Jervis Johnson

He's your daddy. He's everyone's daddy.

Jervis Johnson is a Games Workshop employee. He hates people who try to win at games, thinks gamers should only play narrative battles, and was the mastermind behind Age of Sigmar.

In Citadel Journal issue 48, he argued the following points:

— Tournament gamers only “play to win” and are Win-At-All-Costs

— Tournament gaming and tournaments “destroy what the hobby is really all about”

— Tournament gaming is directly opposed to painting

— Tournament style gaming is unimaginative

Here’s how Jervis thinks the game should be played:

— Scenario based games and campaigns are the pinnacle of the hobby

— Scenario and campaign games have no need for point values or pre-set win conditions

— Points and even match-ups are the cause and death of “casual play” and scenario and campaign based gaming for the wider community

Horrifyingly, Games Workshop listened to this madness. The result was Age of Sigmar, where everyone is a special snowflake tactical genius just for agreeing to play the game, because no one's feelings should be hurt for not having enough skill. After the titanic outcry from the player-base, Games Workshop did a 180 on this with the release of the General's Handbook. However, they continue to employ Johnson, and he continues to be their Head of Development...

To be fair, not everything Johnson touches turns to derp. For instance, it was Jervis who revealed that the original idea behind deliberately obscuring the origins of two Legions of Space Marines (remember, in Rogue Trader, we had names for all 20) was threefold: a reference to the Teutoberg Disaster, as befits the Rome-themed Imperium, an opportunity for new hobbyists to create their own custom Legions for Epic and Apocalypse battles (which could potentially see more than a thousand Marines' worth of points employed, although anyone who tried presenting their fluff for a missing legionne on /tg/ would get their shit righteously fucked up by fa/tg/uys), and to create a sort of 'holy grail' of untouchable fluff which no Black Library author could fuck up, thus lending some mystique to the otherwise fucking goofy 2nd Edition fluff. Seriously, there was a canon character named Obi-wan.