Ben Counter

From Jervis, to Ben, to Ward. (I am his right, and I have a task for you)

Not to be confused with the device used for the numeric tabulation of Bens.

Ben Counter is a novelist for the Black Library and winner of a Golden Demon award.

Some of his books are filled with fail, other Awesome. Of particular note is his series of novels about the Grey Knights.

He's an author who's good at coming up with cool new fluff but awful at keeping track of old fluff. According to regulars at his FLGS, he spends a disproportionate amount of time torturing himself for the fact he might be writing fluff violations he isn't aware of.

In fact, games get interrupted by sudden bouts of angst along the lines of "Wait a minute! You mean your forces can do <something I didn't know about and fluff for which I may have unwittingly transgressed in my book>?"

Those that would admit to using 1d4chan wonder if there might some award named after him, which would represent everything that Matt Ward does not. (The TG Award for Adequacy? TG approves.)

(If anyone's reading this, maybe they can come up with something suitable; we'll run up a real physical trophy, present it to him out of gratitude, and we can thereafter award it to other people in the community who actually care about the game and the game world.) (How about a scale model of Big Ben with a working clock face so it can be used as a counter?)(Ooh, Ooh! How about the "Wardie"? It could be a bust of a heavily caricatured version of Our spiritual liege, in Ultramarines armour, with a necron weapon sticking out of their head. Said model will be plated with gold, but will have an interior composed of paper mache. Said paper will be from Matt's worst codices. Thoughts?)(Let's make it so that the "Wardie" model is holding a gold-plated "Multilaser", so that we can please C.S Goto at the same time.)

It's worth noting that not only is his Grey Knights series FAR more definitive in how the Knights operate than the codex written by Ward, but he's also done a really fantastic job of making daemons sound genuinely horrifying to deal with. Also of note is his book Battle of the Abyss, the best things in it (and arguably the only good things in it) is the unbelievably poetic description of the Warp, it also pulls a Graham McNeill with its portrayal of the Ultramarines. Also includes probably the last in-canon good-guys the World Eaters and the one Thousand Son. Wait, aren't TS still the good guys? BLAM!

He also wrote the Soul Drinkers novel series which depicts the fall of that chapter from Loyalist to renegade while still trying to hold onto their morals and belief in the Emperor. Pretty good series overall.

He's notable for having close to no understanding of thermodynamics, or basic physics at all. If you happen to be a geek, please, restrain yourself from reading his books, least you want to hurt your face with facepalms after reading time after time about ridiculous things, like a non-compressed liquid hydrogen burning in an oxygen atmosphere, or things getting instantly frozen in a vacuum of space.

There is a recurring theme present in his books about the sacrifices Mankind in general and the Space Marines in particular have to do in order to ensure the Imperium survives, this has been a source of many (wo)manly tears. Along with the above mentioned Grey Knights he has given an awesome vibe to chapters such as the Imperial Fists, (his portrayal of Lysander in particular is awesome) and the Astral Knights of World-Engine fame, we hope he may get more commissions from Black Library as, thermodynamic failures and chaos-worshiping eldar aside, he is quite competent at making somehow flawed yet gritty characters.

He has written the story for Warhammer 40,000: Mechanicus. Since he has little to no experience writing Mechanicus stories, it remains to be seen how the game will turn out. Scratch that, it's actually alright.

He is not Sandy Mitchell.