Given Codex: Iyanden is among the lore which is allowed to exist thanks to abandoning the works he produced that does not say much in its favour. As pointed out above, the lore, history and details of that book are almost entirely contradictory to themselves, lazily written, poorly handled and quite frankly Iyanden deserved far better than a cheap cash grab by a man who clearly had no idea what he was doing. Lore is supposed to evolve, develop and progress, with retcons removing the bad ideas, negative points and problematic issues which arise thanks to poor research. It is not supposed to sweep away an army's identity, ruin decent writing and allow for the lore to devolve into a childish, poorly written excuse of a book. One so badly written that quite frankly any fan with a modicum of understanding of the army could have farted out something better in a couple of months work. Lord knows i've seen better written Exodite codices in past years by fans working for free. Oh, we're going down this route are we? Very well. Thrope wrote the Second Edition Sisters of Battle codex, which introduced the many core concept themes behind the Imperium and fully fleshed out a cornerstone of the setting's history with the Age of Apostasy. It was also one of the very few books to actually examine changes in an empire's socio-political climate and how it might change over millenia, rather than placing total emphasis upon the wars and armies. A rare example of such writing among books sadly. Thorpe also wrote Angels of Darkness, celebrated and best known for introducing the theories behind the Dark Angels, depicting the possibility that El Johnson may well have been the real traitor and concluded on a suitably dark note for the series. He wrote the Last Chancers series, which gave character to how the penal legions operated, depicting the criminal scum as a wide mixture of individuals rather than merely raving psychopaths. Not to mention that he also turned Colonel Schaeffer into a borderline immortal figure of legend. He wrote the Catechism of Hate, an excellent follow-up to the First Tyrannic War and giving Chaplain Cassius a story worthy of the often overlooked character. Presenting not only flashbacks of the original conflict with the Great Devourer but also a 300 style conflict which benefited the Chaplain and his warriors. He co-wrote Codex: Daemonhunters, a work which fully explored the Ordo Malleus, better introduced the Inquisition to the tabletop and many fans who may not have heard of them, and was one of the first big pushes to create a combined force of space marines and Imperial Guard. Along with this, it was one of the few books to actively advocate setting up even the most basic scenarios and battles with a genuine lore related reason and background. Not just that two foes ran into one another. He assisted in writing the majority of space marine codices of the Third Edition, everything from the Blood Angels to Space Wolves. Books which attempted to push away from the more overtly tongue-in-cheek cheesy elements of the game into a much more darker depiction benefiting the lore and setting. He was also responsible for Inquisitor, and is one of the few authors pushing for the more long overlooked chapters and sub-factions to be given stories at long last. Furthermore, while the Forth Edition Codex: Chaos Space Marines was indeed a failure, it was primarily marked as a failure in terms of gameplay. The lore it contained was hardly bad, and in fact it presented a number of good ideas such as the fall of a number of space marine factions and certain wars of faith.
Let's compare that with Ward shall we. The man gets into Warhammer 40,000 thanks to poor work on Lord of the Rings and is immediately treated with the worst kind of nepotism, handed the most important codices imaginable. He proceeds to write the Fifth Edition Space Marine codex, and turns it into a love letter to his personal favourite faction. Ultramarine dominance is only furthered, but whereas the fourth edition pushed for some variety and individual army choice, and depicted other chapters with respect in their own stories, Ward promptly makes a mockery of them. The Ultramarines are given more battles devoted to them than the battles meant to cover the entire adeptus astartes, all of which are crushing victories and the closest they come to defeat is Damnos. A battle which, unlike how it was presented in the Rulebook or novels, glorifies the Ultramarines at every turn and tries to twist it into some kind of victory. Even then it's later rendered null and void when the Ultramarines are written to have a staggering victory over the same necrons, completely destroying everything from a C'Tan to their most basic warriors with ease. The rulebook managed to even screw up the most basic chapters with mere paragraphs, such as the Mentors, and many were only characterised by one insulting bit of lore - "They can never be Ultramarines" something which was apparently a detrimental failing to almost all chapters. The book proved to be so bad that Ultramarines players who had been playing the army for decades, retired their forces rather than be seen to associate themselves with that book. He then wrote the Codex: Blood Angels. The book took one or two steps forwards with the force, then over a dozen backwards as Ward's blithering incompetence took over. The army proved to be so broken that a halfwit could merrily beat down anyone with another army so long as they had a vague idea of what units to buy. It didn't celebrate tactical decision making, clever thinking or even putting an effort into requiring players to actually having skill. What it contained was raw power and the ability to steamroll just about everything in sight, with the now infamous flying Land Raiders among other things. What's more is that the lore altered the Blood Angels so that their personality began and ended with their curse. Rather than being a major part of their characterisation, nothing existed beyond it and much of the lore was dumbed down to the point of insanity. This is not to mention that huge chunks of the text went out of their way to turn the Blood Angels into loyalist Emperor's Children, right down to altering Sanguinius' original history to incorporate elements and desires Fulgrim originally had. the FAQ, unlike other editions, was less about balancing the army and dealing with problems, and more confirming the most broken and cheesy ways to abuse the rules. Then came Codex: Grey Knights, which is widely considered to be one of the single worst written codices in terms of lore and effectively only exaggerated the worst gameplay elements seen in Codex: Blood Angels. The Grey Knights had enough raw power to utterly cripple just about anything in sight by running forwards, had characters who could automatically kill big gribbly monstrosities several times their points cost by by dying themselves, had some of the most underpriced and horrifically effective transport poppers in the entire game, and contained elements which made it effectively impossible to lose barring extremely bad luck or sheer incompetence. The lore punched Eye of Terror sized plot holes into the canon, making the Horus Heresy impossible, contradicted itself on multiple occasions as to how secret the Grey Knights were, introduced Kaldor Draigo, and presented multiple ways in which the Imperials could have easily emerged victorious at the Siege of Terra and defeated Chaos itself long before Horus was ever corrupted. Not that he could be corrupted thanks to this. The FAQs were just as bad as ever, potentially even worse, allowing Terminators to take Chimeras as transports, and giving the thumbs up to utterly stupid items which could now defeat entire armies. Namely the Plasma Syphon rendering almost everything in the Tau Empire's arsenal useless. It also continued Ward's pet hatred of the Sisters of Battle, stealing almost all their units, severing any connections with a major power, and senselessly massacring them in an insulting manner which doesn't even begin to make any sense even after discarding half the key points behind the setting. Since then the Grey Knights have had multiple audio dramas, tales and short stories by people who can legitimately be called writers, desperately trying to fix the damage he'd caused. Even years down the line, they still have a lot of work to do. He then wrote Codex: Necrons, which turned the Lovecraftian nightmare machines into Saturday morning cartoon villains. The C'Tan were turned into Pokemon, their leaders all sounded exactly the same, being given such cartoonish personalities that even the self-parodying Orks were complex figures by comparison and the lore went out of its way to destroy any semblance of the old army. This naturally opened up even more plot holes, such as a certain issue behind the Void Dragon, and continued ongoing edit wars with certain authors who had tried to reign in his worst excesses and dared to actually try and fix the damage he'd caused. Were this not enough, nearly everything of these new necrons were elements stolen from other armies, merely being the Craftworld Eldar with a new lick of paint at the end of the day. The gameplay was little more than a minor step up of what we had gotten before, but still emphasised brute force and broken rules over actual tactical understanding of the game. We then had Codex: Iyanden, despite Games Workshop supposedly placating fans aggravated with his ruination of whole armies by moving him over to Fantasy. We've already covered this so moving on. After the negative backlash and people even calling out Games Workshop on breaking their word, the names of all authors involved with the supplement codices were mysteriously removed. However, Facebook posts and answers at conventions still confirmed that Ward was heading the lore on all these books. First to follow Iyanden was Codex: Farsight Enclaves, which proceeded to ruin the tau in unimaginable ways. Along with utterly wrecking the mystery behind Farsight and the Dawn Blade, Ward ruined the carefully constructed and extremely well written work of Jeremy Vetock by declaring "Lol, Ethereals are Orwellian dictators!" and once again boiling down a faction to an extremely simplified shadow of its former self. Naturally this required even more plot holes to work, and even more theft of other people's ideas. For no reason, all of a sudden the Aun Caste were repeating every mistake the Emperor of Mankind had made, but with none of the knowledge or reasoning. They were suppressing all understanding of the Warp, despite being previously confirmed to have little knowledge of the Warp itself beyond "It's bad and very dangerous" and supposedly hiding any and all information about daemons or Chaos. This is despite ten years worth of conflicts with Chaos, well documented and with the Tau Empire itself apparently even having entire stratagems devoted to dealing with them. The cherry atop of all this was that the lore then declared that they were suppressing the very knowledge of psykers existing at all, despite the first race to join the Empire consisting entirely of psykers, various previous depictions showing that the Water Caste understood what an Astropath was, and their two big enemies in the past being the orks and Tyranid Hive Fleets. The book contained only two pages of rules which were barely a step up from the last supplement, and contained insane additions to the lore such as the Farsight Enclave carving a world into a giant D20. After the Black Legion supplement was handed to a far better author for its lore (Aaron Dembski-Bowden, I believe) Ward returned with Codex: Sentinels of Terra, and continued to openly crap on everything in sight. Turning the Imperial Fists into the Black Templars, he continued his trend of adding insane nonsensical additions to the plot, but upped the ante with his theft of writer's ideas and elements of other stories. The villain was an obvious stand in for Warsmith Honsou, just with none of the hard work or dignity, the main story was replicated from Sons of Dorn, elements of the big battle was effectively taken wholesale from Endeavor of Will, and the entire finale of the Soul Drinkers saga was copied and pasted as the codex's ending. Naturally the codex went out of its way to retcon each and every novel and throw in bits which made them impossible to have taken place before thieving them for himself. This is to say nothing of the madness of his other sections, such as saying the Imperial Fists use older "inferior" marks of armour because they can, Lysander being turned into an uncaring sociopath, The Phalanx being turned into a space station (at least until the codex requires it to move) and a recruitment regime which doesn't even hold up to a brief examination. Atop of this, his writings showed a scarily obsessive focus upon recording each and every Imperial Fists casualty, showing them dying as much as he possibly could. Not exactly a flattering depiction of the army.
We have Codex: Clan Raukann, a codex which destroyed the identity of the Iron Hands, ripped out everything unique about them and crapped all over previous lore. Along with retconning Wrath of Iron completely from existence, the book destroyed the chapter's Clan Company structure, removed Iron Father as a rank, retconned roughly half of the Iron Hands' successors into oblivion (while stealing nearly all the ideas from one, the Steel Confessors) and pillaged yet more ideas from the Soul Drinkers books. The codex ended with the declaration that any and all previous depictions of the Iron Hands, their history as coldly logical, uncaring war machines, was a failing and actually removing and controlling their emotions was turning them to Chaos. The Iron Hands players I have seen since this was released have all but declared a blood oath to kill Ward, and nearly all have jumped ship to M31 due to the Horus Heresy books' better lore. Finally we have Codex: Crimson Slaughter. A book so badly written that it gets even basic cause and effect, motivations or logical storytelling progression all wrong. To give one brief example of this here's how their start of darkness begins: Operating to rescue thousands of Imperial colonists trapped within a space hulk in M38, the Crimson Sabres work alongside the Dark and Blood Angels to board the vessel and fight daemons. Said daemons almost immediately start to disappear within a short time of fighting, a fact which apparently warrants no suspicion from anyone involved. Instead, several Crimson Sabres stumble upon an Interrogator Chaplain acting outside of his jurisdiction, get into a minor skirmish over him brutally interrogating a colonist, and then leave. In response to one chapter breaking the tenants of the Codex Astartes, torturing someone apparently without reason, and then starting a fight with a younger chapter, Terra naturally overlooks the Dark Angels. Instead they censure the Crimson Sabres, citing the other chapters' beliefs that they had not shown them the proper "acclaim" for their actions. I'm guessing the Blood Angels were just feeling like pricks that day. The Crimson Sabres respond to this act of censure by burying all records of their history, cutting all ties with other chapters including their progenitor, renaming their ships, destroying all relic weapons, armour and items which might directly link to their long history, and effectively starting over. They also completely change how the tenth company is trained supposedly, despite avidly sticking to the Codex Astartes both prior to and after this incident. They then declare they will only obey Terra as other space marine chapters cannot be trusted. Believe me, it only gets worse from there, and the rules are just as bad. Is that enough, or do you also need me to go into Fantasy as well? None of which you have yet been able to contradict, counter nor present a convincing argument to the contrary. Despite extensive outlining covering your every, heavily detailing a multitude of the book's failings from its basic culture to approach to writing, your only response has been unsubstantiated arguments of falsehoods. If you had even the most basic ability to back up this statement, I would have expected at least a basic response of some kind, a quote or even perhaps some hint which adds legitimacy to your claim. You have offered nothing of the sort so far. It's not exactly the best approach to take when you want someone to believe your claims. No. Believe it or not I agree with you entirely on your problems with the Path of the Eldar books, especially how mishandled Korlandril becoming an Exarch and how easily the Craftworld was stormed. That said, I personally can better appreciate a genuine effort by an author to try and build upon the lore, no matter how mishandled it might have been. What Thorpe wrote was not good, not by any stretch, but it was at least original and tried to stay true to the themes of the race and craftworld. Ward in his usual manner opted to happily plagarise everything in sight, and boiled the craftworld down to being a poor clone of another popular faction with information which contradicts itself from paragraph to paragraph, and heroes who have the strength of character and self control of a seven year old. Thorpe at least had a few decent ideas scattered here and there among his writings, some very mishandled (such as your aforementioned example of Korlandril entering attack poses subconsciously, something which might have been written well if another approach had been taken) but some manage to occasionally shine through such as depicting how Seers shape certain events on the battlefield. It's the equivalent of comparing Activision to Electronic Arts. One has practices which only hurt gaming and are recognised as being a major problem within the industry when it comes down to how they deal with information; but the other is Electronic Arts. Best recognised for some of the least community friendly decisions imaginable, killing off multiple believed franchises, giving such control to their executives rather than the developers who know what they are doing, and generally serving as a PR guide on "how not to do it" in the industry. They're both bad, but one is so horrifically harmful, incompetent and greedy that it overshadows all others, making them look better by comparison. The same thing is happening here. Thorpe could churn out a dozen Path of the Warrior novels and he would still be a vast improvement over Ward, purely because he doesn't sink to Ward's level.
dosent matter how strong or weak a individual is when they put on the exarch armor. The souls within the armor either takeover the soul of the one donning the suit or if strong enough all the personalities mesh into a unified body.
If you can't keep it down to one post then it's pretty much impossible to address to any of your points without writing War and Peace sized replies. One TLDR essay post that covers multiple topics is bad enough nevermind 7 of them. Aint nobody got time for that. As for the original point, Biel-Tan and Iyanden can hardly be all that similar when their alliance falls apart because they kept pursuing different agendas. It's stated in the supplement that Iyanden leave Biel-Tan on their own to face a major Imperial force and refuse to send help because reclaiming the Maiden World has nothing to do with fighting Chaos, leaving Biel-Tan fairly upset with them. The Valedor novel expands on Ward's fluff and depicts the unease that still remain between the craftworlds because of that and how they have to resolve their troubled past regarding failed alliances. So no, by no criteria are Iyanden Diet Biel-Tan. There's nothing uniquely Biel-Tanian about wanting their race to thrive again. All Eldar want this and its even used as a general description of the Eldar on the back of the 6th edition book: "Led by visionary and deadly Aspect Warriors, they fight fiercely against the upstart races of the galaxy, determined that their empire will blaze once more into glorious light before fate consigns them to oblivion." It's the means by which they pursue this end that gives them their character. PS, I didn't say Ward hasn't written bad stuff. You could've saved yourself that biography of everything he's ever written.
It was a pretty well-written essay. The points in his final one were even had bullets so it's hardly difficult to navigate. If you want a TLDR, here it is from his post: You should also read this, which is a pretty well thought out analogy. At the end of the day, I agree with him completely. His renditions of the supplement chapters/craftworlds put a very, very stale taste on 40k. In all, I think he made too much things simple and based on something already in existence, which is cover extensively by Killbo Fraggins. His Iyanden remastery, which while it did fill the void of knowledge on exactly what led to the carnage, it not only painted Iyanden to be stupid and arrogant, but also more or less a copy of Biel-Tan in the way they acted prior to the incident. I don't like his lore, and I really do wish GW would not endorse it.
By the powers of Matt Ward destroyer of lore and Noah Ward (not) destroyer of image i summon thee @BrentEllison to answer mine questions(if possible). What is happening with Eldar and their ranger class. Necromancy at its finest
@BrentEllison If possible could get some information about the Eldar Ranger and it's expected release or balance vs Scouts if they are even in the works since the last amount of information we received on them is rather outdated and is causing confusion about stealth mechanic implementation along with discussions about the Space Marine Scout. If we could get something about priority of release or development like after Heavy Elites such as Terminators or Heroes would be appreciated greatly.
