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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?