Warhammer 40,000: The App – Reviewed
Goatboy here to review the thing we were all waiting for – The Warhammer 40k App that helps build our brand new 10th Edition armies.
I do remember the old days of terrible Excel spreadsheets, hand written army lists, and people being cheeky with how they wrote out the units they’ve decided to bring to the table. Thankfully GW quickly came out with a pretty decent little army builder to help the masses convert to the newest edition of 40K.
Let’s talk about the Good, Bad and Ugly about the app. Overall I think it is pretty dang good and very useful. It moves quickly and will be very helpful for new players and old players alike as it works pretty well. I do have some thoughts on it but that’s why I do reviews right?
Warhammer 40K App – The Good
Hey it’s an App that lets you build armies from the actual maker of the game. So that usually means the points and info are updated regularly. We don’t have to wait for another group to correct the points, load it to the system, and hopefully have that App properly set up to pull in that info. Again this is the beginning so I remain hopefully that the Warhammer 40K App is designed to be quickly updated by GW when rules get changed.
The new change to the points of the game is also pretty evident in how the App can quickly build an army without having to worry about all the fiddly things we had before with unit totals, war gear we had to pick, and other things that made building an army difficult. It also made balancing a bit easier beyond the sheer amount of choices but we’ll leave that for another discussion. The way you pick your units and your armies is very fast and easy to use.
I also like how the App has all the 40K rules locked into the units themselves, as well as the core rules. This makes it easier to figure out what to pick beyond memorizing a ton of Names that match up with the Lore somehow. It was frustrating when you picked the wrong spell or wargear and were locked all event with it. Or you had to explain how this was incorrectly picked each round and the judge was ok with it. Now with the army builder and rules depository more locked in step together it will make it easier to play the game.
Overall there is a ton of good in this initial 40K App. It is a great initial effort from GW to cover their bases. You can see a lot of army building thought went into how they built the design and having it all linked up with their rules, dataslates, and just army construction makes this a much better effort from the past offerings.
Warhammer 40K App – The Bad
I am waiting to see how the Codex, Codes, and army building App costs will be when we get past this free stage of the release. I pay for Warhammer+ myself due to liking the minis they release, watching the Animation, and just in general to keep a better function App available to me. If joining Warhammer+ gets you the full App with points and building ability it will still be good. If the codes from the Codexes just launches the little icon with full data card and rules info in the App then I could move this away from the Bad side of things. It is just something we have to wait and see.
This is something I told GW staff about when I was in Kansas City and got to see the App for the first time. I thought it might be neat to allow you to “add” in the Characters you’ve added to your army into the Units they are joining. This way when you are looking up the Units and looking for their Rules – the Auras and abilities given by the Character show up within the units rules. It would make playing a bit easier. You wouldn’t have to go back and forth from one choice to the other to see how everything works.
There is some missing Allies stuff it seems with Chaos Knights and other armies. I really shouldn’t list this as Bad as we all know it will take a few tweaks to get all the choices and armies right – on top of whatever balance stuff comes out soon. It is just something I notice as a Chaos Knight player and trying to add some Daemon units to my army.
Finally there is some weirdness and extra clicking to add a lot of default equipment to units when you make them larger than their starting size. That should be ironed out sooner than later.
Warhammer 40K App – The Ugly
I tried to use the 40K App on my iPad with attached Keyboard and it didn’t rotate over to allow for easier review. This is a bit frustrating as again I use my little iPad as a portable writing station, art station, and just nerd stuff funzone machine. Not having the app flip to allow me to use it in landscape was frustrating. I write most of my articles from this little machine. So building lists and exporting it would be much easier if I didn’t have to rotate it around to read it correctly.
Overall this is a pretty strong release from GW and will help define how the game goes for new players trying this out. I hope we see more things added in – like Boarding Patrol and a very robust Combat Patrol. I think we could also ask for some kind of mission system involved in the Warhammer 40K App too. For example, a way to help truly randomize the tactical cards themselves would be a great tool. There is already chatter that some players could stack their deck to take advantage of what their army can do quickly so will see.
But go download it, build your lists, and fight on in the world of Warhammer 40K.
Download the App from the App Store Here
Download the App from Google Play Here
