Matthew Ward Games Designer Full Interview 

Absolutely mental people would send this guy hate. Thanks to him and all those who are putting in effort to make our hobby so vibrant.

I actually loved the 5th edition blood angels codex, the Sanguinor is awesome, also the fact that he turned the Necrons into a fully fleshed out race of dr evil like characters was amazing and inspired me to collect about 15,000 pts of super evil space baddies. Also Kaldor Draigo carving a name into Mortarians heart was sick!! Thankyou Matt for making my hobby a far richer place:)

It was very interesting thank you for the video. Thank you also to Matt for all of his contributions to our hobby.

Perhaps add time stamps regarding your questions for such a long video?

I feel quite bad about how Matt was treated, its nice to see him doing well, he does things for Frostgrave now that are cool!

"You can't stop people being wrong" - words to live by. Matt's Frostgrave novels are tremendous, by the way. Well worth a look if fantasy's your cup of tea.

Really enjoyed this Harry.

Fascinating interview! I think "hating" Matt Ward was a mostly a meme & luckily one that has mostly died off by now. This was a great interview though & def gave me a different perspective on him, seems like someone who genuinely loved WH

Really loved the elf books for WFB. Thanks for writing those Matt it was great how joined up they were!

great interview thanks so much. I appreciate very much all the years of work that this man gave to our hobby.

This is a great interview thankyou. I started off thinking that Matthew reminded me of Dr. Robert Chevalier from Gentlemen Broncos BUT by the end of the video I liked him and I could relate to or appreciate pretty much everything he said. I think GW makes big decisions that I dont agree with but its the GW leadership who should get the flak, not the guy in the middle. Anyway it was a great interview so thankyou.

Banner of the world dragon: 2+ ward save against magical attacks for bearers unit (unit of dragon princes could equip) Meanwhile deamons: 👹

Nice interview. Ward created some great supplements and War of the ring is a great ruleset with many nice ideas. And he seems such a nice and educated man. Never understood how someone can "hate" him.

I think on the main subjects that doesn't get touched on very often is age and experience when it comes to a skill set, for about 15 years I used to do writing for technical and operations manuals. Extremely interesting stuff (no it isn't) which if I'm being perfectly honest, the stuff I wrote 24 years ago just isn't as good as the stuff I wrote 10 years ago and would be much worse than what it would be now if I picked up a keyboard in anger. The real problem that everyone hates to hear though is that you're really only as good as the company you're writing for. If that company doesn't have the depth of experience, documentation, accountability and even in some cases, integrity- then you are quite shit out of luck trying to make that happen on your watch because its a very big job. So you do the best you can, with what you have and hope that at the end of the time you have to do it, it doesn't suck Sometimes it sucks a bit, but lets face it, no one very got a dose of ionizing radiation, got dipped in fuel or ate 10,000V on the job of playing war games so its ok if it sucks a little bit. No one died, some people got a bit sad but it probably didn't lead to any long term harm and life moves on. That's sort of the advantage of being an old grump, when I got into GW products in the early 90's and it sucked a bit back then, it kind of sucked in the 2000's a little bit, it sucked in the 2010's and there;s some suck going into the 2020's. But its not all bad! That's the thing, its till got some good bits in it even if you don't like it and there's really nothing stopping you from gathering friends and living in a period which you enjoyed a product. I really like Star Wars and Star Trek, they're complete garbage and terrible now, go back 30 years though and its pretty good. That's just how life goes sometimes. Its going to change, maybe not for the better but you tough it out and just keep going or in the case of a hobby, you can walk away at any time that suits you, no one gets upset about it

I can't say I ever 'hated' the guy but....... Grey Knights slaughtering Sisters of Battle for their holy blood, Papa G being seen as the spiritual liege of all other chapters and the infamous Chaos Demons army book for WHFB was bound to draw a lot of negative attention from a well established fan base.

Matt Ward the bad man. (I jest, of course). Honestly a lot of his writing was a breath of fresh air. At least his books were fun! He was severely underappreciated. Keep being you everyone and do what you love!

I could never hate him for he co-wrote my all time favourite army book. 6th Wood Elves, which was miles above the backstep they took in 8th ed.

For all the hate thrown at Matt Ward, I don't think it's the _rules_ that were the most controversial thing he did. 5th edition Necrons were massively broken because they were arguably the first major codex designed with aircraft in mind. Codex Marines and Blood Angels were serviceable, even if their Razorbacks were a little too cheap. Even Grey Knights' most broken aspects, stunningly low points cost notwithstanding, revolved around external problems (Razorbacks, 5th edition's busted wound allocation, death stars, Eternal Warrior, psychic power mitigation...). Maybe if Tyranids didn't suck anus crack (which was mostly the Space Wolves' fault... which was mostly Jaws of the World Wolf's fault) and Dark Eldar could actually handle Transport spam, the _power_ of Ward's books wouldn't have been much of a problem. It was largely Matt Ward's fluff that earned him his reputation. The Blood Angel / Necron fist bump. The Sanguinor. The "spiritual liege" line. The Grey Knights coating their armor in the blood of a Sisters of Battle convent. Kaldor Draigo. And pretty much the entire Necron reboot, one of the wildest and most mystique-eradicating retcons in all of 40k that _I_ still hate to this day. And if this wound up being editorially mandated, he can assign blame as he sees fit, but I'm still calling those choices dumb.

Mat, despite whatever disagreements you might have with his efforts, didn't and doesn't deserve all the focused hate! We acted extremely toxic as a community towards his person and I truly hope he's in a much better spot in his life right now.

I dont think we hated him as such, i think people just liked to jump on the Ultramarine hate wagon. In retrospect, he was probably just very good at making us fight Ultramarines and hating them instead.

The thing about the Matt Ward hyper negativity is you never actually meet anyone in real life who feels that strongly. Seems like a really interesting fellow fan! @entmoot Videos Really do have to say, this and the other interviews you've done with former GW creatives, for us are 10/10 here in Mercia. Honestly think they are some of the best content made in the hobby sphere. That first one with Rick was part of the the inspiration to get on and create our podcast. Look forward to the next one!

I did not think he sounded like that lol Honestly I liked the Space Marine codex he wrote initially. I enjoyed the previous one by Graham McNeil more because it had more flavor, but I played Dark Angels and enjoyed using the Ward dex with Cato as my HQ for army-wide Ld10. Matt probably did get a raw deal but it was mostly a meme among other 1d4chan nerds like myself; I think the wider 40k fandom either had no opinion or liked the stuff he put out. The Khornate Knights fluff thing was beyond stupid though, to be fair.

Good interview. "How you interact with fantasy worlds is upto you......" change fantasy worlds for ideas, religion, politics etc. as needed and you have good life advice from Mr Ward. The point of ideas, is surely they are only ideas and your are making them up in your head. "I learnt to take the bits I like" ... sound advice indeed, from a writer of storries about crusading space facists.

Having been on the receiving end of Matt's flights of fancy i can say. I don't hate him, just his writing. the power creep and escalating imbalances of a game suffering from inconsistencies, was unpleasant. In fact it is why i went from hiatus status due to school, to outright quitting 40k originally. Mistakes were made i came back for 8th quit before 9th. but i need to thank Matt, due to his BS codices obliterating anything remotely looking like game balance. Combined with GWs ridiculously secretive and slow release schedule and inability to balance the damn books. It gave me the opportunity to grow beyond the artificial boarders of GW. Find better games from game compies that actually give a sh t about their games not just the models. Don't get me wrong i will still meme the hell out of his writing, but i don't hate Matt. How could i? I have never met him, i have only been standing across the table from his BS writing. Going wtf.just happened, oh right you won because book says so. Go go ultra smurffs, yah. Oh F off he wrote Grey knights as well? Joy.

I'm very happy that we got War of the Ring and would love to see a second edition with more playtesting

Seems like a nice guy. I doubt he was solely responsible for all the controversies. Afterall, he's doing a job and creating to a brief. I doubt he ever got free reign on any project. But his heart certainly seems in the right place.

Awesome interview Harry. Looking forward to meeting you this weekend in Belfast! Hope you don't mind me approaching you

I still think the 6th edition Necron Codex was goated for what it's worth, even if it was a slap in the face for the lore that was established beforehand. People seem to forget that we got Zanndrekh, Obyron, Anrakyr and especially Orikan and Trazyn (!) all because of him and that Codex.

2nd edition is still the best edition😊

Incredible interview absolutly love that

I was sad WotR wasn't more successful. I thought it was a really good game. Unfortunately the army lists tended towards forces which overused the elements that should have been very rare. But I think the rules served thematic armies very well.

Great interview!

Great job with this Harry, thoroughly enjoyed it.

I still never want him touching 40k ever again.

Our liege! He did say that all space marines follow the ultramarine model and regard Guilleman as their liege! (From what I understand)…. And people didn’t want their chapters following Guilleman!

Great interview! I was hoping someone would talk to Mat about his time at GW. War of the ring and the supplements for sbg he was in charge of defined my early gaming experiences. Interesting if not totally satisfying answer to the legions of middle earth profiles too!

Mr.Ward does not look like what I expected from all the internet hoopla and in-person displeasure for his Codex/Lore writings. Personally, seems like a good bloke but I absolutely did not care for his contributions to the "Andy Chambers Grim Dark 40k" version of Warhammer 40,000. Just bad lore, at times written like bullet points. This is the firs time I'm learning about the end times contributions, as if this poor lad wasn't disliked before. lol! Is this a case of Battletech writers being given a short amount of time to advanced to the Dark Age? Any 40k players that can suggest something Mr.Ward added that's "pretty darn good?". Updated: Trazyn the Infinite, there's that.

Shadow and flame is still an absolute banger. No sbg supplement will top it

I loved deep striking Land Raiders.

Matts books were great. Everything people hate for the space marine codex was lifted from 2nd ed

I never understood the hate towards Matt Ward, it's not as if he could have written any thing he did at GW and it not being passed as OK by the GW higher up.

I don't hate him as a person. I do blame his poor writing and lack of understanding of game balance for ruining my hobby for several years.

He was the best thing to happen to other games companies, driving people away from 40k, and towards Warmachine and other systems, I went over to bolt action and flames of war and Mantic. he continually destroyed game balance due to what seemed to be a complete lack of understanding of game mechanics and interaction, he made a mockery of the points system, he made it impossible to play Ultramarines without feeling ashamed and dirty, and people just making excuses not to have to play them, I had an army from 2nd edition, and ended up selling them as I couldn't stand to look at them anymore. when he wasn't messing up the rules, he was making awful lore, I had grey knights since the metal rogue trader ones were relesed, and he made me hate them. I spend years trying to figure out what was wrong with him, some people thought it was due to him not having any direct contact or interactions with people, and just spent too much time with his cats, but eventually I decided he must have secretly hated GW and did as much damage as he could to their company on purpose, I was playing through the ward era, and I can say that every single person I was playing with, and everyone I knew from the gaming community strongly disliked, or even hated everything he done. He didn't just pick on space marines, though. I remember him even managing to even make Craftworld Iyanden disliked. I even remember people cutting their hair so they didn't have a similar haircut to him. For people that wasn't there when he was involved with GW, the best way of describing it, was imagine the Female Custodes Gaslighting reaction, but having a persons name attatched to it, and having that person repeatedly doing it, to lore and the armies you love, again and again and again. . . It was only this year that I finally managed to let my harted of the Ultramarines fade enough to start a new army of them again. Listening to ward still not understanding that Ultramarines were never the template chapter, still annoys me, although I think he might have hit the nail on the head when he said it was because" thats how they were explained to him" . . . Maybe if he had bothered to read earlier codex and lore, rather than just accepting someone elses innacurate descriptions, he might have had a chance of producing something the fanbase would have enjoyed. I think ultimately though, the fault lies with Games Workshop for not checking more thoroughly what he was doing, and for not getting at least a few actual fans to read over his work, and advise him more, I remember a lot of people saying that his rules wrighting was proof that GW had stopped play testing with experienced gamers. There are too many examples of times he upset people, but there are a load of what was ward thinking Facebook groups you can join to view the details. Watching this interview, he even seems unaware that a large number of people actually love still playing 2nd edition and even rogue trader, so finger nowhere near the pulse as usual 😂

His codex for Necrons was good. I had no problem with that.

Grey Knights codex. Your argument is invalid.

He wrote stuff about stuff he knew nothing about.

Wonder if the current rules writer will watch this and learn a thing or two. "a sense of responsibility".

Much of the ridiculous stuff he wrote makes sense with thought and context. It was just horribly dumbed down to sell the new and cool thing to idiot readers. And I put that on the people who told him what to write. Examples: Every codex compliant chapter has Guilliman as their spiritual liege because he wrote their art of war. Had GW emphasised the inner conflict over this fact and it would've been fine. Necrons and Blood Angels being too honourable to continue fighting and tag-teaming Tyranids only makes sense when you accept the retcon to Necron lore and explain the uneasy truce which was upheld because of other urgent priorities. Grey Knights butchering Sisters makes sense with how power from sacrifice works. But then, asking anyone who writes for GW to understand chaos and the warp is too much.

he ruined the hobby for years, then the rest of the hobby caught up with him and the whole lot is rotten to the core now,

the hate towards Matt is as much a fiction as the stuff he writes, he is a GW legend , someone should interview Paul Sawyer AKA Fat bloke and find out why he went from editor of white dwarf to answering phones in trade sales.

Our spiritual liege

And this is why they no longer credit individual writers too, supposedly.

Ward's fluff was fine, the codex creep was out of control. Dunno if that was an edict from on high though.

He ruined Necrons. The OG Necron 3rd Ed codex was incredible, so much better than the modern codexes - then he made it a meme. Their lore is so less interesting now they have named characters that speak, they’re like everything else.

YUCK

You can't ever accuse Matt Ward of coming out with a bland codex. Bland codexes are far worse than OP codexes. People wait years for these things to come out and its entireley soul destroying to get a bland weak ass codex.

Brilliant lore writer, awful awful rules writer and should avoid rules and balance creation at all costs.

Seems most hated Matt due to some flavour text in Codexes he authored. Flavour text!Commercially commissioned prose designed to sell toy soldiers. People need to get a fucking grip.

Nahh. I hate Robin Cruddace more.

I don't understand why people have to have their mic sensitivity so high that you hear every spit-swapping gurgle between every word, it's f****** annoying.