Robin Cruddace
Robin Cruddace is one of the designers for Games Workshop. He's not as bad as Matt Ward (although Tyranids fans would argue with that one), but he isn't anywhere near as good as Jeremy Vetock or Phil Kelly.
Mostly, his Codexes are just boring. They're not particularly well-balanced internally (as Pyrovores will attest), but they rarely reach the levels of Phil Kelly. They also aren't very well externally balanced (i.e. against other Codexes), but they're nowhere near as bad as Matt Ward's. And his fluff is... well, it really depends on how much of a 'Nids fan you are.
Recently, Cruddace has mostly been trapped in Warhammer Fantasy Battle, possibly because Games Workshop realized nobody likes him that much, or maybe because he legitimately likes the other game better and chooses to design for it. This seems fairly unlikely, though, as he's a really, really big treadhead. This probably explains why his Imperial Guard 'dex (read: army with dozens of tanks) was so much better than his 'Nids 'dex (read: army with absolutely zero tanks).
Also, for some reason, a lot of people spell his name "Cruddance." It has yet to be determined whether this is a shitty attempt at a pun ("crud" + "dance") or just people being inconsiderate faggots (see: Bretonnia v. Brettonia).
Ahem
Robin Cruddace is a codex writer for Warhammer 40,000 and Warhammer Fantasy Battle, and an utter treadhead. This means, of course, that there is one army he is very good at writing, but not too many others, and there is much wailing and misery over the utter hackjob he pulled on the Tyranids, the army he was least suited for. It's also possible that he's not really a treadhead either - the guy's an Imperial Guard player, just like Matt Ward is an Ultramarines player, so like Ward it's easy to see he definitely played a bit of favoritism with his own guys. On the other end of the spectrum, it appears he may have been in the camp of believers that Tyranids were overpowered with overpowered MCs, since that's what he nerfed the hardest, and then he took away all their equipment options so they couldn't even be accidental bargains somehow.
He also filled the Tyranid fluff with page after page of losing battles for Tyranids, rather than the enigmatic analysis on their rapid development and adaptability which they were previously known for (their crunch now makes them among the most rigid armies in the game). In fact, he has one story about how well the Tau were able to out-adapt the Tyranids by tricking them into disadvantageous evolutionary paths. The Tau won that battle by beating Tyranids at their own game. In the Tyranids' own codex. And then the Tau were killed off by Necrons. Also, he removed all the awesome fluff about Inquisitor Kryptman (aka spehss Alan Grant from Jurassic Park).
We don't know what's wrong with Cruddace, but if he writes your army's codex, you better hope he likes your army. One theory is that if it kills his guardsmen, he'll hate you forever, sorry Tyranids!
No, really, go back and think it through. Sometimes the Tyranids will lose. When they invaded Macragge they couldn't win because it would kill the Ultramarines forever, and the Ultramarines are pretty damn important to the game. Also, they destroyed the entire First Company and decimated the rest of the Chapter, and the Ultramarines could only manage to destroy most of them. Pretty hardcore.
In the the story Cruddace wrote, meanwhile, the Tyranids, in their own codex, lost a battle of adaptation to a random Tau force nobody knows. With rapid adaptability being the Tyranids' single most important claim to fame. And then. Cruddace killed off the whole Tau force anyway. With another faction entirely. The saddest part is how easy it would be to fix: either make it a major Tau world (with the implication that, if the Tau lose, the Tau Empire is nommed), or make the Tau solution something so grimdark and apocalyptic (read: super virus) that the Tau realize the only way to stop the Tyranids when they all finally arrive is to sacrifice the entirety of the Tau Empire (and possibly all sentient life in the galaxy).
But no, he made the Tau better than the Tyranids. Apparently the Ultramarines are just chumps... (he was probably making a remark about how well a certain piece of literature from a certain spiritual liege would realistically hold up against an enemy as dynamic as 'Nids).
The ideal was as he gave it, "you wouldn't be hearing about Tyranid victories".
In any case, we are not kidding: if Cruddace doesn't like your army, prepare to get fucked.
That being said, he also made a bunch of the 8th edition Fantasy books, which were, for the most part, pretty good, and seem to be bringing Warhammer Fantasy into *gasp* balance (even if Tomb Kings are still at the arse end of useful). He was also a co-writer for the 7th edition Lizardmen army book, which was considered a strong, but balanced book until 8th edition changes to magic occurred.
There's also a skubtastic argument between Kelly's and Cruddace's fans about the mess of random tables that Codex: Chaos Daemon has become. The book's actually decent overall (unless you relied on Fateweaver to win games for you) and balance wise is in line with the other 6th Edition books. The fluff section is also really sells what the army is like. However, if you even try to suggest that one of the two might be behind the nerf of one unit, you'll find yourself in one of the big shitstorm /tg/ is known for.
He recently wrote the new Space Marine codex, its pretty depent and balance the Chapters lore pretty well compare to the other previous codexs, even if it did leave in a lot of the Ultrmarine wank it was reedited to be more balance.
It should be noted that "crud" is an often-used euphemism for "crap". Make of this what you will.
Notable Victims of The Cruddace
- Tyranids (5th Edition)
- Sisters of Battle (the 5th Edition White Dwarf-only not-even-Codex)
- Tomb Kings (8th Edition)
- The Empire
- Chaos Daemons (6th Edition)
- Space Marines (6th Edition)