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I've been thinking about it.

Maybe Privateer Press/whoever has insiders at the GW design office. And when they heard that this newbie to 40k codices was writing the one for the most iconic GW army they offered the guy an offer he couldn't refuse. When the company stopped, he produced a decent codex.

Seriously, what explains the high-quality LOTR sourcebooks and then the Space Marine codex?

You can take your tinfoil hat off now. The aliens will no longer steal your thoughts and sell them to the lizard monarchy of Great Britain...

But seriously. No.

Maybe Ward had a little more restraint on what he did in LOTR as he *really* could not fiddle with the background too much (Guhlavar excepted) lest GW earn the ire of the Tolkein estate, who GW need more than they need GW and could quite easily pull the liscense from them.

No conspiracy to see here, move on. Though that being said I'm convinced Ward did get his hands on a WM rulebook and tried to implement some of their mechanics into 40k, without thought of the context the original mechanic is used in, simply because the rules sounded "cool".

Yah, no. I think Matt Ward just really likes having cool stuff. Unfortunately, he also doesn't want his cool stuff to die easily (who does?). If it did, it wouldn't be as cool. Because of this, he has a tendency to make his alterations to already existing creations a bit OP. He really tries to make something neat / interesting but at the cost of balance. His bias agaisnt SoB also shines through if you've read any of the fluff.

His change to the Necron follows the same pattern. He didn't like what the Necron were currently doing or how they appeared fluffwise; so, he changed them to make them seem more interesting as far as he is concerned. Personally, I like all the fluff changes save the whole Blood Angle fist bump. He had recognized them as being a shooty-march-forward type army so he exaggerated that and added options (such as cheaper troop options, more UCs, more choices for every FOC slot and different weapons). Unfortunately, he was so focussed on making an interesting army that he had again forgot about balance and to include important character flaws as far as the codex is concerned.

At least that is what I think happened.

Post-Script. I really hope GW isn't going the direction that battle-tech went with thier Clan Mechs when they were introduced. AFAIK, Clan mechs were introduced and intentionally overpowered so that players effectively got to "play" the storyline (sudden appearence of an unknown and more advanced enemy force was stomping mudholes). After some time of regular Inner-Sphere losses, the game was rebalanced to show players that IS tech was catching up and leveling the playing field against clanners.

War of the Ring is incredibly abusable. Wood Elves, 7th ed Orcs and Codex Space Marines are examples that he CAN write fairly well balanced codeci. I think GW's problems comes from having all of these codex and army book writers who don't know their rules half as well as half of the people on this website (they really don't) and don't have a consensus on what 40k is and it's balance. It's fairly clear they all meet up at one point and decide a direction, but then someone has to captain the ship and everyone else is busy with their own work, so they are on their own for the most part. I got this from a friend of mine who talked to Jeremy Vetoc and how Jeremy didn't realize he made the Hellpit too strong until after the release and how he kept forgetting rules when writing the orc army book. Jeremy sounds like a great guy, but I think GW's way is getting in the way of balance and it's not necessarily just the individual designer's fault.

The Space Marine codex is very well written and designed for playing the game. The fluff is terrible though.

The problem I find with most of the fluff now is how often it changes.

Since I started playing, the fluff to most armies have changed to the point that I don't even relate to the armies that I collect anymore on a fluff level. The fluff used to be what drew me into an army, but now its solely the models and game play.

For a WHFB example, the Emperor of the Empire went from being a mediocre ruler to the greatest warlord the Empire has ever seen and rivals Sigmar in power.

Getting back to the original topic of marines codex, I can say that I passed over all the fluff pages.

I recon that I have been reading space marine fluff for the better part of 15 years and I don't need to read it again. But then a new play says something to me, in relation to fluff, and I have no idea whats going on.

Oh great, this thread again?

We don't need another thread on this.