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So I keep seeing his name pop up in the GK threads. I came into 40k around 3rd edition but didn't start actually play till about a year ago. From what I gather he tends to write as what in mtg we would call a timmy ie giant monster powered dudes. So what else has he worked on.

Actually, it would be useful if someone could list the known authors of current codices. Good question, Cy.

I know he's responsible for a few fantasy books, but most of the derision he receives is because of Codex: Blood Angels and Codex: Space Marines where the fluff section consists of blatant Mary Sueism and complete ridiculousness, and the army list section either makes you cry "WTF OP" or scratch your head and go, "huh?"

Mat Ward started as playtester for the OK army book and coauthored the Wood Elf army book. His first army book as sole author was the previous Orks& Goblins book, average at release but low tier during the rest of 7th edition. His second army book was Chaos Daemons which ultimately broke competitive play in 7th edition, slightly repaired by the 8th edition Fantasy rulebook also mainly written by him. In 40k he wrote Space Marines and Blood Angels, the latter being the current top tier Codex.

When asked if he is aware that his Chaos Daemon book is way overpowered, his answer is rumoured to be that this was his intention. So he now has the reputation to give a damn about game balancing and a tendency to write juvenilish overpowered background and juvenilish names.

Lord Aislinn wrote:At Gamesday today, I was one of the brave few to talk to Matt Ward. We were chatting about how he creates the books, and we got on to talking about how points costs are scaled, and I said:

"Alot of people think a core unit that costs 12 points then gets regeneration is a bit over powered, in fact, alot of people think the demon book is overpowered."

He laughed and replied: "It would be a shame if it wasn't."

He simply has a reputation for writing completely overpowered codexes, and fluff. While I can see a case for arguing that Space Marines are SUPPOSED to have OTT fluf (being the 40k version of heroic knights), he simply takes it too far. While it is entirerly acceptable to write fluff making a certain character a crazy awesome badass, Ward goes a couple steps too far, and instead of a character being a crazy awesome badass (e.g. Commissar Yarrick), it circles around to the character being considered a Mary Sue~ish persona.

The best examples fluff wise would probably be Marneus Calgar in Vanilla Marines, and Lord Draigo in Grey Knights. Both are clearly meant to be badasses, however Ward went way too far, with Calgar doing the beat down of an Avatar, and Draigo doing....well everything Draigo did. (Starting WITH the Mortarion thing, and the whole Realm of Chaos section just mkaing his fluff worse and worse.)

Oh, no. This is the fist I've heard. The BA codex writer is now doing GK? That means it's probably going to be the BA codex stepped UP a notch in ludicrousness.

As if all of the crazy BA stuff wasn't enough...

Yeah, the fluff in the leaked codex is frankly horribly awful...I'm reserving judgement on cheesiness until we know what some of the equipment does. But...even now, an interpretation of the rules means you can have unlimited numbers of 3 man GEQ squads in a Rhino, Razorback or Chimera, each man carrying a special weapons. That's not even going into the laser monkeys....

For the love of all that is holy, please don't start the 'unlimited' argument again. I can only take so much willful stupidity in a week...

Hrmm.... how do I get this man to write Codex: Tau Empire...

To me, his biggest failing is as a WFB writer. He wrote such bad books for WFB.

Da Boss wrote:To me, his biggest failing is as a Human Being.

Fixed it for ya!

Not a very constructive addition to the debate, I feel.

ChrisWWII wrote:Yeah, the fluff in the allegedly leaked codex is frankly horribly awful...I'm reserving judgement on cheesiness until we know what some of the equipment does. But...even now, an interpretation of the rules based on an allegedly leaked book that hasn't even been releaseed yet means you can have unlimited numbers of 3 man GEQ squads in a Rhino, Razorback or Chimera, each man carrying a special weapons. That's not even going into the laser monkeys....

Let's keep it real, shall we?

I know, I know. I hated that debate as much as anyone else in that thread. And, yes pretre, we don't know what it is. Hence why I said 'an interpretation'. I was using it as an illustraton of what was wrong with that codex.

Not that the fluff isn't bad enough by itself....

But it is an illustration of what was wrong with 'that codex' that we don't even know is accurate. That's my point.

People are always getting all hot and bothered about things before they are even in stores. And it always turns out to be overblown.

Cottonjaw wrote:Hrmm.... how do I get this man to write Codex: Tau Empire...

Sorry this made me LoL.

Matt Ward sure does seem to know how to write them..

The quote he made about daemons being over powered made me lol, but the stuff in codex sm was terrible, he should stick to lotr...

davij wrote: he should stick to lotr...

Damn, that's just harsh man, you're a jerk!

I dont mind most of the BA stuff as i like fluffy armies so i dont tend to abuse the army list section, my biggest gripe is the pathetic excuse of a captain we have and all that ooh we're space vampires and our hardest character might secretly have i heart daemons on his boxers emphasis.

Maybe once he's written all the army books/codices, everything will balance

Doctor Optimal wrote:

davij wrote: he should stick to lotr...

Damn, that's just harsh man, you're a jerk!

Was a bit low wasn't it lol. To be fair, he used to be good back in the good days of WD...

What even happened to LOTR, I never see any talk of it on GW anymore. Did it fail because its minis kinda suck compared to WFB and 40K?

I want to beat him with a newspaper...

I do remember when he was cool, back when people played LOTR and the trial assault rules came out.

Ulver wrote:Maybe once he's written all the army books/codices, everything will balance

This would be a scary thing. Imagine if every army had fast transports, enhanced deep striking shenanigans, crazy abilities that removed models from play and T7 super badasses….40k would basically devolve into “whoever gets their lololol rush first wins”. Now that would be scary.

The man has an obsession with Ultramarines and overpowered super-characters that can smite the most powerful of foes in one go.
- Calgar holding a gate from an ork waaagh for a night and a day. Yeah... no.
- Sanguinor bringing the hurt on an Avatar of Khaine, and in another incident taking out one of Khorn'es most favoured Bloodthirsters. Not only is this ripping on the Angel of Death for DA (search this online, I swear it's just canon) but it's like, this guy is supposed to be immortal.

The Space Marine codex has too many references to the glory of the Ultramarines for my liking and the Blood Angels one has some REALLY silly army reports. Like the rather stupid one of Dante allying with crons to defeat some random nids from nowhere, then not finishing off the necrons.

What really makes me shiver is that GW might pay him exactly for that mary sueish fluff and overpowered armylists - because they think it will sell better to 5-year-olds...

I hate his stuff. It isn't possible to take his fluff seriously, and creating more and more new uber units doesn't really add much to the game, either.

In my opinion, he should be fired today.

To be honest...its been quite a long time since I've read any good codex fluff. Characters are either stupidly overpowered....or underwhelming for their fluff's position.

Why can't authors get that nice middle spot? I blame the 40k background personally. Its pretty hard to make a character seem badass without them doing something utterly ridiculous. Lord Draigo is a good example. Its difficult to come up with written examples to explain just how badass he was.

"Oh yeah? he defeated a Greater Daemon single handedly?...that all? [INSERT NON-GK SPACE MARINE HERO] defeated one of those before single handedly. So what?"

I dislike Matt Ward; but I think the blame with this is the Fluff itself.

Jaon wrote:What even happened to LOTR, I never see any talk of it on GW anymore. Did it fail because its minis kinda suck compared to WFB and 40K?

It failed because it was a franchised tie-in to a movie series that ended 8 years ago, yet it's somehow rated as a "core" game. It probably literally has less players than most of the "Specialist Games".

Maybe with The Hobbit coming out in 2012 (?) it'll get a boost, but except for Smaug at Bree and the Goblins at the end, it doesn't really have the same sort of epic battles that LotR did.

EDIT: And Bree hardly counts, honestly. It was just "Archers, fire!" followed by "Archers, ON fire!" until whats-his-name pulled out his Mary Sue arrow and one-shotted a fething dragon.

...Hmm, maybe Ward does belong in LotR.

Doctor Optimal wrote:

EDIT: And Bree hardly counts, honestly. It was just "Archers, fire!" followed by "Archers, ON fire!" until whats-his-name pulled out his Mary Sue arrow and one-shotted a fething dragon.

.

Wasn't Bree, it was Long Lake, anyway, Bard obviously had heroic killing blow.