Matthew Ward

This article is about something that is considered by the overpowering majority of /tg/ to be fail.
Expect huge amounts of derp and rage, punctuated by /tg/ extracting humor from it.

This article or section involves Matthew Ward, Spiritual Liege, who is universally-reviled on /tg/. Because this article or section covers Ward's copious amounts of derp and rage, fans of the 40K series are advised that if they proceed onward, they will see fluff and crunch violation of a level rarely seen.

Matthew Ward (Commonly known as Matt Ward) is ~~the fucking devil~~ a writer working for GW.

There are few things so capable of inflicting apocalyptic rage in the 40k community at large than this man, and its important to understand why. Almost any designer worth his salt at Games Workshop will be hated by somebody for something, and every writer's fluff will contradict somebody else's sacred vision of universe. Gav Thorpe will never be forgiven for Codex: Chaos Marines, Cruddance will forever be loathed by Tyranid players world wide, C.S. Goto will always be synonymous with pooping on a typewriter. But nobody, nobody, in Games Workshop will ever be so universally reviled as Matthew Ward.

Overview and Analysis

There are two things Matt Ward is infamous for: atrocious fluff-writing that induces vomiting and making broken rules sets for armies that turns them into table-flattening steamrollers.

Now there's nothing uniquely Wardian about either of these things, and from an outsider's perspective it can be hard to tell why /tg/ has singled him out for vilification. Games Workshop has been systematically introducing power creep ever since they figured out they could make people buy a new army every year, and the fluff has been rewritten so many times there's basically nothing original left (and really does anybody want to remember second edition?). No, its not what Ward has done in service to his dark masters, but how. We hate the zeal with which he's embraced GW's desire to rebrand everything 40k as X-treme and simplistic, the eagerness with which he turns the cheese wheel for each new release, the shamelessness of his trampling on canon.

In essence, /tg/ regards him as a living embodiment of every giant fuck-up Games Workshop has ever made.

Over hyping a single faction to the exclusion of all others, constantly blowing stories so far out of proportion that they lose all context or believability (especially in the face of previous fluff), constantly trying to one-up his last bullshit story with an even-less-believable story, and actively retconning contemporary writers who he disagrees with, Matt's abuses have been so consistent and numerous that it has caused /tg/ to see Ward as the herald of the impending demise of Warhammer 40k - as if he were one of the horsemen of the apocalypse, riding ahead on an endless wave of Space Marine releases.

In some anti-Ward threads, someone (whom much of /tg/ strongly believes to be Ward himself), has begun claiming that everybody is just hopping on-board a Matt Ward hate-bandwagon. There's even a picture of a bunch of anons riding on a wagon with Ward's face on it, blaming Ward for everything from the Judean People's Front to head lice.

To be fair: It is undeniably true that /tg/ hates Ward so much that most of us are willing to blame anything on him - the man is basically Satan to every fa/tg/uy who used to love the 40k fluff. However, the fact that the defender(s) of Ward are referring to the hate of Matt Ward as "bandwagoning" is extremely telling - how widely-hated does a man have to be, and how deeply-loathed before people feel the need to identify themselves as non-conformist groups of Matt Ward Not-Haters? The answer, of course, is obvious to anyone browsing /tg/: at this time, there are no remaining Ward sympathizers; at best there are indifferent/neutral parties who have accepted Ward's various crimes and who hope to move on with their lives and start families some day.

A History of Violence

Artist's rendition of the Ultramarines honouring their True Spirtual Liege.

2008

Ward busts onto the scene with Army Book: Daemons of Chaos, a work of such apocalyptic cheese mongering it is widely credited for single handedly breaking WHFB. Most people write it off as an overeager premier.

Ward is instrumental in the creation of the Warhammer 40,000 Rulebook, 5th Edition rulebook. While the crunch is more or less accepted (except by armor whores), much of the fluff openly contradicts previous works (sisters being all but retconned out of the universe for example).

Ward writes Codex: Space Marines for 5th edition. Thousands of neckbeards cry out in terror, and are silenced. While he manages to make this work mechanically stable, it comes at a terrible cost. Ward unilaterally decides to retcon massive amounts of Space Marine fluff and enshrine the Ultramarines (coincidentally his army) as the gold standard for a "proper" space marine. The new fluff reads like Ultramarines fanfic, portraying the smurfs as second to the Emprah in damned-near all regards, and that all Space Marines view Roboute Guilliman as their spiritual liege.

Indisputable proof that Matt Ward is going to a very special place in Hell when he dies.

2010

Ward doubles down on his Heresy with Codex: Blood Angels. All pretense of restraint is dropped and the codex is loaded with deep striking Land Raiders, flying librarian dreadnoughts, and ICs that can rip Abaddon's head off and shit down his neck. The fluff, while not the hate crime against neckbeards his previous work was, still manages to inspire rage by having the Necrons and Blood Angels become Super Secret Pony Princess Unicorn Best Friends Forever (temporarily).

Apparently Love Can Bloom for bishonen vampires and omnicidal robots too.

2011

Ward gives birth to Codex: Grey Knights, fusing the awful fluff and limitless cheese of his two previous works into a single abomination. While Psyfulman armies sweep tournament after tournament writefags rage impotently about Kaldor Draigo, Khornate Knights, and the unapologetic rape of ten years of canon.

Ward co-authors the new White Dwarf release of Codex: Sisters of Battle. He shows incredible restraint in not turning the codex into another creepy sisters snuff-fic like his previous works, but otherwise seems spent. The result is a fairly lackluster codex that can only function at low point values.

2012?

After a short break Ward is once again ready to brutalize your childhood. He is rumoured to be authoring both the Black Templar and Necron codex releases coming down the pipe. Brace for impact! Bring derp shields to full!

Why the Hate?

Hating Matt Ward on /tg/ is almost so universal it's painful these days. Although his fluff writing skills are beyond terrible, he has been improving as far as writing balanced codices go (arguably). Hence, one begs the question, why all the unfettered rage? Can't /tg/ just ignore his fluff and play the game for what it is? Why not just make up your own fluff and ignore the guy?

The problem with Matt Ward is a touch complicated, but the biggest issue is the way he writes the fluff. 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. A good player of 40k likes to put a certain amount of himself in his lovingly assembled and painted armies, and he likes his army to reflect his own sensibilities and his own ideals. That's what makes an army truly belong to a player – that's what makes them special.

Matt Ward takes those elements away from the player. The biggest rage-inducing codex he has made thus far is the Ultramarines codex, which explicitly stated that all chapters, excluding a few "abhorrent", behave and think in exactly the same manner as his army – Ultramarines, his chosen faction. He spelled out the organization patterns, the ideologies, who they revere and why, and then proceeded to tell the community at large that if they don't do it that way, then they're making their army wrong.

Players can still make their own factions, but with Ward's fluff, they'll always be bearing a black mark: the flaw of being unlike Ward's army. The flaw of being unique and of following a set of ideals that don't match Ward's. The flaw is canonized and inescapable, and Ward enforces it in all his writing with sincerity and vigor.

Even this would not be so much of a problem if it weren't for the fact that Ward just doesn't appear to be, well, very smart or insightful. Either that, or he doesn't seem particularly well-educated in what he writes. His ideas on what makes good warfare and tactics seem based around the idea that might is right and strength equates victory. His grasp of the subtle nuances of conflict and managing people revolve around things far displaced from reality. Ward's heroes lead head first, sacrificing all in frontal assaults that could be circumvented with more ingenuity.

While there is such a thing as a front-line general, the fact is that all of his heroes are like that, and ones that aren't seem both vague and unfocused. Furthermore, Matt does a lot of telling rather than showing. He tells us that Marneus Calgar is a patient 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, “Yes, that one was dangerous, I probably should have taken cover from that one".

The biggest offender of Matt's “tell not show” policy is Kaldor Draigo, the Grey Knights' supreme grand master, who's main personality trait is “badass”. 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 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 man can relate. Ward has simply declared him the best ever, and he has done so in canon, so it is so.

So Ward is hated for these among other reasons. He yanks the floorboards out from underneath your army, telling you that you're playing the game wrong and giving your army the wrong characteristics, and then shoves a handful of nothing against your chest, insisting that, yes, this is what you've been missing all along. He's that jerk that leans over your shoulder, breathing heavily and telling you where to move your guys. He's that sweaty asshole that cheats on his dice rolls because he's not there to drink beer and chat with you. He's that complete moron in the room that everyone pegs as a sucker, and he's the only one who doesn't realize he's not a genius. Matt Ward is that guy. Yes, that guy.