Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

RegalPhantom wrote:
Man, I thought that people hated Ward.

People hate Ward's fluff and overpowered units, but internally his Codices tend to be fairly balanced (that's not to say they're balanced externally, but that's another can of worms).

Cruddace just throws a bunch of things in and sees what sticks and his unit pricing is terrible. Of the last 3 Dexes he did, the only truly good one is Imperial Guard whereas Nids and Sisters are "decent" but fairly limited.

 Luke_Prowler wrote:
Cruddace also wrote the Sisters of Battle WD codex, which wasn't exactly a graceful addition...

Nah, the Sisters WDdex is pretty strong. It's just very, very small.

 Furyou Miko wrote:

 Luke_Prowler wrote:
Cruddace also wrote the Sisters of Battle WD codex, which wasn't exactly a graceful addition...

Nah, the Sisters WDdex is pretty strong. It's just very, very small.

Well it was printed in a magazine.

Exactly.

I really don't know how the next codex will turn out. The few good units amongst a bunch or fail is pretty much where it stands now. I'm just really worried that they'll nerf what's good now and makes it at least playable.

I'm still pissed when Ward made the comment that "Even an elite shooty army like Tau will be jealous of Necron's firepower"

I think that if Ward got his hands on the Tau codex he would try to nerf Railguns to S8 AP2, give the Plasma Rifles the Gets Hot rule, and reduce the range on the Pulse rifle to 20".

I think its best to wait and see where this all leads... From what I understood the GW design studio was getting more collaborative with its rules, so maybe that'll neuter some of.Cruddance's cruddy writing.

 Savageconvoy wrote:
I really don't know how the next codex will turn out. The few good units amongst a bunch or fail is pretty much where it stands now. I'm just really worried that they'll nerf what's good now and makes it at least playable.

I'm still pissed when Ward made the comment that "Even an elite shooty army like Tau will be jealous of Necron's firepower"

I think that if Ward got his hands on the Tau codex he would try to nerf Railguns to S8 AP2, give the Plasma Rifles the Gets Hot rule, and reduce the range on the Pulse rifle to 20".

Oh come on now, Rail Guns would be 8,1. Plasmas would be 6,3 no gets hot. Pulse rifle would be 24"

Still god aweful but still ><

Sigh, two of my armies are gonna get neutered according to the rumours.
Cruddace - Tau
Ward - Dark Angels

They could go the other way and make things OP.

 Furyou Miko wrote:

 Luke_Prowler wrote:
Cruddace also wrote the Sisters of Battle WD codex, which wasn't exactly a graceful addition...

Nah, the Sisters WDdex is pretty strong. It's just very, very small.

It's average, the problem is that it has horrible, horrible internal balance and some completely stupid idea's.

Only able to use powers in your turn, not to mention not having a scaling power for games, and inability to retry powers in a turn

SC's far better and actually far cheaper than your normal HQ?

Battle sisters at 10 per squad and can take an Immolator that they can't fit in? And being pretty damn pricy for their statline as well.

Immolators losing Fast?

Inferno Bolts only for the Immolator with no options for it on other heavy bolters in the army.

Celestians being the same cost as a Grey Hunter yet being FAR worse and with an ability that only makes them "Barely" able to match space marine and can still only take two special weapons?

Condemnor Boltguns being completely useless.

No new units actually being added, while having a ton of options ripped out.

Sisters did seem like a completely unplanned update to me. Like they suddenly realized that they had one unit in two different armies with different costs and options. And their best option was to just remove it from the dex and accidently spilled to much white out. Then when they tried filling in the blanks, they realized nobody knew or played them and just started slapping in random rules.

I consider it a real slap in the face. Taking away and giving nothing in return. And again, the whole thing with having a dedicated transport too small to hold the dedicated unit really shows that.

My friend has had a sisters army for years and the WD codex so depressed him he gave them up and went to BA, cant say i blame him i played the WD sisters and easily cleared the table.

I hear the whole reason tau is taking so long to come out is that no one in the design studio really likes them and so they probably drew straws and cruddace lost.

Its a shame for the fans that their army being good/bad all depends on how the writer feels about them, when it'd make much more sense business wise to do the best you can on every army as you'd get more sales.

The funny thing is cruddance does okay stuff in fantasy, but he does horrible in 40k.

If the person working on the codex doesn't like it, it'll be sure to be bad. The chaos space marine codex turned out to be crushingly average, so they clearly didn't put much time into making it interesting, besides adding in random expensive daemon engines that they can sell for lots of money.

 Luke_Prowler wrote:
Cruddace also wrote the Sisters of Battle WD codex, which wasn't exactly a graceful addition...

To be fair, he probably did it under orders to kill off the army and ensure that all of the veteran SoB players ragequit and sell their armies so they'll have to buy the new SoB models when they get a proper update.

While that's certainly a possibility, considering the lack of new units it's probably just meant as a stopgap to change the glaring problems (old 3rd edition pricing and rules) and remove the inquisition so there wouldn't be two different stats between it and Codex Grey Knights (even though the battle conclave is just a gak version of henchmen)

Are there writers that 'we' do like?

 Krellnus wrote:
Sigh, two of my armies are gonna get neutered according to the rumours.
Cruddace - Tau
Ward - Dark Angels

Uh. Rumors say Dark Angels will be SM+Awesome

 DakkaHammer wrote:
Are there writers that 'we' do like?

In theory, but I haven't seen it in practice.

nomotog wrote:

 DakkaHammer wrote:
Are there writers that 'we' do like?

In theory, but I haven't seen it in practice.

They all have flaws, each one has produced overpowered codex's, some have revealed crap, some have made poor dex's. Going to count just the 40k.

Cruddance has the lowest rate amongst the ones due to his track record. OP (IG) UP (Tyranids) Complete Meh (SoB), but at the same time his internal balance is just as bad and there's no real customization because choices in his dex are "Auto-take" due to how good they are, or how poor.

Ward has a better rate, but due to the hate that diverged down from TG he's been hated ever since Space marines come out. He's got a higher OP track rate, but he has never made an UP dex. OP: (Necrons, Grey Knights), Medium (Space Marines, Blood Angels). His internal dex is mostly better than kelly or cruddance, but there's still a few bad issues (Such as purifiers cheaper wargear rate compared to troops)

Kelly has a rate that switches constantly. He has made UP, OP, and Meh, but he has horrible, horrible internal balance. The problem with his dex's often is that they don't age well sometimes, despite being blisteringly OP. Such as the fact that Eldar was horribly OP back in 4th due to skimmerspam but at same time, it showed its age very quickly, however he has made the one perfect dex of 40k so far, that being Orks. Originally OP (Eldar), OP (Space wolves), Good (Orks, DE, but DE didn't age well into 6th), and meh (Chaos).

Cruddance being the worst, nobody wants him to write their dex. People want ward because they know it'll at least be middle tier and the rest wants that sweet OP spot, Kelly can write a good book, but half the options will be crap and the other half will be either very good, or showing that it's meh, or it'll be middle realm.

If Kelly can just do what he did with orks for all his other codexes, he'd be great. He just needs to write his codexes exactly like he did orks.

Honestly I'd say Kelly is the best, you can't blame him for aging issues, and truely the only bad book hes given us is space wolves, but thats because he is a xenos writer forced to do a space marine book.

As for Chaos, I'd say that itis indicative of the new direction of the studio rather than his own writing. Compare the Chaos book to any of the hardcover Fantasy books and you can see that they are going for a more "tame" direction than matt wards craziness in his books would have otherwise implied.

Didn't Ward slaughter (fantasy) orks?

Im scared to research who that is.......

Hopefully, if he is writing this codex, it'll be the way of IG rather than SoB and Nids. IG at least has plenty of options and is sort of diverse. SoB is pretty bareboned and Nids look like Cruddy went, "Oh boy, I'm going to make these guys the most diverse codex ever!" and then ran out of steam halfway through the wargear options for the Hive Tyrant.

Oh, Cruddance does like IG. So maybe there will be some terrible Gue'vesa units in the list too. With nothing but lasgun options and over priced special weapoins, BS 3 of course for balance.

chaos0xomega wrote:
Honestly I'd say Kelly is the best, you can't blame him for aging issues, and truely the only bad book hes given us is space wolves, but thats because he is a xenos writer forced to do a space marine book.
.

Just not true. Dark Eldar has probably the worst fluff of any 40K Codex in the last 10 years or so with it's horrid loony-toons-black-hole in a box writing. Not to mention that it took the boredom of Long Fang spam to a whole new level with the even more ridiculous Venom Spam. I sometimes wonder why he even bothered including other stuff.

4th Edition Eldar more or less broke that edition with Cheese-Falcons. I am still scratch my had who anyone with even the remotest knowledge of 40K could sign off an assault unit like Mutilators.

They guy has been with Games Workshop for what? 10 years or so, and he's consistently proven that he doesn't have the slightest clue what he's doing. Let him do DreadFleet 2 and be done with it.

If he could just write anouther codex like orks... DE was actually well-balanced in 5th, but 6th gimped it hilariously.

Hideous internal balance thouhg, exactly like almost every odex - well, eveything bar orks - he has done

The mandatory 10 points upgrade on a venom to DOUBLE its shooting power? Unlocking dirt cheap, surprisingly durable troops with an HQ that you want anyway? then you have the downside...bloodbrides not being worth their points over their scoring sisiters, etc.

 Krellnus wrote:
Sigh, two of my armies are gonna get neutered according to the rumours.
Cruddace - Tau
Ward - Dark Angels

Tau with decent Fluff, somewhat odd unit choices. Overall bland and likely like the WD SOB dex; bland and somewhat static in list making.

DA with secret weapons like the Darkness Power Fists. Also they find a secret chamber in the rock with jetbikes and dark matter engines to make all their vehicles waaaaaay better than all those other guys and they have like these darkness shroud generators which make them look like shadows... Oh! they also use assassins now to hunt the fallen, like DCA but in power armour and cool like Chaplains... Yeah, Assassin Chaplains! That like ignore difficult terrain, move like jump infantry, and have these darkness blades which count as AP3 and ignore invul saves completely!