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Mat Ward writes a good book, most of the time, from a rules perspective. There usually isn't a "bad" Mat Ward unit, just an average one with others being amazing or useful.

Jervis, with his little weekly ramblings in the WD I skim at the local game joint, seem full of "smug".

[tongue in cheek] Jervis and Pals...



[/tongue in cheek]

All of the other talent at GW left to do their own things. I look forward to each of their products.

 Grimtuff wrote:

 MeanGreenStompa wrote:
What I have been hearing is that this is going to be 'from the writers' and was requested by them as a redo of a product they were not satisfied with, which gives me an enormous amount of hope for 7th. Provided that means 'improving gameplay' and not 'improving our idea of forging a narrative'...

I personally want to see a good amount of the fluidity and clarity of 5th return, with accomodations to the new units in 6th, and with a sizeable kick in the nuts to the 'D weapon' rule, a very savage reworking of the allies chart to alter some glaring oddities and cut right back on the Battle Brothers rule and current handicapping of any non-imperium army that isn't 'taudar' and every vehicle in the game receive an extra HP. But that's just my wish-listing.

So, somewhat cautious, very optimistic from me.

I'm hoping for the best, but then I remember Mat Ward and Jervis are amongst those writers...

Well, it's not just a case of names like that, it's the perception of the game from the writing types inside GW vs the view of the game from outside. Many of these guys have known each other for years, they are hired, amongst other things, on their ability to socially interact and discuss and partially on their likeability, talking things through as they go. They just don't 'get' that folks could come to serious impasse over a rule in a game they've written and the conventional wisdom there is that everything should be talked over and compromised.

As someone who games at clubs, with pickup games at stores or sometimes even at tourneys, also gaming in America vs the UK, I find a great deal of difficulty gaming to the expectation/understanding of the established ethos of GW's writers, who expect you to have gentleman's agreement over prettymuch anything and place the responsibility of the nature of the game squarely on the shoulders of the players. This is not 'Matt Ward' (poor bloke) or the venerable JJ, this is the ethos of the company's creative types and I think it needs a serious shake up.

GW writers write the games from the expectation of a group of friends who know each other well enough to have arranged the game prior having worked out what bits they want to put in or not, have an entire day set aside to have the game and can easily reach accord over any problems with a quick mutually agreeable compromise being reached or toss for it on a coin.

Which certainly has it's place, I've gamed like that for years back in the UK with a group of guys I've known for about 20 years, it's not however, in my humble opinion, what 'The Gaming Hobby' is like, out there in the world, which is, due to it being a niche hobby, something you may well find yourself gaming against someone you've just met, with a totally different view on a rule to you, likely just as valid. It relies upon an ideal world situation that doesn't exist for many of us.

GW's view works extremely well for, say, roleplaying games, where there is no competition, the players around the table are not 'opponents'. Wargames are built around the basic premise of chess, you are trying to win. You are placed in adversarial roles by the nature of the game and a rule set for such a game should not weigh so very heavily on and place so much faith on, two potential strangers being able to find rapid consensus from an ambiguous rule.

My personal belief? GW writers should have a long sit down and talk about revising the strategy of relying on their players to be nice, balanced and reasonable individuals enjoying a Saturday together before heading out for a slap up pub dinner and instead, write their rules like they were facing Stelek or someone of his ilk across the table at the final of a tournament with a sizable cash prize. Writing tighter like that, exclusively rather than inclusively, and then allowing all expansions and random charts to be added on if the players agree/want it on it is the better idea to me than making anything and everything inclusive and letting the players hash it out over what to exclude. Writing based on a 'highly competitive or difficult' player as your potential opponent rather than a mate you've known for decades and been best man to is road testing your new car in really difficult conditions instead of a nice leisurely jaunt. You make things to withstand the worst rather than get by in the best circumstance.

Less help forging the narrative, more help ensuring fluid and intuitive gameplay.

 MeanGreenStompa wrote:

My personal belief? GW writers should have a long sit down and talk about revising the strategy of relying on their players to be nice, balanced and reasonable individuals enjoying a Saturday together before heading out for a slap up pub dinner and instead, write their rules like they were facing Stelek or someone of his ilk across the table at the final of a tournament with a sizable cash prize. Writing tighter like that, exclusively rather than inclusively, and then allowing all expansions and random charts to be added on if the players agree/want it on it is the better idea to me than making anything and everything inclusive and letting the players hash it out over what to exclude. Writing based on a 'highly competitive or difficult' player as your potential opponent rather than a mate you've known for decades and been best man to is road testing your new car in really difficult conditions instead of a nice leisurely jaunt. You make things to withstand the worst rather than get by in the best circumstance.

Less help forging the narrative, more help ensuring fluid and intuitive gameplay.

I smell a Zwei incoming...

Well written and I agree coming from traveling the US while playing 40k.

 Kanluwen wrote:

Oh boohoo, Mat Ward's still around. Look at the Wood Elf, Dark Elf, and High Elf books.

He's one of the few writers they have who isn't stuck in the Phil Kelly mentality.

He also wrote the GK and Necron books.

Fool me twice GW....


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 MeanGreenStompa wrote:
[
My personal belief? GW writers should have a long sit down and talk about revising the strategy of relying on their players to be nice, balanced and reasonable individuals enjoying a Saturday together before heading out for a slap up pub dinner and instead, write their rules like they were facing Stelek or someone of his ilk across the table at the final of a tournament with a sizable cash prize. Writing tighter like that, exclusively rather than inclusively, and then allowing all expansions and random charts to be added on if the players agree/want it on it is the better idea to me than making anything and everything inclusive and letting the players hash it out over what to exclude. Writing based on a 'highly competitive or difficult' player as your potential opponent rather than a mate you've known for decades and been best man to is road testing your new car in really difficult conditions instead of a nice leisurely jaunt. You make things to withstand the worst rather than get by in the best circumstance.

Less help forging the narrative, more help ensuring fluid and intuitive gameplay.

Indeed.

GW needs people to break their games for them in playtesting. There's just so many little things that I honestly cannot believe they missed (was standing right in front of Alessio when he admitted to not seeing people taking 2 Lash Princes... ). A tighter system benefits everyone and less arguments make for a more enjoyable game. No more "4+ I get to cheat" rolls.

 TheKbob wrote:

 MeanGreenStompa wrote:

My personal belief? GW writers should have a long sit down and talk about revising the strategy of relying on their players to be nice, balanced and reasonable individuals enjoying a Saturday together before heading out for a slap up pub dinner and instead, write their rules like they were facing Stelek or someone of his ilk across the table at the final of a tournament with a sizable cash prize. Writing tighter like that, exclusively rather than inclusively, and then allowing all expansions and random charts to be added on if the players agree/want it on it is the better idea to me than making anything and everything inclusive and letting the players hash it out over what to exclude. Writing based on a 'highly competitive or difficult' player as your potential opponent rather than a mate you've known for decades and been best man to is road testing your new car in really difficult conditions instead of a nice leisurely jaunt. You make things to withstand the worst rather than get by in the best circumstance.

Less help forging the narrative, more help ensuring fluid and intuitive gameplay.

I smell a Zwei incoming...

Well written and I agree coming from traveling the US while playing 40k.

I also anticipate "a well written 40K ruleset is bad because the sky is yellow" type post in the near future!

Still, at least he's the minority, and can be shut down fairly easily, because his argument has no supporting structure when placed under close scrutiny beyond "I like my game this way, so feth the rest of you"

Isn't Ward broadly responsible for 6th ed? And you all hate 6th ed. So, yeah. (I'm no huge fan either but I quite like mysterious objectives, sue me)

 MeanGreenStompa wrote:


Less help forging the narrative, more help ensuring fluid and intuitive gameplay.

Well written, have an exalt sir.

 Grimtuff wrote:

 Kanluwen wrote:

Oh boohoo, Mat Ward's still around. Look at the Wood Elf, Dark Elf, and High Elf books.

He's one of the few writers they have who isn't stuck in the Phil Kelly mentality.

He also wrote the GK and Necron books.

Fool me twice GW....

Not necessarily true. Remember that it was only recently that we got the whole "Written by the Games Workshop Design Team" thing but it has always been the case of multiple writers work on a book together.

And really, that's two books out of how many Ward has worked on lately?

 Bull0 wrote:
Isn't Ward broadly responsible for 6th ed? And you all hate 6th ed. So, yeah. (I'm no huge fan either but I quite like mysterious objectives, sue me)

No, in my opinion, the absence of Alessio is responsible for 6th ed. His was a strong voice for culling and simplifying and you saw it have a strong effect from 3rd into 5th as 40k traveled that path, the pendulum swinging back into 2nd ed territory so very hard was a result of his leaving and that 'side' of the debate being absent. (Alessio came to GW from the tournament scene, his very (perhaps too) simplified mantic warpath rules show his style and between it and 6th it's like 5th edition went through a transporter accident and was split into two rulesets, one totally stripped of all narrative and minimized on randomness and the other overwhelmed with it.

It's why my optimism for 7th is cautious. The 'narrative', 'work it out for yourselves' school of thought had free reign during 6th, I'm hoping it may have learned a lesson over it and tones it back a bit.

 MeanGreenStompa wrote:

 Bull0 wrote:
Isn't Ward broadly responsible for 6th ed? And you all hate 6th ed. So, yeah. (I'm no huge fan either but I quite like mysterious objectives, sue me)

No, in my opinion, the absence of Alessio is responsible for 6th ed. His was a strong voice for culling and simplifying and you saw it have a strong effect from 3rd into 5th as 40k traveled that path, the pendulum swinging back into 2nd ed territory so very hard was a result of his leaving and that 'side' of the debate being absent. (Alessio came to GW from the tournament scene, his very (perhaps too) simplified mantic warpath rules show his style and between it and 6th it's like 5th edition went through a transporter accident and was split into two rulesets, one totally stripped of all narrative and minimized on randomness and the other overwhelmed with it.

Alessio was also responsible for some of the crap like the overly complex "Bloodlines" for Vampire Counts, so saying that he was a "voice for culling and simplifying" is rather laughable.

 Kanluwen wrote:

 MeanGreenStompa wrote:

 Bull0 wrote:
Isn't Ward broadly responsible for 6th ed? And you all hate 6th ed. So, yeah. (I'm no huge fan either but I quite like mysterious objectives, sue me)

No, in my opinion, the absence of Alessio is responsible for 6th ed. His was a strong voice for culling and simplifying and you saw it have a strong effect from 3rd into 5th as 40k traveled that path, the pendulum swinging back into 2nd ed territory so very hard was a result of his leaving and that 'side' of the debate being absent. (Alessio came to GW from the tournament scene, his very (perhaps too) simplified mantic warpath rules show his style and between it and 6th it's like 5th edition went through a transporter accident and was split into two rulesets, one totally stripped of all narrative and minimized on randomness and the other overwhelmed with it.

Alessio was also responsible for some of the crap like the overly complex "Bloodlines" for Vampire Counts, so saying that he was a "voice for culling and simplifying" is rather laughable.

In what capacity were they overly complex?

Kan's limited one..!

Just joshing Kan, before your shields deploy!

 Kanluwen wrote:

Oh boohoo, Mat Ward's still around. Look at the Wood Elf, Dark Elf, and High Elf books.

He's one of the few writers they have who isn't stuck in the Phil Kelly mentality.

Banner of the World Dragon. 50 points for almost total immunity to magical damage. Able to be taken on a core troops Standard Bearer.
That High Elf character who automatically hits any "evil" army with S4 attacks just by being nearby.

Mat Ward is still making broken units/items. It's just he only makes them for the armies he is a fanboy of, hence why Dark Elves didn't get a banner of brokenness. In fact the Standard of Nagarythe, the Dark Elves most expensive magical banner (which costs more that the Banner of the World Dragon) also gives it's Special Rule bonus (Unbreakable, if I remember correctly) to High Elf Shadow Warriors and Alith Anar who are nearby. So High Elf units get a bonus from an item their opponent has.

Mat Ward has not got better at not playing fanboy.

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

 Kanluwen wrote:

Oh boohoo, Mat Ward's still around. Look at the Wood Elf, Dark Elf, and High Elf books.

He's one of the few writers they have who isn't stuck in the Phil Kelly mentality.

Banner of the World Dragon. 50 points for almost total immunity to magical damage. Able to be taken on a core troops Standard Bearer.
That High Elf character who automatically hits any "evil" army with S4 attacks just by being nearby.

Mat Ward is still making broken units/items. It's just he only makes them for the armies he is a fanboy of, hence why Dark Elves didn't get a banner of brokenness. In fact the Standard of Nagarythe, the Dark Elves most expensive magical banner (which costs more that the Banner of the World Dragon) also gives it's Special Rule bonus to High Elf Shadow Warriors and Alith Anar who are nearby. So High Elf units get a bonus from an item their opponent has.

Mat Ward has not got better at not playing fanboy.

Indeed, 3 words.

6th. Edition. Orcs. Nuff said.

 Bull0 wrote:
Isn't Ward broadly responsible for 6th ed? And you all hate 6th ed. So, yeah. (I'm no huge fan either but I quite like mysterious objectives, sue me)

No.

5th Edition was the "Mat Ward Edition" (having earned the right by writing the LOTR Strategy Battle Game before that).

But everyone hate 5th too at the time, so it shouldn't make any difference.

I think you mean 7th edition orcs. And the other end of that pendulum was 7th edition demons. Admitted to hating orcs and loving demons. We saw how that turned out.

 Zweischneid wrote:

 Bull0 wrote:
Isn't Ward broadly responsible for 6th ed? And you all hate 6th ed. So, yeah. (I'm no huge fan either but I quite like mysterious objectives, sue me)

No.

5th Edition was the "Mat Ward Edition" (having earned the right by writing the LOTR Strategy Battle Game before that).

But everyone hate 5th too at the time, so it shouldn't make any difference.

The original Lord of the Rings rules were written by Rick Priestly (Fellowship of the Ring), Rick Priestly and Alessio Cavatore (The Two Towers) and then Allesio Cavatore (The Return of the King). Got the books right here in front of me.

So really, all Mat Ward did was overcomplicate a well written, easy to learn ruleset by making army composition more limited and confusing when he "updated" them to make it so you needed a big rulebook and army books as well.

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

 Zweischneid wrote:

 Bull0 wrote:
Isn't Ward broadly responsible for 6th ed? And you all hate 6th ed. So, yeah. (I'm no huge fan either but I quite like mysterious objectives, sue me)

No.

5th Edition was the "Mat Ward Edition" (having earned the right by writing the LOTR Strategy Battle Game before that).

But everyone hate 5th too at the time, so it shouldn't make any difference.

The original Lord of the Rings rules were written by Rick Priestly (Fellowship of the Ring), Rick Priestly and Alessio Cavatore (The Two Towers) and then Allesio Cavatore (The Return of the King). Got the books right here in front of me.

So really, all Mat Ward did was overcomplicate a well written, easy to learn ruleset by making army composition more limited and confusing when he "updated" them to make it so you needed a big rulebook and army books as well.

Perhaps. Never played older versions, so I cannot comment.

Doesn't change the fact that Mat Ward was (aside from the overarching Jervis Johnson "guidance" and the "Rick Priestly legacy) the main writer for 5th Edition 40K, not 6th Edition 40K.

 timetowaste85 wrote:
I think you mean 7th edition orcs. And the other end of that pendulum was 7th edition demons. Admitted to hating orcs and loving demons. We saw how that turned out.

Ah yes, 7th!

Squigsquasher wrote:Still, given that they're trying to release a fix edition so to speak (after only 2 years) rather than just forcing us to wait the usual 4+ years for a new edition shows that they obviously realize they're doing something wrong.

Indications are that they are not fixing the collapse of game balance by Escalation, but reminding everyone that this collapse is intentional. I don't expect any fix.

MeanGreenStompa wrote:What I have been hearing is that this is going to be 'from the writers' and was requested by them as a redo of a product they were not satisfied with, which gives me an enormous amount of hope for 7th.

The release date suggests that this is going to be "from panicking accountants", but writing that in a memo doesn't have the same nice ring to it

Is GW doing that badly that it needs to rush through another edition of 40k?

Sorry for being slightly off topic, but I think it's more to address the insane game balance issues ATM.

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

 Kanluwen wrote:

Oh boohoo, Mat Ward's still around. Look at the Wood Elf, Dark Elf, and High Elf books.

He's one of the few writers they have who isn't stuck in the Phil Kelly mentality.

Banner of the World Dragon. 50 points for almost total immunity to magical damage. Able to be taken on a core troops Standard Bearer.

And? Empire can take a pretty nasty banner on a unit of Inner Circle Knights...which just happens to be Core. It allows them to completely ignore barding penalties and is a hell of a lot scarier than the Banner of the World Dragon on a block of Inner Circle Knights who have a Warrior Priest or a Grandmaster hunkered down with them.

That High Elf character who automatically hits any "evil" army with S4 attacks just by being nearby.

Read your rules correctly. Alarielle's "Chaos Bane" only applies to "every unit with the Daemonic special rule within 12" of Alarielle". She also suffers a D3 penalty to her casting attempts if there are "one or more models with the Daemonic special rule within 12 inches".
The attacks are also a D6 S4 hit distributed as for shooting attacks.

The only thing she has in regards to the "Forces of Destruction" is that she gets Heroic Killing Blow for her close combat attacks if directed against models from the Forces of Destruction.

Mat Ward is still making broken units/items. It's just he only makes them for the armies he is a fanboy of, hence why Dark Elves didn't get a banner of brokenness. In fact the Standard of Nagarythe, the Dark Elves most expensive magical banner (which costs more that the Banner of the World Dragon) also gives it's Special Rule bonus (Unbreakable, if I remember correctly) to High Elf Shadow Warriors and Alith Anar who are nearby. So High Elf units get a bonus from an item their opponent has.

Mat Ward has not got better at not playing fanboy.

Oh my God, they give a bonus to a rather pathetic High Elf unit and a character who almost never sees tables?

The "Standard of Nagarythe" does give Unbreakable to Alith-Anar(an over pointed Lord character), Shadow Warriors(an overcosted Special choice in an army book full of far superior Special choices) and the Shadow Walker(the upgrade character for the Shadow Warrior unit).

Shadow Warriors are subpar versions of Shades, and Alith-Anar is a joke. If you are legitimately complaining about the Standard of Nagarythe potentially making a unit of bow wielding skirmishers Unbreakable within 12" of your Unbreakable unit--I do not know whether to pity you or laugh hysterically at you.

Anyways I should point out that there is actually a "Banner of the World Dragon" equivalent in the Wood Elf book...except for the fact that it is a "One Use Per Game" item and you get the effects until the end of the turn or until the Standard Bearer(because it can only be put on a BSB) is killed, whichever comes first.

 Kanluwen wrote:

 MeanGreenStompa wrote:

 Bull0 wrote:
Isn't Ward broadly responsible for 6th ed? And you all hate 6th ed. So, yeah. (I'm no huge fan either but I quite like mysterious objectives, sue me)

No, in my opinion, the absence of Alessio is responsible for 6th ed. His was a strong voice for culling and simplifying and you saw it have a strong effect from 3rd into 5th as 40k traveled that path, the pendulum swinging back into 2nd ed territory so very hard was a result of his leaving and that 'side' of the debate being absent. (Alessio came to GW from the tournament scene, his very (perhaps too) simplified mantic warpath rules show his style and between it and 6th it's like 5th edition went through a transporter accident and was split into two rulesets, one totally stripped of all narrative and minimized on randomness and the other overwhelmed with it.

Alessio was also responsible for some of the crap like the overly complex "Bloodlines" for Vampire Counts, so saying that he was a "voice for culling and simplifying" is rather laughable.

You found bloodlines complex? Really?

Also, explain to me how that has any bearing on his influence on the direction of 3rd - 5th 40k?

Or are you just throwing more abstract gak into the wind again, because you like to contradict people whilst having no cause or argument behind why you're doing it?

Fantasy Battle debate in a 40K thread.

Possibly the very definition of off topic?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Puscifer wrote:
Is GW doing that badly that it needs to rush through another edition of 40k?

Sorry for being slightly off topic, but I think it's more to address the insane game balance issues ATM.

The two are inextricably linked. GW IS 40K right now, if the game isn't doing well because people are getting turned off by the various issues surrounding the rules, they're not buying stuff.

 MeanGreenStompa wrote:

 Kanluwen wrote:

 MeanGreenStompa wrote:

 Bull0 wrote:
Isn't Ward broadly responsible for 6th ed? And you all hate 6th ed. So, yeah. (I'm no huge fan either but I quite like mysterious objectives, sue me)

No, in my opinion, the absence of Alessio is responsible for 6th ed. His was a strong voice for culling and simplifying and you saw it have a strong effect from 3rd into 5th as 40k traveled that path, the pendulum swinging back into 2nd ed territory so very hard was a result of his leaving and that 'side' of the debate being absent. (Alessio came to GW from the tournament scene, his very (perhaps too) simplified mantic warpath rules show his style and between it and 6th it's like 5th edition went through a transporter accident and was split into two rulesets, one totally stripped of all narrative and minimized on randomness and the other overwhelmed with it.

Alessio was also responsible for some of the crap like the overly complex "Bloodlines" for Vampire Counts, so saying that he was a "voice for culling and simplifying" is rather laughable.

You found bloodlines complex? Really?

I'm not talking about the previous book, MGS. I'm talking three books back for Vampires. The cover with a mounted Blood Dragon at the head of a Wight army.

Y'know, the one where a Lahmian army could field heroes from any other army book as "Thralls"?

Also, explain to me how that has any bearing on his influence on the direction of 3rd - 5th 40k?

Pretending that somehow because he did okay with one system means that he should be lauded overall?

Oh, also let's not forget that when we got the first full Codex: Dark Angels, that was something that he had a pretty heavy hand in "behind the scenes".

Or are you just throwing more abstract gak into the wind again, because you like to contradict people whilst having no cause or argument behind why you're doing it?

I have a perfectly reasonable cause. I think Alessio Cavatore gets way too much credit when he was a pretentious tool. He gets remembered as some kind of savior for the game by the same people who usually talk about how "great things were back in my day...".

 TheKbob wrote:
Mat Ward writes a good book, most of the time, from a rules perspective. There usually isn't a "bad" Mat Ward unit, just an average one with others being amazing or useful.

Flayed Ones, C'tan shard...

 MeanGreenStompa wrote:

 Bull0 wrote:
Isn't Ward broadly responsible for 6th ed? And you all hate 6th ed. So, yeah. (I'm no huge fan either but I quite like mysterious objectives, sue me)

No, in my opinion, the absence of Alessio is responsible for 6th ed. His was a strong voice for culling and simplifying and you saw it have a strong effect from 3rd into 5th as 40k traveled that path, the pendulum swinging back into 2nd ed territory so very hard was a result of his leaving and that 'side' of the debate being absent. (Alessio came to GW from the tournament scene, his very (perhaps too) simplified mantic warpath rules show his style and between it and 6th it's like 5th edition went through a transporter accident and was split into two rulesets, one totally stripped of all narrative and minimized on randomness and the other overwhelmed with it.

It's why my optimism for 7th is cautious. The 'narrative', 'work it out for yourselves' school of thought had free reign during 6th, I'm hoping it may have learned a lesson over it and tones it back a bit.

Everyone keeps talking about "narrative". What about 6th edition "drives narrative"?

As far as I can make out, there are a few box-outs here and there that contain a paragraph about "forging a narrative".

I didn't buy 40K for a "narrative" game. I bought it for a wide-ranging science fantasy shoot-em-up skirmish kind of game. It didn't use to be talked about as a "narrative" game.

There isn't anything at that I would recognise (from my nearly 40 years of game playing) as being a narrative game. I can name a number of games that are about narrative and contain rules to support and drive it. 40K is not one of them.

Ok Kan, now Alessio has left, kindly tie all that back I to the release of a new edition, which is topic.....

 Kanluwen wrote:

 MeanGreenStompa wrote:

You found bloodlines complex? Really?

I'm not talking about the previous book, MGS. I'm talking three books back for Vampires. The cover with a mounted Blood Dragon at the head of a Wight army.

Y'know, the one where a Lahmian army could field heroes from any other army book as "Thralls"?

That's the one I was on about.

So, how exactly was that complex?

 Kilkrazy wrote:

 MeanGreenStompa wrote:

 Bull0 wrote:
Isn't Ward broadly responsible for 6th ed? And you all hate 6th ed. So, yeah. (I'm no huge fan either but I quite like mysterious objectives, sue me)

No, in my opinion, the absence of Alessio is responsible for 6th ed. His was a strong voice for culling and simplifying and you saw it have a strong effect from 3rd into 5th as 40k traveled that path, the pendulum swinging back into 2nd ed territory so very hard was a result of his leaving and that 'side' of the debate being absent. (Alessio came to GW from the tournament scene, his very (perhaps too) simplified mantic warpath rules show his style and between it and 6th it's like 5th edition went through a transporter accident and was split into two rulesets, one totally stripped of all narrative and minimized on randomness and the other overwhelmed with it.

It's why my optimism for 7th is cautious. The 'narrative', 'work it out for yourselves' school of thought had free reign during 6th, I'm hoping it may have learned a lesson over it and tones it back a bit.

Everyone keeps talking about "narrative". What about 6th edition "drives narrative"?

As far as I can make out, there are a few box-outs here and there that contain a paragraph about "forging a narrative".

There isn't anything at that I would recognise (from my nearly 40 years or game playing) as being a narrative game. I can name a number of games that are about narrative and contain rules to support and drive it. 40K is not one of them.

Well, I can see the theory, without necessarily agreeing with it, but they obviously feel rules like being able to use grenades on MCs to represent a heroic soldier lobbing one down it's throat (or other twee sci-fi cliche) allow the player to get more involved.

What they, IMO, completely fail to appreciate is that most players will impose a narrative on events as they unfold regardless of the rules attempts to enforce a story, and a solid ruleset that plays in an intuitive way and presents many tactical options for the player will result in the most narrative games.