The Warhammer-community team brings us info on the exciting new 40k app!
The Warhammer 40,000 app will be a game-changer. It’s the essential digital companion for all players, and it will become even more indispensable over time. How? Glad you asked…
What Does It Do?
The Free Offer
The Core Rules for the game are included in the app for free, so everyone has a quick reference to the rules in the heat of battle. Neat, huh? Well, just you wait until new codexes start to drop – every codex written for the new edition will include a one-use code you can redeem through your My Warhammer account (we’ll get back to that in a minute) to unlock that codex in the app.
For Subscribers
Subscribers get even more – all your rules and points for Warhammer 40,000.
At launch, you’ll be able to reference the full rules from the Warhammer 40,000 Core Book. Yep – that makes this the best resource for Warhammer 40,000 gaming ever conceived. So, whether you need to know which weapons have the Blast special rule or how many Command points that Stratagem costs, it’ll all be at your fingertips.
Codexes – Future-proofed and Backward Compatible
As a bonus for subscribers, the rules from every current in-print codex and supplement will be included in the app from day one. This is the ultimate repository of Warhammer 40,000 rules – your points, your Relics, Stratagems, datasheets… everything. All in one place.
There’s never been a better resource anywhere for people who play Warhammer 40,000.
This is future-proof too: as new codexes are released, older ones will be removed and can be replaced using the code you get when you buy the new print version. All future rules updates, including errata, will be reflected in the app as well, so you’ll always be up to date.
And it’s going to get even better with Battle Forge, the powerful army list creator coming soon after launch.
What’s a Battle Forge?
This is THE most requested feature for any Warhammer 40,000 app. Battle Forge will allow subscribers to use the app to build and verify Battle-forged army lists. Whether putting together a Combat Patrol for a quick lunchtime game with a friend or crafting a Strike Force that will dominate battlefields at your next tournament, you’ll be able to do it all in the app and check that it’s valid and legal. And, of course, you’ll be able to use the app to keep track of your rules while you play, so you can leave the books at home!
You won’t have to wait long to get your hands on Battle Forge, it’s the first of many great updates planned for the app after launch. We’ll keep you updated right here, so stay tuned.
How Do I Get It?
It will all be yours with just four simple steps.
You’ll be able to sign up for a My Warhammer account before the app launches, which you’ll use to sign in to the app once it’s available. Your My Warhammer account will also be where you subscribe to the app once it launches, and then you can unleash its full power – easy!
How Much?
£3.99 – less than a paintbrush per month for all your rules in the palm of your hand.
When can I get it?
The Warhammer 40,000 app will be launching in the next few weeks, and even more features will be coming right on its heels. We’ll be bringing you regular updates, so keep an eye out here and on the Warhammer 40,000 Facebook page.
And remember, Frontline Gaming sells gaming products at a discount, every day in their webcart!
The details for this app seem VERY lackluster and quite tone-deaf. We’ll see if they can offer enough features to make the $5 work it, but they are not launching with more than $1-$2 a month worth of features.
Sooo… 3.99 pound/month for all of the core rules, and all of the 8th ed codexes. Cool, great.
But once a 9th ed codex drops, the corresponding 8th ed codex is removed, and you will have to buy a physical book to get the code to unlock the digital version of that 9th ed codex on the app. Is that correct?
*i.e. you will still have to buy physical 9th ed codexes to use them on the app, even if you are a paid subscriber?
That’s correct
Well this was my most looked forward to thing about 9th edition. Now I’m seriously disappointed. I can understand the subscription for the “bonus” of having all 8th edition rules automatically put in but why the heck do I have to pay money just to use a list builder? Guess I’m still sticking with my old app…
Maybe I am the richest man on earth but $5 a month is not a lot. And given I was lugging 4+ books (core rule, codex, psychic awakening, and a supplement/additional codex) plus needed my phone to look up assorted FAQ’s, just the game store or tournament to play a game I am more than happy to pay $5 to not do that any more.
I am more interested on how much data GW captures out of the app back. Will they be able to see which armies (more specifically which units) are most popular in the army builder?
Lol but you can do that now for free. They are all over the Internet. I buy all of the hardcopies, but just use mostly digital copies when traveling. If you’re already buying the books, you could just buy the digital copies. No need to charge an additional five dollars a month for just a list builder. I’ll stick to BattleScribe.
Most 40 K players probably don’t buy many codexes each year, so if they did five dollar a month subscription and you got all the rules for ninth for that they would probably make more money. Especially when you consider some folks would still buy the hardcopies for the fluff. I know I would still buy a few.
The point is that to be a competitive player you need to know all the rules. Most competitive players I know don’t buy every codex though. They could make their game much more accessible AND make more money if this subscription covered all the rules.
Having thought about it, the two features I would most need during a game would be the mission set up and scoring rules, and the army builder.
It’s not clear if the mission rules will be available in addition to the core rules (either free or paid), but launching without the army builder could really hurt subscription numbers, given there are popular alternatives already.
The cost is also a bit cheeky, four times the cost of the AoS app in addition to buying your codex. I guess there were some development costs that need to be covered.
So, $5 a month for BattleScribe that only works for 40k and I have to buy codexes separately for. The only good functions are free.
I’d have paid $5 a month (or even $10) if it included a digital subscription to entire current codex library (or at least the rules portions). As it is, I’ll save my money.
At least you get the digital versions of books you buy updated with errata and FAQs and what not in the free version, was fully expecting that to be behind the paywall 😛
Unless the list builder is seriously great the subscription seems a bit much.
To get a people to pay for something now you have to do it better then what is available for free.
You must show us why it is worth it. Right now we almost all have a app installed and pdf’s on our phones so what is the pull to switch?
Show us how slick and easy it is to use the builder and look up rules on the fly. Show that to build hype for your product.
If the only reason you have that people should pay money and use your app is you have the correct logo on it; this is a DOA program and waste of everyone’s time.
People complaining about paying $5 a month for an app that also play 40k is very funny, lol.
I think they undersold it a bit in the article and not having the list builder yet is annoying but it is coming soon. I’d recommend people wait to see it in action with the list builder before bemoaning it’s value. And even then, a beer at a baseball game is almost double the cost of it, lol. Hardly something to complain about, IMO but to each their own I suppose.
If there is nothing to gain from it besides a GW logo on your app I will rather put all extra Hobby money I have toward my LFGS.
Local game stores in these times really need the help to see the next year and the app will not help them at all.
That’s a noble idea for sure (although to be fair, $5 a month isn’t going to make or break an FLGS but is assuredly appreciated), but the point I am trying to make is getting upset about something that costs $5 a month in a hobby that is not cheap is just silly, lol. Some people are acting like it’s expensive or something which is absurd, haha. The example I used somewhere else was like someone complaining about the price of golf tees being outrageous but still going golfing. If you don’t feel like the value is there for what you are seeing now, that is fine, but it is hardly a big expense.
I’d wait to see it in action, with the list builder, to pass any type of judgement. If you don’t like it? Don’t use it. If it is cool and worth a nominal amount of money a month, buy it. No big deal.
I am 100% with you.
Just disappointed in what they thought they could show and get a subscription out of people with that post.
If you don’t think it’s expensive, you should rethink the value of money. And probably stop going to places where beers are $10, too :p
In all seriousness, $5 a month is a significant budget. It’s per month, so in my expense sheet it’s like 10% of my expense on minis per year ; and it’s the pricing for premium, well maintened applications, which to be honest isn’t what I expect from GW.
To put it more simply : it’s almost certain that free applications will do the same thing better, with less bug, for $0 per month. GW have to show something worth paying for.
In my opinion, I can definitely see this cost as an minor inconvenience that brings a decent amount of value for those who plays 40k on a regular basis and/or attends several tournament/year.
But for those who only play sporadically, less than once per month, for those the cost IS quite significant.
Personally I cannot see why I would ever use the app besides when playing a game. So let’s say that you only play once every three months, at that point the cost of the app becomes 15$ per usage, at which point it is just absurdly expensive (in terms of bang/buck).
The value vs cost is relative to how frequently you play the game. Which is why it’s very important to keep in mind that there people out there, who loves Warhammer as a hobby and loves playing the game, but are just way too caught up with other things in life, which means that they just end up throwing away 5$/month for nothing.
I guess that’s the real issue. If you’re only playing once a month (and honestly, my schedule only permits me to play about twice a month even though I would love to play more), then perhaps there isn’t value in the subscription. The couple minutes to write down a paper list isn’t so time consuming because you’re only doing it once a month not three or four times a week where the cost is probably worth it, especially is you have multiple lists at the ready.
I think GW did a bad job selling the content of the app in the article. We don’t really know what it has and how it’s presented. People are speculating about what they think it will be and judging from there (I know… that’s basic Interweb forum 101…. but I can hope). What does it mean to find the rules fast? Is it (1) just a search box, (2) the pop-ups of the current enhanced digital codex, (3) something else, or (4) some whiz-bang heuristic voice system where you ask it a question and it points you page-and-line to the rule and works out the “Official” GW answer? (I know it’s not the latter but hey, I have just as much info as assuming it’s nothing more than a search box). What does the army builder look like? Is it good and/or better than currently-available free copies. We really don’t know because we haven’t seen it (at least I haven’t). I want it to be good, and maybe it will have the nice pop-ups like the enhanced codices do now.
I do not think $5/mo (16 cents/day) is *that* expensive. I think people are conflating cost with value. Is it *worth* $5/mo is a personal opinion of value and depends on each person’s assessment of their disposable hobby income and the value of their time. For me, as a player who plays twice a month, probably not a good value, I’ll keep making paper lists and use the app for codex references.
: Why is everyone upset about the buy the physical codex and get the digital copy free? I see so many comments upset about this, when you could just as easily think of it as you’re buying the digital codex and getting the physical copy as a free backup in case your phone/tablet bricks itself, gets stomped by a dog/child/space marine player who loses that 1% of games, or knocked of the table (“accidentally” by said losing SM player). Right now, you have to *buy* both if you want both, whereas 9th will be two-for-one however you slice it).
The problem with the $5 is, that they already have a comparable AoS app, for a quarter of the price. And the screenshot in the article looks like it will be based on the AoS app with minimal alterations.
Adding or removing columns from a table is trainee work. New colours and other design changes are also not that big. So why is this alteration 4 times as expensive than the original app? That is something the article was not capable of explaining to me.
And I think it is fair to express criticism about the price-performance ratio. If all negative opinions are ignored with the argument “if you don’t like it, don’t use it”, you cannot write an objective opinion of any product, and the biggest crap would look like the invention of the year.
That’s fair but it really does come down to the simple idea of: if you don’t think it is worth the money, don’t buy it. But objectively, $5 is not much money, so it was annoying to see people bemoaning it as being expensive, you know? And, the app is likely to have a lot of cool stuff to come as well. Like I said, I think they just didn’t do as good a job of selling it in this article as they could have thus the negative reaction from some folks. But my point stands for me, that $5 a month is not expensive. The market will determine if the average gamer feels it is worth it or not =)
@Reecius : stop saying that “objectively, $5 is not a lot”. It’s quite a bit for a monthly fee, and there’s a lot of contexts where $5 for something is a lot.
It’s the price one would expect for something quite premium, which plainly it don’t seem it is.
$5 is significantly less than a beer at a concert or a baseball game, lol. It is objectively a minor amount of money. And if you don’t think the value is there at this early stage, that’s fine. But trying to paint the picture of $5 being a lot of money is frankly absurd coming from anyone with a hobby that’s relatively pricey that they engage in.
As for a premium service, most subscriptions I go in on are a lot more than that. I have tons of apps that I use that are more than $5, some over $40 a month and I don’t even blink at it if the value for me is there, and I am not a big baller or anything.
I mean, like I said, the market will determine if it is over priced or not. Us debating it is sort of a waste of time as nothing will come of it, haha.
I think fair would be to compare it with other subscriptions not with real life products. In comparison to other wargaming apps, it is the most expensive I am aware of. Again 4 times the price of their own AoS app, and without hoping for not even promised features, it has even less features then that. It may be a regional thing, but here, were I live Amazon Prime costs $77 a year. All the digital books and movies included, makes the $60 for not even one book included look really expensive.
Maybe in the U.S. the price is okay as the customers are more used to such prices, but here in Europe it is expensive.
In Europe it is expensive to pay $5 a month for an app but not expensive to play 40k in the first place, lol? That seriously doesn’t make sense. It comes down to value perception, if you think it is worth the money or not, the objective cost is super low. And compare it to other apps, sure, other apps don’t do what this does and will do. Battlescribe won’t have all of your rules for you in a searchable format and all of the codexes, updates, etc. Just for having access to digital rules, all of the 8th ed codexes (which are still viable in 9th) and updates and such is a massive value.
Eh, I am sick of debating it. Time will tell if it brings the value of a whopping $5 a month or not. I am willing to bet though that in time, far more gamers will have it than won’t. But, we’ll see.
Reece, it’s not that five dollars a month is crazy expensive. It’s that five dollars a month is a lot more than the two dollars a year I pay for BattleScribe.
I would happily pay $5, or maybe even $10 a month if this included all of the rules. Plus, GW would probably make more money doing this, while also making the game much more accessible and achieving a more consistent and predictable revenue stream.
I agree with Reece. It’s not objective amount like people are painting it. $5/ mo is me not getting [insert fast food place here] for lunch *one day* in the month and I come out ahead by a few dollars. Or don’t get a second beer if I go out for dinner one night a month. It’s not cost it’s value. Saying you would rather spend $5/mo elsewhere is a legitimate criticism given what we know (which isn’t much). But most people I’ve seen complain isn’t that they couldn’t afford the $5 but they would rather spend the $5 elsewhere. I think that’s fair. As it stands I don’t see anything that makes me willing to pay $5/mo for the app. I’d rather have that other beer out at dinner or a chips and queso at dinner, and don’t intend to subscribe to the app until I know more. But people are conflating cost with value. They’re not the same. Is the cost high? No. Is there value to justify $5/mo.? Given what I’ve seen, no. I could find the money to pay it, I’d just rather spend it elsewhere until GW gives me a reason to reprioritize my spending.
Having been involved in hiring app programmers for a large company…GW is never going to make money off this thing. This app cost easily in the hundreds of thousands of dollars to make and supporting it is going to be expensive as well. I suspect the people unhappy about the subscription fee don’t really understand what this must have involved.
I’m surprised at complaints that the subscriber benefits aren’t worth it compared to the free version…would you be happier if they’d locked the updated codexes behind the paywall as well, so you’d feel like you were getting your money’s worth? They’ve made the most useful parts of the app free, which is a Good Thing. If you want added convenience in building army lists and referencing rules, a small subscription fee is a reasonable ask. If not, use a free app and you’re no worse off than you were before. There is really nothing to complain about here.
Here’s hoping GW will be smart and sell codes for use with the app for cheaper than buying the full codex.
First make a PC version of the app for those of us who aren’t 14-year old girls squinting at our phone all the time.
Then we’ll see.
I’m with you on that one.
Small workaround: Install Android Studio (free) and emulate a phone. You can resize that phone to more or less fit your screen.Not ideal but still better than tiny real phones.
If you think teen girls are the only ones with smartphones, you might want to consider migrating out of 2003.
Nah, 3rd ed 40k was pretty good 😉
But even back then I’m pretty sure I owned monitors bigger than 6″. Just because it’s called a smartphone doesn’t automatically make it the smartest device for every task y’know?
I was against owning a tablet….until I got one. It’s much easier to view and read items as opposed to a phone.
If this app works as described, I can bring my tablet instead of several books just to play a game.
To be honest, I was probably never going to get the app anyway, I still like making up my army lists on paper and reading through the books.
I can see why people are annoyed by the price point. £3.99 a month doesn’t seem like a lot, but it’s not really an app I imagine I would be using more than 3-4 times per month, if even that. I don’t think I’d be looking up rules or my codex at my local gaming club, so if I only used it for tournaments, that would be using the app once every few months.
I think having to buy the codex on top of the subscription is what is rankling a lot of people too. Having to buy a physical copy just to access the online rules that you already pay a subscription for seems a bit much to me. Hopefully there’ll be a decent second hand market for selling on the codes, for those like me who are unlikely to use them.
The army builder app could be interesting, but I tend to make up my own lists anyway. The only time I use battlescribe is when I need to submit it in that format for an event.
It might change my mind when it comes out, but it’s probably a pass for me.
yeah, the combination of “you have to pay for the app” with “you still have to pay for books” feels like the worst of both worlds. And it’s not even that you’re paying for books within the context of the app, you’re purchasing a full-price hardback codex that you will then presumably set on a shelf somewhere and never use again because you now have the app.
There’s always two-fer-ing, I guess. One guy buys the physical codex, then gives the code to a friend who uses the app.
Where does it say you have to buy the physical hardback? The article just says “buy the codex”, I assumed the digital version would come with a code as well. Which would be equivalent to just buying it in the app.
Yeah, sounds cool and all GW, but no. There not enough features in there that warrant a £3,99 price tag.
But what you could do, is make a subscription based “all-inclusive” package, for only £8,99 a month (I know you love your psychological pricing and fancy marketing terms) with the following :
– Core Rules
– Crusade Rules (And Crusade Army management, like Force & Cards)
– Matched Play Rules
– Missions Pack from Chapter Approved (every s i n g l e one, not just the GT 2020)
– 3/4 Codices (with Errata & FAQ updates embedded) and their associated rules that we can find in various supplements that I can change every month.
– Army Builder
– Primary / Secondary Objectives Points Tracker / Counter
– CP Tracker, just for fun
If you’re willing to do that, maybe I’ll be willing to scratch the back of my head and rethink the deal.
But having to pay a subscription for essentially… outdated 8th Edition books and an Army Builder (That I can get for free with Battlescribe and ALN) which won’t be available when the App is launched along 9th Ed ? As it stands, it’s a hard pass. Sorry GW, but I’m not sure where you’re trying to go with this. Feels like you wanted to be the cool kid at school with all the fancy toys, but failed.