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.

'lo thar

I'm pretty new the 40k, only about 3 months and already I have heard a lot of "bad things" being aimed at matt ward.

Just wondering why? I don't really know anything myself, but I do know about the high pricing of miniatures, ESPECIALLY here in Oz. And there is some god awful gak in the BA codex. Did he have something to do with one of these?

Any info that can help me refine my hatred would be wonderful

Draigo and the GK codex in 5th.

People hate him because his vision of 40k doesn't line up with their vision of 40k. That's really all there is to it.

Also, "this thread again?"...

Space marine codex and it's 12 man landraiders.
Ba codex for the deep striking landraiders.

His fluff - I'm really not a fan of the sanguinor. Rather than making Dante a very good character, he instead invented a spooky blood angel who flies down from the heavens when all is lost, then he flies away again. He's been around for millenia, only we'd never heard of him...
He also invented the 'keep hitting you until your whole squad is dead' dreadnought.

Because for some reason people venerate Phil Kelly, and for some reason have forgotten that other people have made incredibly OP armies.

In general though it comes down to the fact that he wrote the 5th edition codex and people got butthurt over a few lines of code about the ultramarines that made them feel sad over their own special snowflake chapters, and thus because there's more space marine players, they raged until it became a common joke.

I believe Mat entered the game writing rules for Lord of the Rings, back when that was relevant. I was never too interested in the game so I'm not in a position to criticise his work. If anybody played, specifically in the Return of the King stage, perhaps they can give an account of his early rules writing.

Then he moved to Fantasy battles and co-wrote the Wood Elf book. We might laugh at it now but when that book was released it was right at the top of the power curve and extremely frustrating to play against, essentially being a skirmish shooty army in a land of slow regiments. Of course he was only a co-writer and so it is not fair to give him full blame, but the book was more powerful than it needed to be.
Next sees his first independant project by writing the 7th Edition Orcs & Goblins, which went down in history as one of the weakest, blandest and unrewarding armies in the game. Honestly, I would have preferred no update and simply keep the 6th Edition book. Units were overpriced, nothing 'new' was really added and Animosity was absolutely devastating to the army, removing control from you 1 in 3 times. I haven't got the source for it but I understand he said that he just didn't like Orcs very much in an interview and that the state of the army was simply because they needed a new book, rather than any passion or drive on his part.

Then I believe it was relatively quiet period until the 5th Edition Space Marines. Many people lay blame at him for the obvious bias towards Ultramarines in fluff and content, 3++ Stormshields or the obnoxious strength of Vulkan. We also see some truly horrific fluff writing like the legendary 'Spiritual Liege' line, Calgar beating down an Avatar or Eldar getting written as morons in their big battle scene. I don't really blame him for a lot of this since the fluff was mostly taken from 2nd Edition and the power level was alright.

However, Blood Angels are soon released and they come out as the over-the-top, glam-rock guitar solo of Marines. Mephiston gains a Daemon Prince profile with the size of a standard Marine, Dreadnoughts gain the ability to shred entire units at a time, Land Raiders and Dreads gain the ability to fly and the army gains the cheapest Marines/Razorbacks in the entire game. Unless you were playing against Vulkan it was pretty much 'better' than the standard book without really missing out on anything. We see that Sanguinius is apparently an immortal ghost now, or that Dante can cleave apart Khorne's favourite Bloodthirster without issue.

Then came Daemons and the death of 7th Edition. 'Overpowered' doesn't quite do it justice: Bloodthirsters manhandle *everything*, Flamers could shoot a unit down every turn, Plaguebearers simply wouldn't die and one of the best abuses of the magic phase any army could pull off.

Grey Knights apparently written as an apology to Daemon-haters everywhere, this represented the peak of wonky game mechanics supporting stupidly heroic macho-warriors. I'm sure we all remember Draigo rampaging through the warp and cheerfully dispatching Primarchs, or the introduction of purity 'tiers' where even an incorruptible warrior has people purer than him.



I'm getting tired at this point but after all these travesties, we still have Necrons taking advantage of near enough every single rule of 6th Edition and a complete fluff rewrite.
Then, the Daemons rerelease which came across as yet another apology, nerfing them into the floor while further ruining the internal balance and apparently devoid of any passion or enthusiasm. This is then further nailed in by the High Elf release, which was surprisingly tolerable other than a Banner specifically designed to *ruin* Daemons in a competitive format and generally held to be the most imbalanced magic item written under 8th Edition.

So yes. Plenty of reasons.

The internet hates everything. It's just a pile of screaming monkeys.

honestly I don't have a problem with Him. His fluff writing in general is OK, but there are a few rough edges. People always complain about rules in their Codex, regardless of whoever wrote it, so really take no notice of the people who whine. This is GW's game. GW hire Ward to write their books. They like it and print it. Nobody forces you to play 40k. If you don't like it then pack your bags and play another tabletop game, this is how GW want it (or whoever is in charge of actually writing the books/making the models/bringing an awesome tabletop game to the table).


And yes Walrus "this thread" again. I'm just as sick of reading them as you are. Nobody cares if you like Ward or not, just play 40k as it is and appreciate all the good stuff that's in it.

sound like a now, but I just wanted to get some things straight before this becomes a viral thread.

I can see why people hate the fluff, and admittedly it is a bit over the top, but his more recent work on the Iyanden book shows to me at least that he CAN write decent background. My only gripe is this:

"And so it is"
"And so it was"
"And so"
"And so"
"And so"

... MY GODS, MAN. Expand your vocabulary.

As stated by the poster a couple above me;

- WHFB Daemons in 7th were a cheesefest to end all cheese fests, and kind of broke the game for a while.

Space Marine players who actually liked chapters other than Ultramarines kind of got the boot in C:SM.

Blood Angels lunacy.

Turning the Grey Knights from cool, mysterious space paladins that were difficult to play well into "NYURR I RUN AROUND CARVING NAMES INTO PRIMARCH'S HEARTS" Draigo and a few other bs rules. (Hi I'm a plasma siphon.)

While the Necron codex -looked- good, when he wrote (or co-wrote) the rules for 6th edition it boosted them to obscene levels of power.

The Iyanden supplement is alright, even if it doesn't line up with (and at a couple places contradicts) the vanilla Eldar Codex.

A lot of the grief with ward, from my point of view, is that most of his fluff revolves around what he makes being "better" than anything else (Ultramarines, Grey Knights) and packing the crunch with really strong units that stand on weight of being ludicrously powerful as opposed to standing on the weight of functioning together as an army.

when I first got into fantasy in a serious way, back around 2006, I decided to pick up Tomb Kings. Despite the fact that they were an older uphill battle type army, they were undead Egyptians, so, yeah.

My buddy picks demons. Just his favorite pick. We get our books (his was hordes of chaos at the time) and buy a few models. 1 month later, Demons of Chaos comes out.

I never ONCE beat him. Not one time. Historically, Demons stacked up well against Tomb Kings, but his book was unbeatable. I tried EVERYTHING against it over the course of 2 years and never once was able to win against him. Everything in that book was lightyears ahead of what my TK could do. Better fighting (by far), better magic (by far) and even better shooting (not even close).

That's why I'm not a Ward fan. I remember someone asking him in an interview why demons were so powerful, and his response was "well, it would be a shame if they weren't". Sums up his writing philosophy quite nicely. He seems to just write whatever he wants without any sort of acknowledgment of existing mechanics or lore. That's why most people just don't like the guy.

He has just this little bit of a tendency to write overpowered codices with bastardised fluff.

 PrinceRaven wrote:
He has just this little bit of a tendency to write overpowered codices with bastardised fluff.

perhaps some of the fluff is a bit off colour, but personally I don't mind it. Nor do I think that the codecies he has written are overpowered. I've never had a problem with Blood Angels (and I have played against BA a lot) and the only time I lost to GK was when I didn't think my list out properly (I brought Leman Russ battle tanks against a terminator army when I should have brought some plasma gun vets).

the Ward story is an internet swollen pile of rubbish. People should stop moaning when they lose against someone who uses a Ward codex and try and figure out how to beat it. If I can do it, anyone can.

OP, as you said you're new, but these threads pop up about once a week or two. You can likely use the search and find pages of hatred on him. A nutshell, as explained already:
-7th edition fantasy daemons broke the game
-7th edition fantasy O&G were boring and awful because he admitted he didn't like them
-blood angels were busted when they came out
-GK (especially Draigo+bloodtide)
-Necrons are dirty beyond belief in 6th. Of course, it's my understanding they ran things when they were first created though (before my time in 40k), so that may have been a company nostalgia decision
-fluff is awful. Truly heinous.
-8th edition daemons are incredibly hard to use well and he did a 180 on them
-high elves written to massacre daemons without a prayer.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meme

People like to use Matt Ward as a shorthand term for 'rules/fluff I don't like' because that's what a bunch of people around them on the forum have been doing for awhile too.

You're not going to get a ''real answer'' to this qustion, because nobody actually has one. You'll get alot of conjecture being passed off as fact, like you've seen in this thread, which is just a bunch of post-hoc justifications for a meme that caught on a couple years ago.

People certainly weren't looking at the *wood elf WHFB codex* (bahaha) and saying "Hmm this Matt Ward guy sure contributes to overpowered rules!" and nobody was really critiquing the miles of derivative/awful/boring/copy-pasted fluff that's come in the literally dozens of books before the GK codex existed with the same kind of fervor and per-author attribution that you see since the Ward thing caught on. We don't even have a legitimate source that shows 100% how those rules come about anyway.

General Annoyance wrote:

 PrinceRaven wrote:
He has just this little bit of a tendency to write overpowered codices with bastardised fluff.

perhaps some of the fluff is a bit off colour, but personally I don't mind it. Nor do I think that the codecies he has written are overpowered. I've never had a problem with Blood Angels (and I have played against BA a lot) and the only time I lost to GK was when I didn't think my list out properly (I brought Leman Russ battle tanks against a terminator army when I should have brought some plasma gun vets).

the Ward story is an internet swollen pile of rubbish. People should stop moaning when they lose against someone who uses a Ward codex and try and figure out how to beat it. If I can do it, anyone can.

Did you play them when they came out or recently? Both codices have suffered from the change to 6th and new codices being released, especially Blood Angels which have done a complete turnaround.

I like Ward's books, I don't care about the fluff. I'll read it, sure. But I don't get nerd rage, butthurt about the stuff. When he makes a codex almost all the units are able to be put on the field. With few "fluff" units(crap that is light and is there to just take up a unit slot). I don't understand why Phil gets more praise over Matt. Phils books have some super strong points and some run of the mill copy/paste units but 50% of the other units are usually unfieldable or straight fails.
These opinions are coming from someone that plays the game for being a game, not a hobby. I play GKs and CSM and they are each on one end of the spectrum. GK: great internal balance, CSM: some OTT units, everything else is bad or falls to mediocrity.

Phil should write the fluff, Matt all the rules. If everyone is OP, no one is OP.

@Prince Raven - I have played both in 6th, but I don't really think there is much difference. And even if there was, then you can't blame Ward for it. He wrote the codex in 5th for the rules in 5th, he would have no idea if changes in the main rulebook would drastically affect the rules in his codex's.

Because he is getting paid for his work and brings out things an amateur like myself can do better and faster.

Poor fluff, poor rules and obvious favorisem of given factions are enough for me to disrespect him.

General Annoyance wrote:
@Prince Raven - I have played both in 6th, but I don't really think there is much difference. And even if there was, then you can't blame Ward for it. He wrote the codex in 5th for the rules in 5th, he would have no idea if changes in the main rulebook would drastically affect the rules in his codex's.

What I'm saying is that when the codices come out they were overpowered compared to the competition and basically instantly became the deck to beat.

I would hope that people would at least not actually "hate" the poor guy but merely disagree with his opinion and dislike what he's writing. I myself find some of his material a turn-off as I'm not a fan of such exaggerated levels of "epic". I think AlmightyWalrus already correctly analysed the situation as a clash of interpretations. The only thing I'm not sure about is how much of this actually comes from him, and how much is a change in attitude from the studio as a whole. That being said, he is "the new guy" (relatively speaking), and if the designers have as much influence over the IP's development as we are led to believe, then this change in the studio could well be due to him.

Something not yet mentioned in this thread: Matt Ward also had his hand on the 5E SoB "Codex" with its horribly nerfed wargear selection and certain unappreciated changes to existing fluff.

Well, my theory is that a few people started out criticising his more OTT fluff and OP units (because apparently no other Codex writer in the history of the company has ever done anything like that), and other people started following suit because it's fun to complain and jump on bandwagons.

I suspect a lot of people just type "MAT WARD LOL" without actually knowing what he's done in the first place. Plus, if someone was beaten by one of his army books, it's easier just to blame it on the fact it was a Mat Ward book because that saves the trouble of having to think about one's own mistakes.

Seriously, I can't speak for his WHFB work, but his "crimes" in 40K come down to a few bits of fluff and a handful of OP units that would scarcely fill a pamphlet. Like I said, things every Codex has.

The necron book just feels like half the rules he wrote down on a napkin after taking down a bunch of beers in a pub.

"Hunters from Hyperspace"??? Give me a break
Mindshackle Scarabs??
a CC focused unit in an I2 army that has shields that "return" overwatch fire???

Just always some crazy named rule that pops up when I play against them. Sometimes just feels he threw whatever he wanted in the book without any thought to how it fits into the whole context on the tabletop.

I am a BA player and I do enjoy the codex fluff it's a fun read but I agree with the previous statement about the Sanguinor. Kind of a goofy addition to the universe and I have liked BA since 2nd edition, they got along fine without him and that goofy ass looking model.

People need something to whine about, and Ward is a visible name.

 Fezman wrote:
Seriously, I can't speak for his WHFB work, but his "crimes" in 40K come down to a few bits of fluff and a handful of OP units that would scarcely fill a pamphlet. Like I said, things every Codex has.

I dunno, I reckon I could fill a pamphlet with about half of the Necron codex.

Fezman wrote:Well, my theory is that a few people started out criticising his more OTT fluff and OP units (because apparently no other Codex writer in the history of the company has ever done anything like that), and other people started following suit because it's fun to complain and jump on bandwagons.
I suspect a lot of people just type "MAT WARD LOL" without actually knowing what he's done in the first place.

The bandwagon thing is a possibility for sure - see C.S. Goto. However, I can't really agree with other Codex authors having such a ... let's call it a tendency to write weird stuff. Sure, you always had some OTT pieces here and there, but I am under the impression that it used to be minor "lapses" rather than a consistent approach.

Isn't it possible that Mr. Ward has "overstepped" the boundaries of what the vocal core of the fandom is used to and would condone? Which designer has actually evoked similar reactions in the past?

 Lynata wrote:

Fezman wrote:Well, my theory is that a few people started out criticising his more OTT fluff and OP units (because apparently no other Codex writer in the history of the company has ever done anything like that), and other people started following suit because it's fun to complain and jump on bandwagons.
I suspect a lot of people just type "MAT WARD LOL" without actually knowing what he's done in the first place.

The bandwagon thing is a possibility for sure - see C.S. Goto. However, I can't really agree with other Codex authors having such a ... let's call it a tendency to write weird stuff. Sure, you always had some OTT pieces here and there, but I am under the impression that it used to be minor "lapses" rather than a consistent approach.

Isn't it possible that Mr. Ward has "overstepped" the boundaries of what the vocal core of the fandom is used to and would condone? Which designer has actually evoked similar reactions in the past?

There is a very big difference between C.S. Goto(an individual who wrote novels and had seemingly had no oversight beyond an editor reading the grammatical side of the book) versus Matthew Ward--an individual who is part of part of the Codex writing team. It has been known for quite a long time that the Codex/Army Book authors are not working in a vacuum. They get contributions from the other authors as well as their own contributions.

To pretend that Ward "overstepped" the boundaries of what the neckbeards can deal with is stupid, considering that long before Ward ever started in the Design Studio you would find ridiculous nonsense in the codices/army books.

TL;DR version?

Get over this Ward nonsense.

 Lynata wrote:
Isn't it possible that Mr. Ward has "overstepped" the boundaries of what the vocal core of the fandom is used to and would condone? Which designer has actually evoked similar reactions in the past?

Well, what I don't understand is why, by the logic of the anti-Ward set, no designer has had such a reaction in the past. Plenty of people like to moan about individual units like Vendettas and Heldrakes, or about how apparently the entire Tau book revolves around shooting you off the table without you having a chance to do anything about it, but I don't see the names Kelly, Cruddace or Vetock being used in the same way as Ward, i.e. as a catch-all shorthand for bad design.

I would hazard a guess that Ward was just unlucky. Every book has its clear winners, a few units and rules that are so good they can feel almost mandatory, but unfortunately for Ward he also combined these with some small but obvious bits of silly fluff. Thus it wasn't just that he had written some strong units, the fluff examples could also be held up to accuse him of fundamentally misunderstanding the setting (which I also don't agree with, I think he probably approached the 40K universe from the perspective of "it's bigger and crazier and more grimdark than anything else out there" and was therefore overenthusiastic with his fluff).

Can we put a ban on these threads opening up every month or so? If your really curious google it, everything that has been said will only be regurgitated in the new threads

Kanluwen wrote:There is a very big difference between C.S. Goto(an individual who wrote novels and had seemingly had no oversight beyond an editor reading the grammatical side of the book) versus Matthew Ward--an individual who is part of part of the Codex writing team. It has been known for quite a long time that the Codex/Army Book authors are not working in a vacuum. They get contributions from the other authors as well as their own contributions.

If you'd read the previous post carefully, you would see that I was talking about the "bandwagon" theory rather than how these people work.

Kanluwen wrote:To pretend that Ward "overstepped" the boundaries of what the neckbeards can deal with is stupid, considering that long before Ward ever started in the Design Studio you would find ridiculous nonsense in the codices/army books.

And yet it is only this author who is regarded as that controversial, so what is your theory for this phenomenon?

Thanks for the condescending and insulting attitude, though.