Editing Phil Kelly (section)

==The Pros and Cons of Phil Kelly==
Kelly was often regarded as perfect by /tg/, and the main reason people liked him is that unlike some [[Matt Ward|other designers]] he used to try to keep at least some of the themes of the old armies, rather than [[Grey Knights|give away all the mystery behind an army]], [[Ultramarines|try to make a chapter into the greatest thing ever]], [[Necrons|or completely revamp existing armies to fit their tastes]] and his [[fluff]] (with the notable exception of [[Space Wolves|Codex: Space Wolves]]) was usually well written and held true to the old armies, [[Heldrake|even in cases when it should be really, really stupid]]. However, his actual [[crunch]] has seen ups and downs. Most of his codices are very middle-of-the-road, and the internal balance is almost always terrible; it's not a Kelly book unless there's at least [[Counts As#Mandrakes|one completely useless unit]] and [[Heldrake|one completely overpowered, auto-include-or-else unit]].

More recently the issues with his fluff became more apparent, and the first notable example would be some of the issues surrounding Codex: Space Wolves. First and foremost, much of the fluff is frankly ridiculous, such as a story about scuba-diving Terminators or a handful of Space Wolves floating across space, breaking into a Chaos Space Marine flagship by hitting it, and then slaughtering all Chaos Space Marines onboard before using it to wipe out an entire Chaos fleet.  Most of the non-Codex: Space Marines wargear has the word "Wolf" thrown in for no reason, such as '''Wolf''' Fangs, '''Wolf''' Necklaces, '''Wolf''' Tail Talismans, and, of course, '''wolf''' mounts. Yes, this Codex has Space '''Wolves''' ride giant Thunder'''wolves''' while acting like '''wolves''' with their '''wolf''' <s>'''wolf'''gear</s> wargear, while leading packs of Fenrisian '''Wolves''' (naturally their squads were later renamed '''packs''', as in a '''pack''' of '''wolves''').  While most of these options have been in the Codex for some time, heaping more '''Wolf''' options into the codex is an example of taking something [[Awesome]] and overdoing it, which is another problem with Kelly.  Additionally, the Codex is an extreme example of "Codex Creep." It has a number of choices that are outright better than the Codex: Space Marines equivalents while costing much less, leading to the disappearance of vanilla Marines from competitive play. The most egregious examples are Grey Hunters (who have a bunch of special rules and equipment, including Wolf Guard Terminators as Sergeants, at a cheaper cost than vanilla's Tactical Squads) and Long Fangs (who have much greater firepower than the equivalent Devastator Squads but cost nearly the same). 

Unfortunately the pros listed above also ended up disappearing one by one, keeping at least some of the themes of the old armies, rather than [[Grey Knights|give away all the mystery behind an army?]] Gone when he wrote the Deathwatch. Not trying [[Ultramarines|to make a chapter into the greatest thing ever?]] Gone when he wrote Damnos. Not [[Necrons|completely revamping existing armies to fit his tastes?]] Gone when he wrote Dark Eldar, Eldar, Farsight Enclaves, Deathwatch again and his Tau novels. Usually well written fluff that held true to the old armies? Gone when he wrote his Daemons codex and thrown into a fucking woodchipper when he wrote Farsight Enclaves and his Tau/Dark Angel novels. These Codices are covered below, but as a quick example of how he changes shit, while his description of the Dark Eldar as a whole is good, he introduced a mechanic that completely ruins the Eldar's entire identity as a species struggling to survive. It's so egregious that it makes you wonder why they're bitching about anything at all, as he effectively made the Dark Eldar one of the most numerous species in the galaxy because of it and there's no reason the Eldar can't use it. [[Tau]] fans have a love-hate relationship with him, since on one hand, his Tau books are [[Skub|divisive]] but on the ''other'' hand, he's also the only author who actually writes Tau stories.

Another issue would be how his armies have very wobbly crunch, if you wanted to make 6th edition Chaos Space Marines competitive you can go Heldrakes and/or Nurgle or go home, whereas with the new Eldar codex you can spam vehicles and have essentially a guaranteed win against all comers lists.  The armies ''do'' have good options, but many of the options need very specific scenarios to work and earn their points back (especially thanks to rampant over-costing), the Daemon army book for example can be really powerful if you roll decently, but a single bad roll on a mandatory table will have you lose the game regardless of how sound your game plan is. Mediocre units are fairly common in Phil Kelly books, including [[Counts as|Mandrakes,]] Chosen, Possessed, Juggernauts, Grotesques, and so on.  That's not to say the Codices are ''bad'', per se; rather, his Codices usually have one truly great build, one or two other builds that work all right, and a lot of builds that just don't work very well (leading to his books being referred to as "monobuild").  You won't win nearly every game ([[Eldar|with a]] [[Space Wolves|few aforementioned exceptions]]), but you won't typically lose because [[Robin Cruddace|somebody took all]] [[Tyranids|of your good units]] [[Carnifex|and made them terrible for their cost]].

Finally, Kelly has become known as the "High Lord of Random Tables" because he puts random tables in every... fucking... thing. This has only started with his 6th edition books and onward, but Chaos Space Marines introduced a [[Warriors of Chaos]]-esque table for challenges (which was also something he made), and the new Chaos Daemons are an absolute mess of random tables, with most of the wargear and a number of special rules (including Daemonic Instability and Warp Storm) being entirely random . Some see this as a good thing because it adds "spice" to the game as most of these tables do make sense from a fluff perspective (especially when we're talking about the embodiment of true chaos), but many find these tables to be tedious, annoying, and damaging to the game as it could lead to you either losing the game or curb-stomping the enemy depending on a mandatory lucky 2D6 roll with the opposing argument being "A small element of randomness is fine; too much of it is just tedious, annoying and it interferes too much with the game".