. (3.5 sucked in terms of overall balance, leave it good and dead please!)

c) Ward;
- Wrote Codex Marines which is a solidly balanced codex and has aged pretty well. A few wtf? background moments, (everyone wishes they were a cool Ultrasmurf!), and 3++ storm shields raised alot of eyebrows at first, but overall, the book is solidly high middle-of-the-road.

- Wrote Codex Blood Angels. A giant wft background bit with the BFF BA/'Crons, but overall the background isn't that much worse/better than the average codex. (it's most certainly not Orky'tastic though!)
Rules-wise the codex reeks of being 'Marines +1' leaving most codex marine players feeling butthurt. Was solidly competitive in 5th due to how effecitve transports & MSU melta spam was. DoA's made Daemon players feel stupid. 6th kicked 'em in the teeth.

- Wrote Codex Grey Knights. The background is laughably bad and it reads like some 10 year old's crappy school english project.
Ruleswise the internal balance is solid, but externally, it's the worst balanced codex. Too many easy to get hard-counters to almost any type of opposing lists. Forced Daemon & Tyranid players to simply shelve their armies.

- Wrote Codex Necrons. The background is a love/hate bit. Personally, I like the direction, just not the childish 'sunday morning cartoon' execution.
Again, overall wonderful internal balance. Had a couple annoying lists in 5th. Now the 'kings of 6th' due to how readily they can spam fliers.



So we have one author who's either Crud or Ace, one author who's typically on the mark but has a solid miss, and one author who understands internal balance, needs to understand other armies exist and simply needs to stop writing marine background like a twelve year-old would!

Kelly managed to turn Space Wolves into the most counter-fluff-intuitive army ever seen, turning heroic viking-inspired marines into the ultimate Wizard-led, table-edge hogging gunline. Cheese-Falcons pretty much necessitated the need for 5th Edition pretty much all by themselves. And the train-wreck-atrocity of fluff that is the Dark Eldar Codex has nothing to do with editions. The sooner it is forgotten the better.

There was no variety of build in the Dark Eldar Codex either. Everything it ever was was rushing across the table in paper planes to drown the opponent in dice (CC or poison rapid-fire).

It couldn't have been nerfed by some minor rules changes in 6th Edition if it hadn't been one of the worst one-trick-pony-Codexes ever written to begin with. Just because there is several different units (all doing essentially the same) doesn't mean there is true variety in game play (e.g. as you would in a Blood Angels DoA List vs. a Blood Angels AV13 list vs. a Blood Angels Golden Army list vs. a Blood Angels MSU list vs. probaby another 20 Blood Angels list, all with more game-play variety than the sum of Kelly's work in 40K together).

There is little doubt to anyone looking at the material unbiased that Kelly is the worst of the current writers (and by a fair margin too). Space Wolves also holds the record for the longest FAQ for any Codex. His understanding of the rules and how they work to create a game is just atrocious. There's a reason he gets to write as little as possible and ideally is sidelined to do things like DreadFleet and why he isn't included in actually writing core rules for the major game lines.

And the "golden Codex" in 40K was surely written by Mat Ward. The sheer scope and potential of the Grey Knights Codex is mindboggling. From the "ultimate-low-model-beginner-army" of Paladins to the "ultimate-free-form-hobbyist-challenge" of Henchmen, there hasn't been a 40K Codex, hell not even an Expansion like Apoc or a GW sub-division like Forge World, which has added so much creative latitude and scope for development to the 40K hobby in decades, if ever.

 Howard A Treesong wrote:
But then they had to become s gaming regular on the table top in the demonhunters book, which effectively watered down the sisters of battle lists, and they were expanded to have marines and drednaut as well as terminators.

Point of Order:

It should be mentioned that the Grey Knights did have a list that had PA Marines, and various standard Marine characters and so on back in the RT days. They actually lost all that in the transition from 1st Ed to 2nd Ed (where they became a single squad taken as allies), and through part of 3rd Ed until the DH Codex came out.

Furthermore, the DH Codex was more than just Grey Knights. Far more. Inquisitorial armies were possible without a single GK on the table (I should know – I fielded such an army). Now that isn’t possibly without a damned Special Character.

And finally it’s difficult to ‘water down’ an army that didn’t really have a proper list, just various WD incarnations. The SoB’s got their own list in the WH Codex later.

I get what you’re saying Howard, and I don’t necessarily disagree, but let’s not forget the history of where the GK’s started and when they had a full-blown list in the first Realms of Chaos book.



Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Void__Dragon wrote:
To an extent? Of course it would. But the 5e codex went balls-out and made them hammy, mustache-twirling cartoon villains.

See that’s my biggest problem with the Newcrons. I don’t mind them diversifying them and giving them various dynasties, but I much preferred it when their troopers were soulless automatons and their leaders were unfathomable personalities.

I said it when the Newcron Codex first came out, but look what happens when you remove the names from the Special Characters in the Codex and just leave their titles.

You get:

1. The Stormlord.
2. The Diviner.
3. The Illuminator.
4. The Infinite.
5. The Vanguard.
6. The Traveller.

This, to me, would be a far more interesting way to present the special characters. Don’t give them hokey pseudo-Egyptian names (Imhotehk? Really?). Keep 'em mysterious.

I remember a campaign GW did ages ago... Medusa something... anyway it was a campaign where every race had to be shoehorned in (and by that I mean they had to find a way to involve the Tau and Dark Eldar). In that there was a Necron Lord who’s name escaped me (could have been Stormlord, or Herald of the Storm, or something like that). It was just the title, no name, and it made him mysterious without robbing him of a personality. Then when he failed (as the Necrons didn’t win the campaign), the Deceiver showed up, uttered one word (“Failure!”) and the Necron Lord was left motionless on the world to suffer the fate of being engulfed by a Warp Storm whilst the rest of his forces were teleported back to the tomb.

When I did my own Necron army I did the same sort of thing. None of my Necrons were given names, but titles. My Destroyer Lord was simply called “The Harvester”, and that to me was way cooler than Osiris Tehkmutonatron the Third, leader of the Harvester Dynasty or whatever Tomb King-y nonsense the new book has.

I get what people say when they complain that the Necrons (and the C’Tan) were emphasised a little too much in that they were behind everything, but at their core the mystery of how unknown they were made them so much more interesting. Take that mystery away and you just have Tomb Kings in spaaaaaaaaace.

And yeah, I really hate the way Necrons “pilot” vehicles. Machines piloting machines just doesn’t make sense. I’m mostly ok with the Newcron fluff (aside from what’s mentioned above) but I truly hate the way Destroyers were treated. In my mind Tomb Blades simply shouldn’t exist, and the pilots on the Command Barge and that God-awful troop transport should be integrated in the way Destroyers are. And the troop transport should be a mobile portal, not a Trade Federation Battle Droid Dispenser.

 Void__Dragon wrote:
P.S. I recall you mentioning that you find that FFG RPG fluff is good at improving the fluff blunders of the codices without outright ignoring it, an opinion I share. If you've read it, what did you think of Tome of Fate's Necron fluff?

Luckily I worked on Tome of Fate, so I got to see that stuff take shape, and I was quite happy with the outcome. Leave it to FFG to take something that irks a lot of people (Wardian Grey Knights, Newcrons) and turn it into something far more subtle and grounded. The guy who wrote the Tome of Fate Necron rules also did work on another FFG book called The Outer Reach, which is the Deathwatch line’s Necron expansion book. That has all the ancient mysteries and unknowable eldritch horrors elements put back into their story, as the FFG RPG’s are set before the Imperium really knows what the Necrons are, so things can be vague and hinted at and we get something called the ‘Dark Pattern’. It’s a thousand times more interesting than the legions of Pharaohtehk Tutantehkman Ramisises IX and his Legion of Doom.



Automatically Appended Next Post:

Experiment 626 wrote:
So we have one author who's either Crud or Ace, one author who's typically on the mark but has a solid miss, and one author who understands internal balance, needs to understand other armies exist and simply needs to stop writing marine background like a twelve year-old would!

This is probably the best summary in the whole thread.

Grey knights had a pretty scant RT list from what I recall, they were still all terminators and little else. Sisters of battle had their own codex in 2nd, had to share it with inquisitors and grey knights later on, and now have a white dwarf listing.

 Howard A Treesong wrote:
Grey knights had a pretty scant RT list from what I recall, they were still all terminators and little else. Sisters of battle had their own codex in 2nd, had to share it with inquisitors and grey knights later on, and now have a white dwarf listing.

They didn’t even have Terminators in their first list (Terminators aren’t even in the book!). They were all PA. They were just another Marine list (Tac, Dev, Assault and so on) and had GK Techmarines, GK Chaplains and all the usual things that Marines could get.

And I know Sisters had a Codex in 2nd Ed. The DH Codex didn’t ‘water [that] down’ because by then the 2nd Codex was irrelevant.

...I'm just going to skip over Zweishneid... Everything he said is absurd, except the bit on space wolf fluff. Too much ridiculousness to go over one by one, and it's late. But yeah, I'm sticking by what i said. Kelly is the best codex writer. If everything could be brought up to the level of the ork and current chaos codex (or pre-6th DE) we would have a fantastic game and just as good fluff.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
See that’s my biggest problem with the Newcrons. I don’t mind them diversifying them and giving them various dynasties, but I much preferred it when their troopers were soulless automatons and their leaders were unfathomable personalities.

I said it when the Newcron Codex first came out, but look what happens when you remove the names from the Special Characters in the Codex and just leave their titles.

You get:

1. The Stormlord.
2. The Diviner.
3. The Illuminator.
4. The Infinite.
5. The Vanguard.
6. The Traveller.

This, to me, would be a far more interesting way to present the special characters. Don’t give them hokey pseudo-Egyptian names (Imhotehk? Really?). Keep 'em mysterious.

I remember a campaign GW did ages ago... Medusa something... anyway it was a campaign where every race had to be shoehorned in (and by that I mean they had to find a way to involve the Tau and Dark Eldar). In that there was a Necron Lord who’s name escaped me (could have been Stormlord, or Herald of the Storm, or something like that). It was just the title, no name, and it made him mysterious without robbing him of a personality. Then when he failed (as the Necrons didn’t win the campaign), the Deceiver showed up, uttered one word (“Failure!”) and the Necron Lord was left motionless on the world to suffer the fate of being engulfed by a Warp Storm whilst the rest of his forces were teleported back to the tomb.

When I did my own Necron army I did the same sort of thing. None of my Necrons were given names, but titles. My Destroyer Lord was simply called “The Harvester”, and that to me was way cooler than Osiris Tehkmutonatron the Third, leader of the Harvester Dynasty or whatever Tomb King-y nonsense the new book has.

Well, that's the thing, you have that option. Before, the number one question I got about Necrons was "So why are they here?" and inevitably I just had to shrug my shoulders and say "The C'tan are hungry." I understand the notion of a soulless machine, darkening the galaxy one world at a time, but didn't we basically get that with 'nids? Oldcrons were just metal 'nids as far as fluff was concerned. Now, with the Newcrons, you can be a powerhungry warlord looking to reconquer a system that you once razed just as easily as you can be an eccentric living metal aristocrat with a penchant for violence and murder or a soulless robot that only exists to kill living being in the galaxy because your ancient programming says so. The choice exists now, which is awesome

That guy that I quoted above wrote:And yeah, I really hate the way Necrons “pilot” vehicles. Machines piloting machines just doesn’t make sense. I’m mostly ok with the Newcron fluff (aside from what’s mentioned above) but I truly hate the way Destroyers were treated. In my mind Tomb Blades simply shouldn’t exist, and the pilots on the Command Barge and that God-awful troop transport should be integrated in the way Destroyers are. And the troop transport should be a mobile portal, not a Trade Federation Battle Droid Dispenser.

I think the thing to keep in mind, and this was the case with oldcrons too, is that at one point, all Necrons were individuals. Every warrior, immortal, flayed one, destroyer, lord, and even flayer was at one point a Necrotyr. Now, the aeons that have passed have hardly been kind to them, or even uniform. Some maintained their sense of individuality (lords, etc) whilst some are so buggered out by the millions of years of dormancy that they are literally just protocols and machine code (destroyers in particular).....but are still the form of an individual. It's why they carry weapons instead of just...be weapons. I mean, if you were building a killer robot, would you bother to give it digits on it's hands...or even bother to give it hands at all? Odds are, you'd just start welding on guns and stuff. But since they didn't, it's at least someone possible that shooting space marine tanks to death is just a day job to them. At the end of it all, the warriors will put their guns back and the pilots will get out of their ships and go do whatever it is that the Necrons do. Remember, they are obstensibly people trapped in robot bodies. Some of them adapted okay. Others have gone so far off the deep end that it's difficult to even judge them as individuals (Destroyers). Moral of the story: It helps to think of them as Necrotyr, not robots.

 Nerobellum wrote:
Moral of the story: It helps to think of them as Necrotyr, not robots.

I agree with you, but I couldn't help it... Necrons have feelings too!





Or, if I were a politician: Necrons are people, my friend.

 loota boy wrote:
...I'm just going to skip over Zweishneid... Everything he said is absurd, except the bit on space wolf fluff. Too much ridiculousness to go over one by one, and it's late. But yeah, I'm sticking by what i said. Kelly is the best codex writer. If everything could be brought up to the level of the ork and current chaos codex (or pre-6th DE) we would have a fantastic game and just as good fluff.

Actually the ward hate/legend started with fantasy where he destroyed an entire edition with the most ridiculous op codex you can imagine.

40K he is actually doing pretty good. I like a lot of his new rules which are unique and tend to add something new to the army. I just wish GW would do a mini update to help the earlier codices deal with 5e fliers.

Btw orks is a masterpiece of codex writing. Definitely the best written codex out.