GW Grognard: Can you spare $8?

Hey everyone! Adam, from TFG Radio, here to once again wax poetic about a time long ago, and past attempts by Games Workshop to make an army builder.

Right now it seems that there is a lot of discussion about the new 40K app that Games Workshop is developing. They listed a few things that you can achieve with the app and one of those is that there will be a way to construct your army for games of 40K. This sounds great but the kicker to this is that you will have to subscribe in order to use this function of the app, when it is available. This is the latest in a line of attempts by Games Workshop and we will look at these and how well they did.

For the longest time I used Army Builder and it was the go to program. I’m not even sure it gets updated anymore as it seems to have fallen behind. The rapid release schedule of late 7th and 8th edition caused it to be unusable, but I digress. Back in 3rd edition, Games Workshop first released an army builder program but it was only available in the UK. I actually had yo go to the UK website and order it to be delivered to me in the USA. It was on a CD and had the roster for all the armies, at that time. It used a drag and drop interface and used painted models to represent the units. I thought it was great but it soon fell out of favor as it wasn’t updated often as new codexes were released and I eventually went back to what I was using before.

When Games Workshop tried again with another armylist builder they decided that two was better than one. They decided to split it by those with the Imperium and those against the Imperium. On the surface it seemed like a good idea. Why not just get the one that your army is in? You don’t need all that other useless information because those were armies you weren’t even playing. Unfortunately you still needed to buy both. Whether you wanted to try a new army, or you just wanted to be up to date on the latest giong on with your opposing armies and possible army build, you just ended up getting both of them. I don’t remember too many people actually using them because they weren’t required at tournaments so people just used Army Builder, excel spreadsheet, or pen and paper. List building apps were a long way off.

I’m not going to mention the attempt that was made at the start of 8th edition as that was doomed from the start, mainly because it was power level only. Now I’m not sure how this app will do as we have plenty of other apps that we can use to make armies already. Cost os a little high for an app but really, if you are griping about the cost, compared to the prices of the actual product, then you may have to have a good look at some of your life choices leading to this point. Besides, whatever you decide, it could be a moot point if tournaments require the use of the app army builder, but that’s a whole other discussion.

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