Jeremy Vetock

Jeremy Vetock on Tau.

Hamster Man

Jeremy Vetock, also known as Buntain Simpson or the Hamster Man, is one of Games Workshop's core Codex writers. No one is quite sure when he turned up, as he wrote a bunch of stuff before being noticed. Over time, he's become one of the best-loved designers at GW, mostly because he hasn't had a mess-up as bad as Tyranids, Chaos Marines, Space Wolves, or anything by our dear friend Ward. In fact, he made the 6th edition Tau Empire Codex, which many people believe is easily the best Codex of 6th edition, and possibly the best Codex ever. He also loves Orcs & Goblins, as well as big games with lots of awesome scenery. Also of note is that he is American, and in fact pretty much the only one at GW. In stereotypical American fashion, he's a bit... uhm... large, leading to the theory that he is at least 30% hamster (possibly more).

Authorship

His CV at GW reads as follows:

• Warhammer: General's Compendium: Written way back during 6th edition fantasy, this book is THE hobby book for Warhammer Fantasy. 172 pages almost entirely of crunch, by gamers for gamers, with rules for everything from ladder campaigns, map campaigns, variants of tournament play, gamemastered campaigns, to naval combat(!), as well as assorted fluff units like the Night Goblin Brewing Cauldron which could turn other Night Goblins into Fanatics. What happened, GW?
• Warhammer: Skaven: A book clearly written with knowledge of 8th edition beforehand given how Skaven are still ranked in the top 3 of Fantasy armies. It did require a supplementary codex to be released however, jokingly called an FAQ given its huge length, to fix all the fuzzy rules that a rookie writer like Vetock made.
• War of the Ring: The first book with Vetock's name attached to it; unfortumately, it also has a certain other individual's name attached as well. No one on /tg/ knows how good it is, since nobody's played LotR since the early 2000s.
• Warhammer Fantasy 8th Ed.: Vetock (presumably) had a big hand in writing this book to save WFB from our Spiritual Liege's rampant cheese-mongering.
• Warhammer: Orcs and Goblins: Well received by some players, this army book is a bit boring and lacks of imagination, Vetock is clearly Goblinphile.
• Warhammer: Ogre Kingdoms - Another great book for fantasy pairing him up with Jervis Johnson. A solid book like the Skaven one that will likely survive for at least half a decade, strong internal balance, initally poor external but that's more likely caused by people actualy having to fight a competent Ogre army not the book being OP. Fate will not recognize his talents yet and put him under the thumb of a most treacherous evil once more...
• Warhammer 40K Apocalypse - Didn't know that, did you? But yes, Jezza did "contribute" to the game of cataclysmic battles, though no one knows how. It only mentions his name in the "written by" bit. Annoyingly, it also mentions Mat Ward's. This explains the unnecessarily large amounts of Orks and Ultrasmurfs used in the book
• Warhammer 40K 6th Ed - yet another book that bound Vetock to Ward (and Adam Troke, too); we are unsure as to the level of input Vetock or Troke had in writing this book as it contains a lot Matt Ward's signature dickbaggery.
• Codex: Dark Angels - Over much vexxing that the codex will be written by Matt Ward, TG breathes a sigh of skeptical relief to find out the actual author. Vetock's first forray into 40K codex writing and a sink-or-swim test of the half-hamster; the fluff is largely forgettable, but the crunch dramatically modernizes the Dark Angels for 6th ed. It also expands upon the Deathwing and Ravenwing and makes generic HQ and non-Death/Ravenwing-only armies worth playing. All things considered, it's a helluva good start!
• Codex: Tau Empire - Again, there was much gnashing of teeth in the horror that Treadhead himself might be writing this book, but we are relieved once again by the Vetock. And hot damn - would you just look at what he made? Ethereals that aren't useless (including Aun'va, holy shit Aun'va), a whole new level of giant robot and practically every single fucking thing in the book pretty much has its use! And on top of that, a lot of things in this army was designed to fuck up Wardian cheesy shit, while remaining totally balanced against regular armies, if you're not going to spam Riptides like no tomorrow. New Tau fluff, while being noblebright and optimistic, is filled with tiny hints of true grimdarkness hiding behind shiny facade of Greater Good, which is awesome. On the other side crunch-wise this codex is very powerful. Some may even say overpowered. Though aside aforementioned new giant robot nothing could be called OP by it's own, everything synegize VERY well with each other.
• Warhammer: Lizardmen Got a pretty good armybook that wasn't broken one way or another, and, much like your mom's mechanic, gave it a quick inspection and tune-up and left it unbroken,as usual pretty boring....
• Warhammer: Dwarfs A solid high mid tier update. Optimized it for 8th edition and removed a lot of the cheesey 6th ed magic defence items. All dwarf players breathed a sigh of relief when he not only kept their beloved rune system intact but gave them access to heirlooms as well. They then screamed his name in fury when they saw his work on the weapon runes.
• Crimson Slaughter: A Codex Supplement: The "better" of the two Chaos Space Marine supplements. If it is Vetock, it has also drawn from his previous work with Codex: Dark Angels since there is considerable cross-over with fluff and crunch. Where Dark Angels were the anti-chaos-marine army, Crimson Slaughter work as the Chaos-Marine-Anti-Dark-Angels army.
• Kharadron Overlords: He wrote the fluff of the new battletome and consensus is that these guys are pretty up there in terms of quality.
• Daughters of Khaine: Recently announced on Warhammer-Community, J. V. is once again at the works for AoS. One could be safe to assume that he can make the Daughters fit on Order.
• Idoneth Deepkin: They're Dark Eldar, but underwater! Bravo Jeremy. Though for different reasons (for one, it isn't the Deepkin's fault they're in their mess) and are overall more tragic.

On another note, he's also been credited for writing in Warhammer 40K: Darktide.

Codices He's Rumored to Write

• Astra Militarium: Hopefully, Our Lord Vetock will fix some of the issues left over from being a Cruddex; namely, toning down the OP stuff and making the Elites section viable.

First Impressions: The new codex is strong, with designs for the new rules released shortly afterward. It would be a safe assumption that Jeremy had a hand in it.

Later Impressions: The new codex absolutely sucks, not as bad as Orks or DE one, but still making AM mid-tier army, turned into low-tier by 7th Edition and formations everybody and their dog got. Many unique characters were removed, even the ones with models, the rest had their special rules butchered (no Stubborn on Yarrick, no Tactical Genius for Creed). Tauroxes and Bullgryns/ Ogryns cost too much to be taken (And not just in-game), Chimeras are nerfed and their points cost increased, artillery pieces cut, the Wywern is ridiculously overpowered while the Hydra is nerfed to the ground, Relics are either crap or overcosted, every tournament roster relies on the Pasknisher gimmick...Yeah, it would be safe to assume the guy who buffed Tau to stratosphere is responsible for this mess.

Due to GeeDubs deciding it would be a grand idea to not tell us who the Author of each army book is anymore, we may never know exactly what Mr Vetock is writing in the future with any measure of accuracy. This atrocity bought to you via your Spiritual Liege. Based on wording in the latest White Dwarf, it seems he'll be writing or at least aiding in the writing of the new Chaos Space Marine supplement.