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.

Behold, the great beast has come, destroyer of verisimilitude.

Matthew Ward (more commonly known as Matt Ward and less commonly known as "dickface") is a writer working for GW the fucking devil.

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. The name "Matt Ward" even gives you "part of your comment can't be posted" if you write it in a post because the epic shitstorms that come about from mentioning his name in a thread.

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. 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.

I actually don't mind him. HERESY BE GONE

A History of Violence

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

2002

• A certain 'Matthew Ward' writes the War of the Ring section of the Return of the King Rulebook. No notice is given.

2003

• Ward writes the 'Battle of the Pellenor Fields rulebook for LOTR, introducing the game breaking Mumak, a sign of things to come.

2005

• Ward co-writes a pretty decent Wood Elves armybook.

2006

• Ward writes the Legions of Middle-Earth book for The Lord of the Rings Strategy Battle Game, a tome containing all the army lists (all of them) for the game. This book contains point costs and options for many models that at that point had not been released yet, and given the current state of the SBG, probably never will. Also notable is the fact that many of the units that have been released (such as those in Harad, notably Half-Trolls) have different points costs than the ones listed in Legions of Middle Earth, making the book essentially worthless.

• Ward (printed with one T for some reason) appears to be in charge of the 7th Edition update for Orcs and Goblins.

2007

• Ward writes the decent Gondor in Flames book, containing the rules for the armies of Gondor.

2008

• Ward's 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 - which is one hell of an accomplishment when one considers some of the problems WHFB has had over its lengthy lifetime. Most people write it off as an overeager premier. The biggest drawback is that it heavily screwed with the nature of Daemonkind, which screwed heavily with both the fluff and the existing model appearances - though whether this was Ward's own work or due to management fiat remains a point of conjecture.

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.

• 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), and there's considerable attempts to promote certain armies over the 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 (and surprisingly so), 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. It is about this time that Ward's prejudices against certain chapters start to emerge for the first time, and when the Salamanders receive a retcon regarding their dark skin - originally an intentional adaptation to allow them to survive the fire and radiation of their lava-scarred homeworld, Ward instead argued that their pigmentation was a genetic flaw, inducing facepalms from many a 40K veteran and launching a few thousand jokes about Ultramarine KKK rallies. And as a cherry on top of the derp sundae, he added a reference to Highlander II: The Quickening.

2010

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

• 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 rip Abaddon's head off and shit down his neck (Abaddon, of course, being for all his problems, a close-combat monster that normally makes players break out in hives). 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 (if only temporarily).

2011

• Ward gives birth to Codex: Grey Knights, fusing the awful fluff and limitless cheese of his two previous works into a single abomination - nothing about this book remotely holds back on the cheese, resulting in it being a completely table-destroying army list with few, if any, legitimate counters. Armies loaded with deep-striking forces, 2+ armor saves, and mountains of Psycannons and their various variants immediately sweep tournament after tournament, writefags rage impotently about Kaldor Draigo, Khornate Knights, and the unapologetic rape of - literally - over ten years of canon.

We feel his pain. :(

• 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 really function at low point values, and which lost a lot of the previous punch it had in larger games. The Sisters continue to have relatively weak vehicle support, with nothing really new or useful added to the table in exchange. Making matters worse, the army no longer supports auxilliaries or ally rules, which prevents one of the time-honored methods for getting the sisters Vehicle Support (previously you could induct a Guardsman or Space Marine unit to get some Leman Russ Battle Tanks or Predator Tanks if you needed heavy punch for example), along wth most of the other Ordo Hereticus options that their codex used to support.

• Ward pronounced doom on the undead zombie Robots with Codex: Necrons. Even before the Codex was out, the Games Workshop Site gave a taste of what will come in the article introducing "Getting Started" on Necrons. And oh boy did Matt Ward get started. Matt Ward has once again taken the poor, sweet canon and raped it. Apparently the C'Tan and Necrons weren't forced into slumber because of the Warp and Enslavers. NO THAT WOULD BE DUMB. No, the Necrons rebelled against the C'Tan. Yep. And beat the C'Tan. And tore them into pieces. And then went to sleep for no reason, since the reason now didn't happen. OH AND GUESS WHO LED THE NECRONS IN THIS. The Silent King ring any bells? Yes. The Blood Angel's best butt buddy is the King of All teh Necrons. And he is just a swell guy saving his poor race. Who killed Stargods. Fuck you Matt Ward. Fuck you so hard. It's becoming almost sad and/or humorous how predictable this failure is getting.
  • A REASONED NOTE: Someone seems to be forgetting that while this was, indeed, a shameless rape of established cannon, it's somewhat debated on /tg/ as to wether or not this was a bad thing - indeed, the number of people who look at is as a good thing somewhat outnumber the bad. This is simply because Necrons themselves (outside their lords) had zero characterization beyond the C'tan in the previous codex, which made them bland, uninteresting, and extremely difficult to write for, whereas the new fluff fleshes 'em out, and the new direction their army is taking seems to be, like the Dark Eldar, a push in the right direction. Note, however, that even fans of the new fluff do not appreciate that the old fluff had to be utterly curb-stomped to make way for it. NOTE ENDS; RESUME VITRIOL.
  • The Necrons did go to sleep for a good reason. In the Codex it states, that after the defeat of the Old Ones, the Necrons rebelled against the C'Tan, because they hated them, because the Deciver tricked them into the Biotransference. After they defeated the C'Tan, albeit they didn't kill them, the Silent King knew, that in the current state, the Necrons couldn't defeat the Eldar. Thus he ordered his race to sleep, because he knew, that ever race, that isn't immortal, would eventually loose their grip on the galaxy. And The sleep is to ensure the Necrons wake up, after the Eldar had lost their rule over the galaxy.
  • Note: The section on Necrons here probably needs to be cleaned up now that the Codex is actually out. However, it must be noted that this Codex is still stupid. No, it is not Codex: Ultramarines and Pals stupid, and I think there was a lot of hype over the terrors that might have been because it was Ward- but still. Even Matt Ward not sucking as much is still Matt Ward (sucking). Sure, he gave the Necrons more character. He just did it in an (expectedly) hamfisted manner. Setting loose Ward amidst canon is like letting an epileptic chimp paint your army. I think we're just so used to pure shit that slightly diluted shit looks nice. And that's almost more horrifying - this is the new "average".
  • The real suckage in the fluff of the new Necrons Codex is that it removes a lot of the "terrifying" aspect of the Necrons and all of the mystery. You can't have an army be wiped out or a planet attacked by soulless metal monsters anymore without some Tomb King style robotic pricks giving a running commentary or post game discussion...
  • Hell no you totally can do that. There's no need at all to use any bits that are merely decorations. There is in fact a Tombworld that accidentially deleted every Cron's personalities and then took over, turning them into the mindless stubborn Terminator army you know from 3rd edition.

2012?
*After a short break Ward is once again ready to brutalize your childhood. He is rumoured to be authoring both the Black Templars codex. Considering that Ward is widely-acknowledge to hate this chapter, /tg/ can do little but look on in horror. It's fine, it's fine. Phil is doing the new codex. We're safe...we're safe.

• Praise the Emprah!
• FFFUUUUUUUUUUUU_______________... -UCKKK YEAH!!! -Angry Mahreens.

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 "aberrants", 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, whose main personality trait is “badass”. This isn't the good kind of badass, like Duke Nukem, this is "badass" as in "hey guys, I made a god mode Sue who can do everything!" 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 is to Warhammer 40k what J.J. Abrams is to Star Trek. 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.

Also Misogyny

This image has been known to turn ordinary men into Angry Marine Initiates just from viewing it.

There is a disturbing tendency in Matt Ward's works to have the Sisters of Battle get horribly butchered in roughly 70% of the fluff that Ward has thus far written. Whilst the penultimate example is the Khornate Knights incident, there's at least half-a-dozen works in official canon since the release of the new edition rulebook where the Sisters get horrifically butchered or worse. Virtually the entire Sisters of Battle army was retconned out of existence by the omission of two paragraphs of text in the fifth-edition rulebook, and there are multiple cases of the sisters being corrupted, destroyed, and/or massacred. All of this has led many to ask uncomfortable questions regarding Ward's sexual deviancy that nobody really wants the answers to, since he really, really seems to like him some sexist snuff.

A combination of Matt's apparent misogyny and seeming intellectual immaturity have led to the meme that Ward is, in fact, Chris-Chan.

Matt Ward and the End of Days

It is has become so that some members of /tg/ are so adamantly disgusted by Ward that they have actually accused him of being the Antichrist. Matt Ward's existence shall bring the end of days, and he shall walk the Earth, his hunger knowing no bounds. On face value this seems ridiculous, but when one look closer...

• The series of natural disasters occurring since 2010 coincides with the release of Codex: Blood Angels, believed rightly by many to be one of Ward's cheesiest and flufffucked codices to date, competing only with Codex: Grey Knights and potentially the new Codex: Necrons (although few Necron players are complaining about a new ruleset, regardless of its author). Since the release of the Blood Angels, weather worldwide has been batshit bonkers. We've had an earthquake every month, hurricanes, typhoons, and oh yeah...IT FREAKING SNOWED. ON HALLOWEEN. THERE IS SNOW ON THE PLASTIC SPIDERS STRUNG UP OUTSIDE MY HOUSE. Da fuck?

And it rained fish this summer on my house. I shit you not.

• IF Ward is the Antichrist, then it would explain his ass-crazy rules. HE is creating thousands of overpowered characters so that when the Beast rises from the Bottomless Pit, it can draw upon these rules to make itself unstoppable. Luckily, however, we may find condolence in that when the Archangel Michael, slayer of demons, goes to the field to challenge Lucifer, he will call upon every cheesy Blood Angels rule and beat that horned WHFB fantasy-crossover motherfucker into submission. And lo, the world will be saved.

• Also, Blood Angels Librarian Dreadnoughts. 'Nuff said.

Hey Matt Ward

• Grey Knights
• Macragge heresy
• Sisters of Battle
• Who Watches Them?
• Ward-pocalypse
• Matt Ward's Decent into Madness

Gallery of Fail

• 

  Matt Ward masturbates furiously to this every single night.

• 

  Fa/tg/uys long for the days when this book was the least of their troubles.

• 

  This Marine has the right idea.

• 

  THIS PLEASES HIM

• 

  Coming to a Codex near you.

• 

  This is believed to be true.

• 

  Actual Grey Knight unit.

• 

  Spiritual Liege.

• 

  So tsun-tsun~

• 

  All aboard!

• 

  This is how Matt Ward views Spess Mehreens.

• 

  Friends forever

• 

  His body is ready, yours however is not

See Also

Ward's wikipedia page