Editing Matthew Ward (section)

== Saving Grace? ==
To be fair, Matt '''can''' write reasonable fluff, like [[The World Engine]] ''(which this former Necron player admits is awesome despite ripping off Star Wars in several ways; the World Engine is just a renamed Death Star, and the Rebel Fle- {{BLAM|SPACE MARINES}} have to destroy it)'' , [[Castellan Crowe]] ''(who even this severely butthurt Daemonhunters-now-GK-player has to admit IS pretty fucking cool)'' or [[Trazyn the Infinite]]. [https://twitter.com/thetowerofstars/status/826052983565799424 And then there's ''Piotr's Folly.''] But for every good piece of fluff he's done, there's a bunch of [[Kaldor Draigo]]s and [[Khornate Knights]] to sift through - and in the eyes of a staggering plurality on /tg/, that's a big part of why he's disliked.

Another point: he's able to create crunch that is fine on its own (like the Space Marine codex, or Necrons before 6th edition buffed them to the stratosphere) and perfectly balanced against his other books (a trait he shares with Vetock). The special rules he writes are usually interesting, creative, and useful, making his armies very distinct from the others, and capable of doing things nothing else in the game can (y'know, things like all-assault marine Blood Angels, Furioso's blood talons and magna-grapple, teleporting Dreadknights or Necron Mindshackle scarabs, entropic strike and Deep-Striking in the enemy movement phase), usually adding more fun into the game (albeit at the cost of balance against other armies). In fact, he helped create other armies' special rules, like the Eldar Battle Focus. "Unwardified" codices of 6-7E tend to change those interesting things into something mundane, simple and often less powerful - sometimes to the point of uselessness (RIP mindshackles and assault troops) - or removing them entirely.

However, the fairest thing to level at Ward is the fact that, in his absence, GW hasn't stopped making shitty decisions with their intellectual property (and arguably started long before his tenure). This tells us it was less about Ward's flaws seeping into and contaminating the game, insofar as it was his employer using him as a scapegoat to take the heat off their profit-driven cheese-mongering. Yes, they needed someone to write these abominations, but every writer at GW has problems writing books at some point. In essence, Ward was the ''perfect'' author for GW's shift to an all-SM production across all lines: his admittedly bad writing gave us someone to blame and, at the same time, gave GW the sales burst they desired but couldn't figure out how to justify, lest their moves become noticeable by the community and a substantial revenue risk.

Oh, and he also had a hand in the plot of [[Battlefleet Gothic: Armada II]] and was a creative consultant for [[Vermintide 2]]- it tells something about 4chan and the internet that there doesn't seem to be much mention of that fact when the script is so widely praised. Odds are you've just found out by reading this very sentence.