Talk:Phil Kelly

What's going on this page? It seems like Ward fanboys just discovered it's existence. Ridiculous. A part complains about Kelly's Codices' lack of competitiveness, another about how broken (HA!) biker Nobz and Wolf Guard are. Ha-fucking-ha. It sounds like someone who doesn't know how to counter specific armies. Of course he's not perfect, damn it, nobody is. Moreover, we know /tg/ has issues with furries, but this is not the right page to hate.

 The idea that "He isn't perfect, nobody is!" excuses him from his horrendous mistakes is ridiculous. He is fairly
 terrible when it comes to crunch, and can still fuck up the fluff. Just look at Codex: Wolf Wolves or the Eldar or
 Beastmen codices. The former has bad fluff and crunch, and the latter two are Overpowered beyond belief or broken
 to the point of unplayability respectively. He's closer to ward levels of bad than you think, and he's hardly 
 better, the only reason /tg/ doesn't abhor him entirely is because Ward and Cruddace exist.

-

It says that the armies aren't competitive, but what it means is that they aren't competitive compared to the ridiculously overpowered armies roaming in the current edition. Moonsaves 14:39, 26 February 2013 (UTC)

Yeah, I thought the same thing. It helps that my local game group just happens to be made up of a Dark Angels player, the Sisters of Battle player, and nothing but Kelly Codexes (Chaos Marines, Dark Eldar, Orks, Space Wolves, and Eldar) and everything is pretty balanced, except for the Edition-screwed Eldar. It really feels like he writes balanced works, with a lot of the "non-competitiveness" only being in contrast with notoriously OP Codexes.

The page should probably be reverted to Korvalus' last edit, and then the competitiveness stuff can be added back. Right now it just reads like Wardite fanwank and bitching.

I'll try to keep an eye on the page; hopefully the Wardites won't give us an edit war. TjcBomeday 00:49, 28 February 2013 (UTC)

• Seems like they want one. Purge the heresy and regroup brothers, these trolls shall find us enduring.

Hey guys! As you might have noticed, I'm the one putting up most of the "Kelly's faults" stuff recently. It should be noted that I'm a fan of Phil Kelly (I play CSM, DEldar, and Daemons) and I think he's easily the best codex writer. However, he isn't perfect and I think that needs to be represented. If anything, we should make up for it with even more stuff about why he's awesome... not by denying that he sometimes has problems. --Dok

• Meh, I'm ok with this. Though I don't really know what I could write about it. Maybe we could focus on how he took care of poor, raped old codices and turned in far better books.

On that note, regarding the idea "Phil Kelly codexes are made to be good in the hands of skilled/experienced players", whether that's true, I don't know, but I do know the only army that really applied to was the Dark Eldar. Back in the third Edition codex (when "Kruellagh the Vile" [yes, I find this name corny] was a canon Dark Eldar special character), the overview mentioned it was an army for experts, not being able to rely on thick armor, high toughness, or numbers to compensate for tactical errors.

His armies can't be too hard when you can just spam hellturkeys and wave serpents, hell for Ork's I used just spam shoota boyz, Grey Knights are harder to play now.

And that's not getting into the difficulties of playing Chaos Daemons- all those random tables make it impossible to form a reliable strategy that won't get screwed over by a bad dice roll, not to mention the thoughtless porting over of the Champion of Chaos effects from Fantasy, the multiple CSM units that are fluffy but otherwise useless, and the monobuild problem that most of his codexes have these days. I'm starting to think that maybe he and Cruddace are influencing each other's writings- the difference between them is starting to get more than a little blurry now.--Newerfag (talk) 16:31, 5 December 2013 (UTC)

• Currently Eldar are the only faction of his that doesn't have monobuild or random bullshit (minus psyker powers).
  • Who knows? In a few years time he might end up vilified as the new Cruddace as new writers start to step up. --Newerfag (talk) 23:43, 5 December 2013 (UTC)
  • The thing is Kelly has gotten a pass due to Ward and Cruddace hate blinding them, resulting in fanboys overlooking his flaw, often things Ward or Cruddace do. However they have been getting better while Kelly is staying to same he's always been.
  • Excellent point. I guess that it's ultimately just about picking the least unpleasant alternative.--Newerfag (talk) 16:52, 8 December 2013 (UTC)
  • Cruddace getting better? Don't make me laugh!

Why Phil Kelly Is like Matt Ward

Reading this article, the section "Why Phil Kelly Isn't Matt Ward" just doesn't ring true, and I can show you why by going through all of the points it brings up. Please note this will be a long section.

• For starters: "Matt Ward designs armies by taking a bunch of units and cranking up their power level to MAXIMUM, either by making them extremely difficult to kill, extremely shooty, extremely choppy, or any combination of the three. He then assigns points values to these units based on what he thinks they should cost and peppers a few special rules here and there for "flavour" before tossing the Codex into the printers office."

Yet Kelly does this quite a bit too, the Space Wolves fluff in particular is really bad for this, winning almost all major battles by being "better" than the army they were fighting (there are some exceptions like the First War for Armageddon), and even when they piss off groups that should get them killed (like starting a war with the inquisition because they defended a heretical inquisitor lord from puritan inquisitors) they're let off the hook with no punishment whatsoever when they concede and the heretical inquisitor lord gets away. Quite possibly the biggest part of their fluff is when a Chaos Fleet shows up in front of and destroys a Space Wolf ship, the Space Wolves float through space all the way to the chaos flagship, break in by punching it (yes, seriously, if they can barely put a dent in a land raider how could they get through even tougher armour?) then proceed to kill everyone in their way, despite there being maybe a handful (if that) of them versus an entire flagship of Chaos Space Marines, until they get to the bridge where they use the ships weapons to wreck the entire rest of the fleet, I guess their invincibility just extends to the ship too since an entire fleet couldn't take it down. Then there's the Space Wolves version of the Bloodtide, when the Ecclesiarchy touches down they're gunned down immediately for no reason at all, and when the Sisters of Battle show up to ask "What the fuck?" They are gunned down too with no explanation. Eventually the Ecclesiarchy chooses to leave because the wolves are just too tough to beat, and there's no reprecussion for this either. People got so upset at Codex: Blood Angels for having the Necrons work with the Blood Angels to defeat the Tyranids (and there's good reasons they would do that), yet in Space Wolves the Wolves work with the Eldar and try to have a peaceful parley with them despite the Eldar not giving a fuck about anybody who isn't an Eldar, and the Space Wolves before wanting to kill aliens rather than peacefully co-exist with them, they start fighting again, but because of an imagined insult, and not because they're all supposed to hate each other. Anyway, that's a few examples of the fluff, I'll get into the crunch in a later section, where Wave Serpents are all but untouchable, Eldar get re-rollable 2++ saves, and why not give that to Daemons too, make sure to keep it on all of the really shooty/choppy units which makes them very hard to kill!

Another thing we can "thank" Phil Kelly for is changing the warp from being a hellish dimension completely at odds with are own and where you will be devoured by the area that is also one of the Chaos Gods Forms as the warp is divided into mere extensions of their will if you ever go there without a spaceship shielding you, to being just a mildly unpleasant shifting landscape, where you can stroll through the gardens of nurgle, take a tour through the palace of pleasures, and get a great view from the brass citadel of Khorne all before stopping in the impossible city for dinner. Under Kelly the place turned into an area ships literally crash into (not kidding, and the survivors wandered out and got lost in Nurgle's jungle). This is a place where a Dark Eldar Kabal ended up after accidentally taking a wrong turn in the webway, as if they were bugs bunny in a looney toons scene. It's a wonder the Emperor never thought to conquer a portion of it for safe space travel during the great crusade, apparently there's lots of real estate to go around.

• "Phil Kelly designs armies that work as armies, rather than a bunch of units that rely on simply being "better" than anything the opponent can field in order to function properly. That's why neither the Dark Eldar or Space Wolves Codexes have big, fat, expensive units with Thunder Hammers, Storm Shields and Feel No Pain for 200pts - you can have units like this if you want them, but where Matt Ward has to give them to you for peanuts because he can't design an army without making it broken, Phil Kelly makes you pay through the bumhole for them because in his army books, these units are a luxury, not a necessity."

True, the Space Wolves and Dark Eldar do not have those, but the Dark Eldar and Chaos Space Marines in particular have a lot of shit units that have no real way to help them support the rest of the army, and this doesn't seem to stop Daemons or Eldar from fielding a bunch of units that can kick the shit out of anything other armies can field without any real challenge. It also doesn't do well to say that the armies are designed to work as armies when it says right at the top of the page that there's always broken units and shit units, you'll never take Mutilators if you ever want to be competitive, same with Warp Talons, and if you want to be competitive there's always just a few units or vehicles you can take to completely fuck over the other player without any real challenge, it doesn't take a lot to realize you can just take several Heldrakes and Wave Serpents and there's not a lot your opponent can do to you, or that you can get re-rollable 2++ saves on entire units that guarantees you can handle everything in the game short of Strength D weapons.

• "tl;dr: Phil Kelly is the best designer GW have got, the only one who makes armies that require any thought to play, and the only thing standing between the gaming side of 40k and complete assmongery. If your army hasn't had a new Codex yet pray to THE EMPRAH/CHAOS GODS that it's Phil Kelly who is going to write the update because if it is, you can count on your book still kicking ass three years down the line, looking like a joke but being almost unbeatable in the right hands, or surviving through two Editions as a force to be reckoned with. Unlike certain army books written by a certain spiritual liege, which seem broken at first but quickly fizzle out as they collapse under the weight of their own hollow bullshit, and even at their peak still have a number of units that are utterly worthless due to stuff in the book that does their job better."

The best? Even the article admits he isn't, the only one who makes armies that require thought? I've seen this a lot, all armies require some thought to play, and since this section is made to go after Ward specifically, pick random Necron units and play a game, I guarantee you're going to lose. Not to mention earlier they go on about how bullshit Matt's armies are for making units way too powerful, but here say that they're pretty weak down the line, pick one or the other, you can't do both, and if you can consistently/constantly pull out wins against them using somebody else's book (seriously, the Grey Knights have next to no counter for most of the stuff in Codex: Eldar) then the other army either isn't broken (highly unlikely), or your book is just as overpowered and you don't realize it.

• "However dialectic around GW writers never stops and it seems that the tides are changing direction. Now that everyone everywhere loathe Ward and workship Kelly, it's cool, very cool indeed, loving Matt Ward and his work and blaming Phil Kelly about all the bad design around WH40k and remember stupid designs within Space Wolves, Dark Eldar and Chaos Space Marine codices (special mention to certain dragon). Now, all hipsters are turning to Ward, until he will be so popular that Phil Kelly will be awesome again."

I've never been too sure of what this means, if anybody could explain it I'd be very thankful.

Now I am not a Matt Ward Fanboy, I just have no special love for Phil Kelly, I figured I'd play the devil's advocate for him (Ward) this once, and even though I titled this "Why Phil Kelly Is like Matt Ward" I do not think he is Ward (though do think he's on the same level as him), the thing that makes the two of them different is that Ward makes new fluff and usually uses it to replace existing fluff, whereas Kelly picks an existing theme, and then makes that one theme all that the army is ever about to the exclusion of all else, the reason people hate Ward is because they think the new fluff is often inferior to the stuff it's replacing (it often is in my opinion) or they think the added fluff is outright shit that didn't need to be there (once again I agree) but because Kelly sticks to some of what was originally in the armies, he gets a pass and people don't realize how much the armies change in tone and character because of this. Triacom 13 August 2014

Do you read Kelly's books?

Just thought I'd ask, how many people here have actually read Phil Kelly's Black Library novels, and how many of you enjoyed them? He's coming out with a new book now and I'm thinking of expanding the section on the main page to cover the novels in more detail.

For the record I think the novels are steaming piles of pig shit, and that's why I wanted to go more in-depth with them. Even if there was no lore besides what Kelly wrote since he frequently forgets what he wrote in the same book, and has characters do something already established to be impossible to pull a win out as a result. Sometimes he does this 3+ times in the climax of a single book, and almost every single fight boils down to him making the losing side retarded (with exceptions like Crisis of Faith, where this describes every fight). If you think that language is uncalled for, then that means you haven't read the books. -- Triacom (talk) 23:32, 20 February 2020 (UTC)