Warhammer 40,000: The App Hack 1.2.0 + Redeem Codes

Much better than the 9th edition app. However, it’s usefulness stems from the ability to see ALL of the rules, including all of the rules for EVERY faction. This makes it possible to research other factions in preparation for events, and look up an opponent’s rules in-game, both of which are vital to keeping things fair and balanced for everyone. Once the codexes come out, if players are forced to pay for every codex in order to access those rules, the value of this app will once again disappear. I would be happy to pay a small monthly fee for unlimited access to all of the rules. However, paying a monthly fee AND paying for every codex isn’t something I believe most players will be interested in doing. Also, please add an ability to “duplicate” an army roster. If I want to create different variations of a list, having to build each one from scratch is extremely tedious. Thank you!

…but please, please, PLEASE devs add a list view/summary view to use as an in game reference to see all the specific units in your lists along with their stats, abilities and weapons profiles. Making it printable as well would be really amazing. Otherwise on the list building side of things it works great and is fairly intuitive unlike the previous version of this app. If a summary section was added this app would be nearly perfect. I will be happy to revise my review to 5/5 if that extra functionality is added in the future.

My initial impressions: So much easier to use than the old app. It’s laid out better and the addition of the graphics really helps it feel like a better experience. The addition of the little lore pieces adds a nice touch. The army creation tool, seems to work well, everything is drop down menus and check boxes. It’s not hard to figure out and once you figure it out it’s really pretty easy to use. In the army creation tool it is inconsistent in listing squad leaders first or last. Need to pick which layout and be consistent. A huge improvement, from my point of view, over the last app.
UPDATE: the organizing of the armies is much better. Each army is listed once and from there your select combat patrol, index, or Forgeworld.

This app makes army theory building fast, easy, and satisfying with cool accompanying pictures, lore tidbits, and a user friendly interface.
However, GW in their infinite ability to shoot themselves in the foot claims that they’re going to remove the BatteForge™️army building aspect of this app.
My brothers in plastic mini figures, if you get rid of that, you get rid of the easiest ingress for new players to your tabletop game to plan which physical products that they would like to buy . I’m not going to buy a subscription to it. It should be a free tool to help make playing the game easier.
That said this is the best army builder app I’ve used yet. Much better than Battle Scribe.

What the app does it does very well but there are a couple huge misses here. The inability to search units is the biggest - if you want to find something to fill the last 95 points of your list, instead of searching for units of 95 points or fewer you have to scroll the entire army list and check each entry manually. Looking for weapons with devastating wounds? You have to manually examine every weapon profile on every data sheet.

Also no facility to duplicate rosters or change sizes is somewhat shocking - if you have a 1000 point roster you want to increase to 2000 points, you have to start a new roster from scratch.

The app provides decent presentation of information but is held back by terrible UX design.

There’s absolute bare minimum iPad support, the Battle Forge army list builder is functional (if unremarkable and missing some QoL features), and as far as I can tell has all the rules currently available, and that’s progress, so 3/5 stars to start. Devs, some feature/QoL requests: ->A way of indicating attached Leaders. ->A way to expand all sections or switch to a view without collapsible sections in data sheets (currently requires a lot of tapping and wasted space). ->Army roster sync between devices. ->Optimized iPad layouts. ->Split Screen etc support on iPad. ->State tracking (Wounds, Battleshock) for units. ->Play/In-Game view that only shows full relevant data sheets, detachment rules, etc.

It’s about time this app is finally free. Everything in the app looks solid enough but I can’t imagine ever paying money for this. So glad that GW finally decided to do something smart and give everyone access to the rules in an east to use app so I’m not forced to use wiki websites to look at the rules. I give it 4 stars for the fact it’s solidly usable, but the army builder has a few issues, it also doesn’t allow me to put in what models I own so I can build easily from that. Would have been a really useful feature.

The functionality and bone of the app are great and it’s a joy to use but I see three potential QoL improvements they could make:
1. The ability to edit the name of a list after you make it.
2. The ability to duplicate a list so you can make minor tweaks without changing your original idea.
3. The ability to save favorite units and their load out would be nice. It’s a bit of a pain to max out the unit and add all their wargear every time you add the unit to your list and/or add it to another list.

Pros: - A slightly nicer to look at UI
- Free rules, and list-building (for now…)
- Separation of combat patrol datasheets from main indexes
- Quick list-building, but may be due to the simplicity of points this edition.
- Drop-downs within datasheets makes it easier to see only what you want.

Cons: - No way to add enhancements to your list (points values are found in your index)
- No way to quickly reference your army stats (you have to go into the reference, or into details for each unit within the battle forge)
- clunky reference section, its just a list of each index

Conclusion: Hey it’s free, it’ll make list building a little bit faster than a calculator. The app is easier to navigate than the pdf index documents. If they made a quick access “these are my unit datasheets for this battle” I’d love the app. As is, it’s the 9th edition app with drop downs.

Ideally this should make things quicker. An army roster should have a simple list of units with their top level stat line, a single click shows a clean version of the data card without frivolous decoration, a mobile screen real estate is very limited, please don't flood it with imagery and textured backgrounds that distract and force the content to flow below the fold if it doesn't need to. It also causes things to loose performance since it is pulling from a web service. Strong type hierarchy, high contrast legibility. One click to view details of a unit in a list