One small tweak...

[Deadlift]

Rules aside, The Ork codex is one of the most enjoyable codexes to read. It's very funny.

[DarkLink]

As for Phil Kelly's track record, the reason why netlisters latch onto his books so rapidly is because they have terrible internal balance. It's easy to take one quick glance at them and say 'ok, Rune Priests are the best HQ, Grey Hunters in Drop Pods are awesome, Long Fangs are awesome, and Thunderwolf Cavalry with a Thunderwolf Lord is pretty rough, too'. Bam, instant netlist. Same thing with current Eldar. 'Wow, Wraithknights, Wave Serpents, Farseers, and Seer Councils are better than everything else in the codex'. Bam, netlist. CSM? 'Heldrakes murder mechanized Marines'. Daemons? "FMCs, Flesh Hounds, and the Screamerstar'. Old Eldar? Eldrad, Falcons, Harlequins, Fire Dragons. Dark Eldar? Venoms, the Baron, and Ravagers.

In every single one of his books, you can look at any give force org slot and quickly determine which unit is the best. He always has one unit in each FOC that is pretty blatantly better than the other units in that slot. Occasionally two units with share the top spot. The only exception to this rule is the Eldar troops section, where Guardians, Jetbikes, and Dire Avengers are all pretty equal, depending on your purposes.

That's not to say that the other units are necessarily terrible. They're just completely overshadowed. Why would you ever take a Predator when you could take Long Fangs instead? Why would you ever take

Most netlists come from Phil Kelly's book because they have very poor internal balance. That's something not present in, say, the GK codex. There were a multitude of different builds you could be competitive with at the height of their power. Purifier spam, Acolyte spam, Draigowing, Razorback spam, Psyrifle Dreadnought spam, etc, and to top it off you could even mix and match elements between those different archetypes. But all of Phil Kelly's books always boil down to one or two netlists. If you want to take a big hit competitively, you can swap out some stuff for the less competitive units while still doing alright, but you still have to keep some of the cheese. And if you avoid the netlist units, then good luck winning any games. Anyone going to a tournament is forced to use a netlist, simply because it's the only option available if you want to actually, y'know, compete. Even the more casual tournament players (which really, that describes the vast majority of tournament players) are still trying to win. With a GK style book, however, you can take basically whatever you want and still have a solid shot at winning.

TLDR; Phil Kelly has terrible internal balance. Matt Ward has, generally, pretty good internal balance, with the GK codex as his best in that regard, and Vulkan his one major failure. All of GW's writers have pretty terrible external balance, though I would still rank Matt Ward higher than Phil Kelly. Ward's only real standout was the GK codex, the rest of his stuff has been pretty well balanced overall.




For reference, internal balance is the in-codex options available to the player. Good internal balance means that all the units are roughly equally good, and you can take any given unit without worrying about how competitive it will be. Poor internal balance means that if you pick certain units, you win, if you pick anything but those units, you lose.

External balance is the balance between different codices. If a small number of books are head and shoulders above everyone else (Tau/Eldar/Daemons at the moment, GK, IG, and Space Wolves at the end of 5th edition), and/or if there are a few books that lag significantly behind everything else that's out there (Daemonhunters/3rd ed Necrons back in 5th, Nidz/Orks now) there is poor external balance. If you can take any army to competitive game and win on skill alone rather than your list, that's good external balance (e.g. the Warmachine tournament where every single faction was represented in the top 16 of a very large tournament, and no one army had more than 3 in the top 16, and the worst faction in the game took 2nd place).

It's possible to have good internal balance but poor external balance (GKs at the end of 5th, with outstanding internal balance but poor external balance, again due to the prominence of light vehicle spam and wound allocation shenanigans), and vise versa with good external balance but poor internal balance.



Edit:
Also, yes, the Ork codex is hilarious. I won't fault Phil Kelly for his fluff. Though I honestly don't read much of the codex fluff.

[eldargal]

Phil Kelly makes books that are interesting to play, Wards tend to trend towards tedium (both to play with and against) though he has improved dramatically recently. However they are both good writers, the trouble is people focus on the relatively few things each writer does poorly in their books and extrapolate it into some kind of overarching issue of competence. Banshees are terrible certainly and have really hurt my enthusiasm for Eldar but to argue that his books devolve into mono-builds is just wrong.

When I get a Phil Kelly book I know it going to be full of fun, lore friendly goodness even if the internal balance is a little wonky. When it comes to Ward I expect solid balance but a little dry and dull to play. In fairness I would say Ward has made dramatic improvements while Kelly has remained much the same, which you prefer comes down to preference. I do strongly disagree that there is always one unit per FOC slot in a Kelly book that is objectively superior, that is just nonsense. There is usually one choice which is easiest to use and people latch onto it (Trueborn, for example) and declare the others to be worse but that is simply not the case. Hellions vs Reavers, Trueborn vs Bloodbrides vs Haemonculi things etc, it all comes down to personal preferences.

[DarkLink]

Competitively they devolve into monobuilds. Like I said, there are other decent units in the codex, but there are a limited number of units that are blatantly better than everything else, which you can use to make the latest netlist. That's true of all of his books, including Eldar and even Dark Eldar. Even ask a guy like Reece from Frontline Gaming (who's been playing Eldar for many, many years) who has a habit of taking unusual combinations of non-typical units and making them competitive despite conventional wisdom, and even he will say "holy crap, Wave Serpents are just sooooo good".

Now, you can take a poorly balanced codex, show restraint, write a non-netlist, and have a fun game. That's true of both Phil Kelly, Mat Ward, and any other codex author out there. And if you play in that sort of environment, then more units become viable, and the more the illusion of balance appears.

The problem is, not everyone plays like that, especially in larger gaming groups where you don't have a tight little group of friends. That's when Phil Kelly's flaws start to appear, and his books just fall apart. Nowadays with the GK codex, though, it doesn't matter whether you play casually or competitively, you can pretty much take whatever you want and have a solid, mid-level army. With my Eldar, though, which I designed to be competitive, half the time I'll get into a game and see that I massively outclass my opponent, so I intentionally play stupid for a few turns so I don't just steamroller them. Then when I feel like I've let them kill enough of my stuff that it will be a more even game, I start playing seriously. That doesn't happen with my GKs, at least not since 6th started.

So while you might be fortunate enough to play in a particular group where poorly balanced units don't matter, you're lucky. You're in kind of a special niche. But a lot of people get screwed over because of Serpent spam, Seer Council, Warp Spiders, and Wraithknights.

[Kyban]

Phil Kelly makes books that are interesting to play, Wards tend to trend towards tedium (both to play with and against) though he has improved dramatically recently. However they are both good writers, the trouble is people focus on the relatively few things each writer does poorly in their books and extrapolate it into some kind of overarching issue of competence. Banshees are terrible certainly and have really hurt my enthusiasm for Eldar but to argue that his books devolve into mono-builds is just wrong.

When I get a Phil Kelly book I know it going to be full of fun, lore friendly goodness even if the internal balance is a little wonky. When it comes to Ward I expect solid balance but a little dry and dull to play. In fairness I would say Ward has made dramatic improvements while Kelly has remained much the same, which you prefer comes down to preference. I do strongly disagree that there is always one unit per FOC slot in a Kelly book that is objectively superior, that is just nonsense. There is usually one choice which is easiest to use and people latch onto it (Trueborn, for example) and declare the others to be worse but that is simply not the case. Hellions vs Reavers, Trueborn vs Bloodbrides vs Haemonculi things etc, it all comes down to personal preferences.

I'm not so sure. I like Kelly's older books, they all seemed pretty good but the last three have been terrible. The new Eldar book didn't seem very lore friendly at all and those three books are responsible for most of the units that people despise playing against now. Both writers have some failings but I've just been really disappointed with Kelly's rules recently, especially as Eldar are my favorites but I haven't been playing them recently because of the codex. Kelly's not the only one who failed them recently though...

[eldargal]

Competitively they devolve into monobuilds. Like I said, there are other decent units in the codex, but there are a limited number of units that are blatantly better than everything else, which you can use to make the latest netlist. That's true of all of his books, including Eldar and even Dark Eldar. Even ask a guy like Reece from Frontline Gaming (who's been playing Eldar for many, many years) who has a habit of taking unusual combinations of non-typical units and making them competitive despite conventional wisdom, and even he will say "holy crap, Wave Serpents are just sooooo good".

Now, you can take a poorly balanced codex, show restraint, write a non-netlist, and have a fun game. That's true of both Phil Kelly, Mat Ward, and any other codex author out there. And if you play in that sort of environment, then more units become viable, and the more the illusion of balance appears.

The problem is, not everyone plays like that, especially in larger gaming groups where you don't have a tight little group of friends. That's when Phil Kelly's flaws start to appear, and his books just fall apart. Nowadays with the GK codex, though, it doesn't matter whether you play casually or competitively, you can pretty much take whatever you want and have a solid, mid-level army. With my Eldar, though, which I designed to be competitive, half the time I'll get into a game and see that I massively outclass my opponent, so I intentionally play stupid for a few turns so I don't just steamroller them. Then when I feel like I've let them kill enough of my stuff that it will be a more even game, I start playing seriously. That doesn't happen with my GKs, at least not since 6th started.

So while you might be fortunate enough to play in a particular group where poorly balanced units don't matter, you're lucky. You're in kind of a special niche. But a lot of people get screwed over because of Serpent spam, Seer Council, Warp Spiders, and Wraithknights.

Sorry but that's just nonsense.

Competitively everyhing is ****ed up because the rules aren't intended for competitive play, so no ****s given to be honest. Even then it's just not true that his books devolve into monobuilds, it's just the netlist culture says they do. Wave serpents are good, but then as the onl dedicated transport in the book they aren't exactly facing much competition in their FOC slot are they? Let's go through the FOC excluding HQ and pick out all the competitive units:
Elite:
Fire Dragons
Striking Scorpions
Wraithguard/blades

Troops:
Jetbikes
Dire Avengers
Rangers

Fast Attack:
Warp Spiders
Shining Spears
Crimson Hunters

Heavy Support:
Wraithknight
Fire Prism
Wraithlords
Dark Reapers
War Walkers

People may have a favourite from each category but in my experience the preference is purely down to playstyle and meta, NOT a fault in the rules.

You can't turn around and say 'not everyone plays like that' when you are referring the the vast majority of players who do not play competitively, even if you accept the monobuild argument is something other than bollocks.

I'm not saying his books don't have faults, I'm saying that acting like his books are terrible when you prefer a different style is just stupid. His book may tend to be a bit unbalanced in some ways but they are at least interesting, Ward struggles to get his to be something other than boring. I don't even bother playing GK anymore because it's just boring. His newer books are better. All this is personal preference really

I won't deny the Eldar book is a bit disappointing in some ways though. But it's still a solid, reasonably well balanced book.

I'm not so sure. I like Kelly's older books, they all seemed pretty good but the last three have been terrible. The new Eldar book didn't seem very lore friendly at all and those three books are responsible for most of the units that people despise playing against now. Both writers have some failings but I've just been really disappointed with Kelly's rules recently, especially as Eldar are my favorites but I haven't been playing them recently because of the codex. Kelly's not the only one who failed them recently though...

Fair enough, I'm not saying he is perfect. I'm just saying people have a tendency to overstate their least favourite writers faults and understate their favourite authors faults. Ward gets the worst of it though. What most of it boils down to is a few questionable choices and a whole lot of personal preferences that people seem to think are objective.


It's rather amusing to me that I'm in the position of defending Codex: Eldar because in many ways I was quite disappointed with it, though most of those ways are related to Howling Banshees. It really killed my enthusiasm in spite of the new kits so while I've been collecting new fighter wings and a small horde of ghost warriors 4 out of 5 games I play are with Dark Eldar and I'm playing WFB more than 40k (mostly Vampire Counts, another Kelly book).

[Wolfshade]

People may have a favourite from each category but in my experience the preference is purely down to playstyle and meta, NOT a fault in the rules.

I would agree and go a little further. Many units are not taken because they are seen as uncompetative, and because of the advent of the netlist, people copy and paste a list and then gain experiance with said list playing in a certain style. So units that then fall outside of that style of play are then seen not to be as good as people do not use them effectively and moreover do not have enough game time to make it competative.

A perfect example is my brother-in-law's tyranids, he has been playing since the dawn of 40k, and as a conseuqnce has a long history of playing many many games with a variety of very different builds, consequently he can field a nid army that works together in synergy but each time being radically different, from a shooting list to a gribbly lsit to a monsterous creature list. By knowing the army inside and out he knows how each unit can be used and how they can be used together in ways that a rather one-dimensional (and easy to learn) list may not.

[Mr Mystery]

Yup. Plus, netlisting usually ends up with those dependant on them not really knowing why the stuff they're fielding is superior to the rest. It's just sort of taken as read.

Though don't get me wrong. If someone wants to netlist, there's nowt wrong with that. Horses for courses and to each their own. Your hobby is no more my hobby than my hobby is your hobby.

[Wolfshade]

Oh certainly, a net list can be a good way to get into an army and to quickly get up to speed with it.

[Eldar_Atog]

An observation about the Kelly/Ward debate:

I would say that you can't blame either of them for codex creep. They are not hiding in their offices cackling over their next broken codex. What is more likely is that they are given their marching orders from the brass about which units they want to see pushed and which should be shelved. The codex writer then comes up with a set of rules that encourages the buying behavior that the company brass wants.