Editing Matthew Ward (section)

==Why does /tg/ hate this guy so much?==

The reason why /tg/ hates this guy so much can be summarized into two different answers: the first and most painfully honest answer is because we need to blame ''someone'' for our woes, and he was the easiest target.

The second answer is because he messed up. A lot.

''A lot.''

For many, as can be seen by the plethora of /tg/-made chapters here on 1d4chan, the true appeal of 40k is designing a unique, colorful army with a rich history and engaging heroes. Good players of 40k like to put a certain amount of themselves into their lovingly-assembled and painted armies, and they like their army to reflect their own sensibilities and ideals. That's what makes an army truly belong to a player—that's what makes them [[your dudes|special]].

Ward does this too, but the difference is that he can write the official fluff and therefore gets to declare that his interpretation of said army is the "correct" one through the books he writes. Those heroes you may have liked before now seem like entirely new people, and the armies you liked before now seem to be an entirely different force you never wanted to play as. While this kind of change isn't anything new to 40K, the reason people single Ward out more for it is because the other authors (most notably [[Phil Kelly]]) at least try to keep some of the themes in the new books so that they feel like the old army with a new shade of paint, rather than some alien force wearing the skin of the one you used to like.  

By those metrics, it's widely believed that Ward made some of the most broken books ever published by Games Workshop (which is really saying something), and that he systematically destroyed the fluff to fit his own childish and incoherent vision of the [[Warhammer 40,000|40k]] and [[Warhammer Fantasy|Fantasy]] universes. Chief among his flaws is that his stories and rules utterly lack restraint (yes, even by the over-the-top standards of Warhammer). For instance, in his Necrons book, he casually introduced a small faction that has the power to detonate any star in the galaxy with a click of its fingers. But the most rage-inducing codex he has made thus far is the [[Space Marines]] codex, which explicitly states that all chapters, [[Black Templars|excluding]] [[Raven Guard|a]] [[Iron Hands|few]] [[Space Wolves|"aberrants"]], behave and think in exactly the same manner as his army—the [[Ultramarines]]. He spells out the organization patterns, the ideologies, [[Spiritual Liege|who they revere and why]] and just assumes that everyone else automatically accepts this radical shift in logic from thinking of the blue boys as "all-rounder guys with a Roman motif" to "TEH BEST CHAPTAHR EVAR". (It's believed by some that the codex was supposed to be called "Codex: Ultramarines" and was changed at the last minute by GeeDubs. It still would have been stupid, but we could have easily written it off as Macragge propaganda instead of spending 11 years bitching about it.)

Of course, players can still make their own [[Emperor's Nightmare|factions]] and think up whatever backstories they want for them, but with Ward's fluff, they'll never measure up to his smurfs.  This could easily be written off as the bitter anger of the old veterans, and on some level, it is—but when analyzing Ward's works, and his reactions to works by other codex and fluff writers, patterns quickly emerge, and one cannot ignore this.  The [[Chaos|flaw]] is inescapable, and Ward enforces it in all his writing with sincerity and vigor. 

Just ignore Ward's fluff, you say? I like your moxie, but the reality is this—players play fluffy armies, the canon lore ''does'' matter to them, and though try as they might to ignore the glaring fact that the canon fluff is forever altered by creating little pockets of what they believe ''should'' be the fluff, it all feels exactly as it sounds: like a personal delusion that ignores the facts. If you found out one day that your family actually doesn't exist, you could still maintain the belief that they do, but it will never be true. That's how it feels. And it is painful to play as these armies and to see their fluff changed so much, or to be reminded constantly when you play against them.  And Ward's codices have been very successful; look at the number of people playing Grey Knights, [[Blood Angels]], and Necrons these days, ruthlessly exploiting every bit of [[cheese]] they can find and purchasing all the new, shiny, overpriced models for them.

Besides all that, Ward's other major problem is that he just isn't a tactician. Only rarely does he try to write factions using any kind of thought to dictate their battle tactics (the closest he's come to writing military doctrine was the [[Necron]] codex), and instead maintains a "tell, don't show" policy. That is, usually, he'll just tell the player that somebody is a [[Creed|tactical genius]] without anything to show for it.  The majority of Ward's heroes lead head first, sacrificing all in frontal assaults that could be circumvented with more [[Reasonable Marines|ingenuity]]. Or, as another example, he tells us that Marneus Calgar is a patient [[Creed|tactical genius]] who considers the danger of an incoming projectile before taking cover. The image painted in the average person's mind in that case is one of Calgar analyzing a falling bomb until it strikes him in the head and explodes, at which point he decides, [[Derp|“Yes, that one was dangerous, I probably should have taken cover from that one"]]. <s>A person with two braincells would also probably understand that the metaphor was supposed to mean that Calgar is ready to take a blow when needed.</s> A person with two brain cells wouldn’t need to think about taking cover when being shot at.  Especially shots fast enough to defeat a Space Marine’s mental speed.

The biggest offender by far of Ward's “tell, don't show” policy is [[Kaldor Draigo]], the [[Grey Knights]]' Supreme Grand Master, whose main personality trait is supposed to be “badass”. [[Mary Sue|Without rhyme, reason, or feasible explanation]], Draigo simply exists as this whirlwind of enemy-destroying fiction in his codex. He pops in and out of the [[Warp]], wrecking everything, everywhere, without so much as a minute of exposition or explanation. Draigo is a concept—a meaningless one without any emotional impact. He's not a person or anything to which the average person can even attempt to relate because all Ward can write about is how badass he's supposed to be. Ward has simply declared him the best ever, and he has done so in canon, so it is.  Also, this isn't helped by the fact that the Grey Knights are already a very "tell, don't show" chapter. Ever since they were introduced, every amazing feat they perform has been kept under a whole chest full of locks and keys.

As for Ward's crunch, it goes without saying that it is unbalanced, with several armies he wrote (read: Grey Knights and Necrons) essentially flattening everything from here to hell, but the main issue is that they're essentially all over the place in terms of rules. (Although Ward could be excused for this in light of [[GW]]'s tendency to force new sets on people for the sake of profit.) The most damning example of his crunch-making skills isn't in 40K, but in Fantasy. When he wrote the 7th edition [[Chaos Daemons|Daemons of Chaos]] codex, it was so overpowered, so unbalanced, that it practically destroyed the edition's overall balance and forced GeeDubs to build a whole new edition to even begin to staunch the bleeding.

Whether you decide Ward deserves the rage and hate he gets, write it off as a sad consequence of his earlier work, pity him for having to work for GW, or simply don't give a shit is entirely your call. As ever, on /tg/, we urge you to make your own decisions.  Either way, he's not the best writer they have, but he's also not [[C.S. Goto|the worst]], and his reputation will follow him in his endeavors from now until time immemorial, for good or for ill. Of course, hating his Extreme Fuck Ups in lore and rule writing is one thing. Sending him angry emails and trying to find ''where he lives'' is another.

Overall, it has been a decade now. Just leave this man alone and grow the fuck up. GeeDubs have proven the past few years to still be as scummy as last time, so if you wanna bitch about something, [[Games Workshop|you know who to look for responsibility.]]