Editing Matthew Ward (section)

==Matt Ward's Writing "Highlights"==
[[Image:Zeist.png|left|thumb|This image is considered by most to be tacit proof that Matt Ward is going to a ''very'' special place in Hell when he dies.]]

For a while Matt Ward worked for Games Workshop and, initially, his works were not too bad.  Over time the problems arose, yet Games Workshop kept trusting him with more important projects.  They seemed to be under the misconception that Matt Ward was their best writer when his popularity (that many people kept using his armies) was more likely due to three things; they got him to write for their most popular armies with the players choosing to put up with Ward's flawed writing rather than give up their army and throw away the money/time they invested, the power-gamers loved his armies as they were overpowered at first and the newcomers to the hobby were ignorant of the previous state of the game, so they could have been unaware of how unbalanced it had become and how often Ward ruined the continuity of the game and retconned so much previously established lore.

'''2002 - 2007'''
*Ward authors a bunch of Lord of the Rings books. Revisionist neckbeards now like to point to them as damning proof of Ward's madness in its infancy, but mostly they're just forgettable. During this time, he also worked for [[White Dwarf]], his only real defining feature being his fondness for playing the [[Chaos|evil armies]] in battle reports. In hindsight, this was probably a sign of things to come. He also creates the rules for the Mumakil, the most fucking ridiculous unit ever, which can destroy entire armies in its movement. The Mumakil is eventually revealed to be so broken (and included in an army that already had its share of cheese) that it signals the beginning of the end for the Lord of the Rings system. 

*On a Warhammer Fantasy note, 7th edition Orcs and Goblin book (with really stupid fluff mistakes and the appearence of a wizard from magic colleges in Gorbad's siege, thousands of years before their foundation).  He also teamed up with the long-lost Anthony Reynolds to write the 6th Edition Wood Elves army book.  The fluff was passable and the crunch had a few gems.  (Thanks to Reynolds) 
[[Image:Ultrawank.png|right|thumb|Warning: Clicking this thumbnail may induce projectile vomiting and spontaneous neckbeard combustion.]]
'''2008'''

*Ward's [[Matt Ward's Decent into Madness|descent into skub and infamy]] begins with '''Army Book: Daemons of Chaos''', a work of such apocalyptic cheese mongering it is widely credited for '''''single-handedly breaking WHFB.'''''  No army could come close to beating it (Dark Elves and Vampire Counts, accepted as 2nd and 3rd powerful in the rankings, generally had to struggle to grab DRAWS!) and the failing attempts at Power Creep to match eventually broke the entire system so hard that Fantasy required a hard reset in the form of the massive shakeup that was 8th edition. Most people write it off as an overeager premier, and whether this was Ward's own work or management fiat remains a point of [[Derp|conjecture]]. It was bad enough that a balance patch of sorts had to be made in an attempt to keep the meta intact (it didn't work). This might've been where GW started to think that broken rules lead to increased sales (see Eldar in 7th edition for a concrete example of that) at the expense of their core demographic, though later on that just became their mission statement. Either way Ward didn't seem to get into hot company water over all this, and would go on to write several other books for worse then better (in that order). The saving grace is the fluff, which in general is quite good, putting Chaos in a better written and more grounded light compared to Ward's contemporaries.

*Ward is instrumental in the creation of the '''Warhammer 40,000 Rulebook, 5th Edition''' rulebook. While the crunch is more or less accepted, much of the fluff openly contradicts previous works (sisters being all but retconned out of the universe for example), and there's considerable attempts to promote [[Ultramarines|certain]] [[Doom Eagles|armies]] over [[Salamanders|the]] [[Raven Guard|others]].

*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 as [[Bullshit|the gold standard for a "proper" space marine]]. The new fluff reads like [[Ultramarines]] [[Twilight|fanfic]], portraying the smurfs as second to the [[Emprah]] in physical attribution damned-near all regards, and that all Space Marines view [[Marneus Calgar]] as their ''[[spiritual liege]]''. It is about this time that Ward's prejudices [[Salamanders|against]] [[Imperial Fists|certain]] [[Black Templars|chapters]] start to emerge for the first time.

'''2009'''
*Ward writes "War of the Ring" with Jeremy Vetock, a completely different style of game for the ''Lord of the Rings'' model lineup and the basis for some of the new rules in the 8th edition of Fantasy, which will help clean up after the mistakes of Daemons of Chaos. The book isn't bad, but the fact the Lord of the Ring's hasn't been popular since 2001-2003, cheesy units on certain sides (Elves for example), the book having its fair share of mistakes (mostly typos) and the fact that the system was so radically different from the previous versions (it played like a cross between the LotR strategy game and Warhammer Fantasy) prevented it from becoming all that popular. Ward is sent back to writing 40k and Fantasy.
[[File:Crons.png|200px|thumb|Apparently [[Love Can Bloom]] for bishonen vampires and omnicidal robots too. (Appropriately, in Jewish tradition Gehenna was a cursed place of heresy and corruption.)]] 

'''2010'''
*Ward doubles down on his [[Heresy]] with '''Codex: [[Blood Angels]]'''. Any and all pretense of restraint is dropped and the codex is loaded with deep striking Land Raiders, flying librarian dreadnoughts, and ICs that can unscrew [[Abaddon]]'s head and shit down his neck. Ward devises new weapons and abilities for the blood angels, giving them evocative names like blood fists, blood talons, blood reavers, blood croziuses, blood lances, blood boil, bloodshard bolts, and bloodstrike missiles. That's right. "Bloodstrike" (See [[Space Wolves|Codex: Wolf Wolves]]). 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 [[My Little Pony|Super Secret Pony Princess Unicorn Best Friends Forever]] (if only temporarily). As fate would have it, this work will not survive the next edition too well. 
[[Image:CryingKnight.jpg|thumb|left|We feel his pain. :(]]

'''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 Psyflemen sweep tournament after tournament, writefags rage impotently about [[Kaldor Draigo]], [[Khornate Knights]], and the unapologetic rape of over ten years of canon.

* Ward co-authors the new [[White Dwarf]] release of '''Codex: [[Sisters of Battle]]'''. He shows incredible restraint by giving the sisters some respectable fluff, but compensates by basically reverting the Witch Hunters to 2E. The force org chart is gutted out, allies are removed, and the best strategies are promptly eliminated (with a bit of help from the [[Nerf|nerfer]] in chief [[Carnifex|Robin Cruddance]]).

* Ward next turns his fell hand to the [[Necron]]. He ups the ante again by ''completely'' rewriting their backstory, presumably while [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EGC09B810Yk&t=3m20s humming to himself] with a shit eating grin plastered to his face. The crons are now insane Tomb Kings, '''IN SPAAAACE''', who [[Rape|want your body]]. Oh and they turned the C'tan into [[pokemon]]. ''Yea''. Mechanics-wise the release fares surprisingly well, trading away some of the more egregious cheese of 3E (Monolith Death March) in order to eliminate its shittiest design flaws (Phase Out), some argue that it changes Necrons to the point that it would've been easier to change their name altogether and you know... some people could've taken up Necrons because they liked them as they were.  Anyway, in its few improvements, the fluff manages to dodge [[Matthew_Ward#Why_does_.2Ftg.2F_hate_this_guy_so_much.3F|Matt Ward's greatest flaw.]] 
[[File:HE_Up.png|thumb|right|[[/tg/]] quickly caught on with this. Godspeed you magnificent neckbeards.]]

'''2012'''
* Matt Ward teams up with Adam Troke and Jeremy Vetock to create '''Wardhammer 40,000 6th Edition'''. The whole rulebook promptly turns Codex: Necrons and Codex: Grey Knights into rape trains with no brakes (though they are later surpassed by Tau and Eldar).  Every single fa/tg/uy instantly regrets ever thinking the Space Tomb Kings were balanced in the first place. We're talking cheese like '''[[Night Scythe|9 fliers in a 1500pt list with flying dedicated transports that don't kill passengers when they crash!!]]''' What the fuck. Among other rage-worthy things of note include massive Buffs to [[Grey Knights|already broken beyond reason armies]], highly abusable mechanics resulting in severely limited builds for HQ choices (tool for challenges or suffer!) and the Space Marine segments of the fluff being [[Ultramarines|full of yet more Matt Ward Porno]].

'''2013'''
* Matt Ward rewrites '''Army Book: Daemons of Chaos''' for 8E. Many neckbeards commit suicide before the official product announcement is out, to save themselves from the predicted cheese. Many Fantasy power gamers also ritually sacrifice themselves, in anticipation of a gargantuan nerfing. In the book, Matt Ward nerfs all the overpowered units of the previous army book, puts a lot of random effects, random magic items, and does things such as taking one of the worst units of the previous book (beast of burgle), improve it and reduce its cost by 40 points/each, or giving daemons one of the best cannons in the game.  Overall they ended up as one of the better armies, but nowhere near the overpowered rape train they were last edition. Aside from some questionable fluff, it's not all that bad.

*Matt Ward heads the team that made the 8th edition Warhammer Fantasy update for the '''[[High Elves]]'''. It's... really, really good. No, really! The [[Everqueen]] (and her units) were added back in and come off as pretty awesome.  Tyrion retains his awesome wartime skills while being less of a Mary Sue, being given a short temper and occasional moodiness.  The book also fixes a lot of the cheese that the High Elves got away with in the older book, like "every time we cast spells it's Irresistible Force" and the "we '''ALWAYS''' Strike First with fricking Great Weapons."  The fluff is good (although it's arguable how much Ward is responsible for the fluff, since it's mostly copy-pasted from earlier editions), and the army is pretty well-balanced, both internally and externally... except for one thing.
** Banner of the Motherfucking World Dragon. 2+ Ward Save against ''anything'' magical. And you know what army has ''only'' magical attacks? That's right, Daemons of Chaos. Most people feel this is blatantly unfair (hell, most reviews went out of their way to point it out, because it's just that egregious), but a small number chuckle lightly every time it comes up, because they remember the days when Daemons always won.  Yet the previous versions gave COMPLETE immunity to spells, were cheaper and there are currently a few spells and rules that ignore ward saves in 8th edition.  This one also makes all dragons within '12 stubborn, but that applies to allied and enemy dragons.  Furthermore, only one unit in the army benefits from it if the character carrying the banner joins them, thus rendering those complaints somewhat invalid.

* Writing the Codex: Eldar Supplement about '''Craftworld Iyanden'''.  It's two pages of crunch with the rest being fluff for $40. Said fluff consists of turning Iyanden into a clone of Biel-Tan, forgetting how the Infinity Circuit works, retconning more or less everything involving Ynnead; and turning Iyanden's leadership into incompetents who didn't think the Tyranids were a serious threat.  That said, a number of Eldar players loved it because it's one of the few fluff bits that doesn't treat the Eldar as the universe's punching bag (which is far more than what can be said about most of their fluff), and gave them a little street cred.

* Writing the "'''[[Dark Elves]]'''" 8th edition update (and according to [[White Dwarf|White Dwarf]] is now GW's go-to-guy for all things elven in WFB). Good news, the crunch is passable; Dark Elves have army wide Always Strike First like High Elves do while retaining High Elf Hatred.  Also Murderous Prowess with some units getting buffed significantly with slight nerfs to balance them (Witch Elves).  They also gain a glass cannon sea monster, that doesn't have any rules to let it move through water; justified in fluff so it can't escape its handlers.  The bad news is Matt Ward like usual rewrote/ignored some of the established fluff to suit his tastes, though in this case it's very minor, for example Clar Karond is the Beastmaster's city instead of Karond Kar like it was in every previous edition.  They both deal in slaves but Clar Karond has most of the monsters now (even though or maybe because it's also the Dark Elves's main shipyard), leaving Karond Kar out in the cold (literally in the fluff).  Malekith also gets an ex-wife, while not badly written it seems out of character for him and he never had one before.  Another change is the fluff suggesting incest between [[Malekith]] and [[Morathi]] has been removed.  Now it's changed that Morathi is wet for her step-son, Tyrion, who she thinks to use to reincarnate Aenarion in a magic ritual to name a few.

* He had a hand in the new '''Wood Elves''' update, the fluff is good, though there have been changes to some of the characters, such as Ariel having a dark side and being more gullible (she's manipulated by her arch-enemy Morghur, as well as Morathi), the personality of each incarnation of Orion is influenced by the person sacrificed to revive him, and [[Squat|Skaw the Falconer is no more]].  The heavy hand of Thorpe-ian writing is also present, jacking off Chaos at the expense of the previously established elf canon. Crunch-wise the Wood Elves are arguably better at shooting (and definitely close combat) than before, but there were some major nerfs handed out to a few things; Dryads, Treemen and especially their magic items.  The Lore of Athel Loren is also gone, making the race of isolationists feel more like a race of bipolar copycats.

* Writing '''Codex: Sentinels of Terra''', he was a part of a team effort to write the book and put in charge of writing the fluff. Mostly talks about things anybody who has ever read anything about the Imperial Fist would know from other writings. Emphasizes on their Pride and Stubbornness being both their biggest strength and weakness. Went a little too far on the Assaulting when the Fist as best know for deference fighting and "Centurion Squads are awesome" (gotta push the new stuff, and the fluff does only focus on one Crusade), confusing them a bit with the [[Black Templars]] (though they are a successor chapter) and killing off their Chapter Master.

'''2014'''
* Going by the writer's traits below, it looks like Ward may have had a hand in the new Dwarfs codex for WFB.  For example, it has good balance but like the last book still allows them to field a potentially cheesy gunline army.  The fluff is mostly unchanged though the few new bits make heavy use of the special characters, and a few uses of the word 'alas'.

* It turns out that Ward quietly left GW on May 2014, with the Wood Elves being his last army book. The exact circumstances behind his departure are unknown (as is how nobody knew about this until it was posted on his LinkedIn profile three months after it happened), but seeing that [[Robin Cruddace]] is still employed at GW it's not likely that the quality of his work had anything to do with it.  
** Whatever issues there were around Matt Ward, some people took their hatred of him too far; one reason for his resignation was incoming '''real-life death threats that he received'''.  [[Grimdark]] indeed.  This adds a dark new twist to hiding the author's names; perhaps it was to protect Matt Ward from potential attempts on life rather than to try and "get one over" on the fans.
** Actually, he's also come out in revealing that he's written parts of [[The End Times]] (WHFB's super-huge apocalypse event that's pretty much [[Storm Of Chaos]] II: Electric Boogaloo), taking special responsibility for writing the [[Khaine]] book (Where he writes the last swansong for all the Elves he wrote for).  Predictably, it's the most skub book with some of the most insane plot twists out there ([[Malekith]] is the one true Phoenix King?  [[Teclis]] was playing everyone along?  [[Tyrion]] is a murderous asshole?!), but considering what followed with [[Thanquol]] and [[Archaon]], some have to consider just who exactly was behind the writing.
** His Blog does indeed list that he did work on End Times Archaon as Well as Vermintide.

'''2016'''
[[File:The Return of Ward.jpg|300px|right|thumb|Our [[Spiritual liege|Liege]] has returned! [[Anal Circumference|Clench your butts everyone]] and hide yo [[Sisters of Battle|Sisters!]]]]
* On his Twitter, Ward stated he's [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=31g0YE61PLQ been rehired] by Games Workshop as you can see [https://www.spikeybits.com/2016/08/matt-ward-returns-games-workshop.html here]. Feel free to start whining now.

'''2017'''
* When PETA writes a letter to GW whining about how wearing animal fur is wrong in a setting with literally ''all'' of the blood, gore, violence, and just generally not being nice to anything and everything, Ward responds with the following tweet: https://twitter.com/thetowerofstars/status/826052983565799424 While not ''quite'' redeeming all his past misdeeds, it comes pretty close. Who knew Ward was such a marvelous fucking troll? 

*Fans blame Ward for Guilliman's cheesey return. With the hilariously overpowered rules Gulliman has gotten and the fact that he now leads the Imperium once again, it's fair to say to suspect Ward. Turns out it was [[Phil Kelly]]. Who knew? WHICH EXPLAINS WHY THE IMPERIAL GUARD IS OVERPOWER--{{BLAM|'''*BLAM*'''Keep complaints in the cheese section!}}

'''2018'''
* Signs with the same literary agent who dealt with George RR Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire.

'''2019'''
* His first epic fantasy novel, A Legacy of Ash, is released to rave reviews. The TV rights are already rumoured to be hotly contested by various outlets.
* Was a writer in [[Battlefleet Gothic: Armada II]].

'''2022'''
* Revealed himself to be one of the [https://twitter.com/thetowerofstars/status/1512480226651295744?s=21&t=NUj9HjXrbOrune4o2Vf50w co-lead writers] on [[Warhammer 40K: Darktide‎]] alongside [[Dan Abnett]]. Which has turned out dogshit in the writing department and the lack of actual narrative has been one of the main criticisms. Good job Matt!