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What format do you use for army lists that you are bringing to hand out to opponents and the TO at tournaments?

Pencil and paper

Ah... I had somewhat ruled that one out

Hand written lists are a bad idea. It takes too much effort to make enough copies for yourself, your opponents and the TO while maintaining good penmanship.

I use open office calc, but I don't skimp on information like stats and wargear.

edit: I voted other since your poll says the excel-type wouldn't include all the info.

I jump back and forth between Army Builder and Excel sheets... sometimes on the Excel sheets I'll note down rules ... but I don't do it often.

I use ilist on my phone.

I love excel. Army builder lists are too busy. I don't like having so much information. If I want to know something, I'll ask my opponent.

I'm surprised that the entry I expected to be rather high is noticably lower than all the others, at least up to this point...

I do custom sheets in Word, which include stats, but also a clear and concise breakdown of where the points were spent in case a judge wants to check that.

I don't trust Army Builder. I use it, but it has made mistakes in the past and they frequently have bugs (plus, having written datafiles, I know just how easy it would be to cheat with it).

Nothing worse than a judge getting a list that shows it was printed by army builder, only to find that the person who submitted it tweaked a value or two in their datafile set, right?

Do you include the stats as a kind of cheat sheet for your opponents? Or is it for yourself?

I had planned on bringing more concise lists (this is what I usually do) without stats/rules laid out on the army list.

Both. Having stats in front of you makes it much faster to use in a tournament than having to look it up in the book.

Ah, that makes sense. Not sure why that was so hard for me to grasp when thinking about it myself

Will have to see if I have $40 somewhere to renew my Army Builder license, as the PC it was installed on is no more and the time limit has expired on new installs...

Redbeard wrote:I do custom sheets in Word, which include stats, but also a clear and concise breakdown of where the points were spent in case a judge wants to check that.

I don't trust Army Builder. I use it, but it has made mistakes in the past and they frequently have bugs (plus, having written datafiles, I know just how easy it would be to cheat with it).

Nothing worse than a judge getting a list that shows it was printed by army builder, only to find that the person who submitted it tweaked a value or two in their datafile set, right?

It would be even easier to tweak a number or two while you write out your list by hand, or type it up in Word or Excel.

TO's should double check every list, Army Builder or any other format, and make sure it is accurate. If they trust the numbers, just because it is AB, then they are inviting cheaters into the game.

I use an excel spreadsheet that has all the unit/character stats as well as what upgrades or gear they have.
Does all the calculating for me after i put in a few numbers so its very easy/quick to use (especially after youve made a few lists and can copy/paste unit stat lines).

Army builder mistakes are very few and far between.. I mean, humans make many more mistakes using excel imo

There is a difference in being thorough with army builder and blindly trusting whatever it tells you. Since yes there are times when data files have bugs (like when the guard data file had the heavy weapon teams totally messed up for months.. that was the biggest problem ive had in years tho). Its just like GPS, some people dont trust it cause it is wrong some of the time but its still a hell of a lot better than relying on a humans directions most of the time

All in all as a TO I prefer army builder with most of the info taken off.. I know what items do, I just want to see the point break down and validation. Excel or typed up lists are fine. Hand written lists annoy me to no end, as your school teacher says.. use a computer, come on lets not be sloppy

When I play tho I give one more detailed copy to the judges and a much simpler version to players

Redbeard wrote:
I don't trust Army Builder. I use it, but it has made mistakes in the past and they frequently have bugs (plus, having written datafiles, I know just how easy it would be to cheat with it).

I see people bashing Army Builder for this all the time and I think it's a canard. No one cheats using Army Builder because no one makes their own data files. It's too much of a pain in the ass. It's much easier to put a bogus value in a spreadsheet or on a hand-written list. But people don't seem to talk about that. They're much more interested in bashing Army Builder because they don't like the licensing arrangement it uses. Afterall, in the internet age there's supposed to be a high quality list creation tool available for free, right?

Nothing worse than a judge getting a list that shows it was printed by army builder, only to find that the person who submitted it tweaked a value or two in their datafile set, right?

What? Nothing worse than a a judge catching a cheater before the tourney starts?

Arschbombe wrote:They're much more interested in bashing Army Builder because they don't like the licensing arrangement it uses. Afterall, in the internet age there's supposed to be a high quality list creation tool available for free, right?

Well, since you mention it... No, I don't believe there should be a free creation tool available. On the other hand, their licensing system sucks. I have no problem paying for a license to use software. I have issues when, because of my work, I need to change OSes and computers fairly regularly, and they won't allow me to update my registration number more than once every three months.

But my issues with Army Builder are more related to the 40k update team, and stem from their steadfast refusal to allow a nob in a shoota boy list to take a powerklaw, right before Adepticon a few years ago. In spite of the fact that it was debated quite a bit at the time (and eventually ruled legal by a FAQ), in spite of the fact that it's more logical to allow a tool to do something debatable and let the TOs make their own call, they made a huge stink about being the final arbiters of that debate (and got it wrong).

I use the Alice40k list makers. Pretty nifty so far.

AB "Tournament" format, for submitting lists

Just has unit, location (troop, core, etc) and points cost, along with exact upgrades and points costs for each model / unit.

For my actual use I normally have the full AB list, in WHFB potentially with spells (where i dont have lore cards - fixing that though!)

I didn't realize there was a "tournament" format selection- maybe I used a version too old for that (I remember when my copy was up to date, I had to select what types of things I wanted printed).

MS Word.

The last second.

The last day.

Before the tourney.


575'th post

I personally can't stand seeing army builder lists as a player at tournaments because I think the format makes it so freaking hard to actually tell what is in each unit.

I understand that having the rules on your army list can make things easier to play, but that should be the PERSONAL list someone uses as opposed to what they hand to their opponents and tournament organizer.

I know that you can turn off a lot of that crap with army builder if you want, but the fact is, people don't, so you always end up getting these incredibly difficult to decipher army lists handed to you by your opponent.

I always play horde armies for the most part and I'm desperately trying to get my games finished, so I really hate having to spend time trying to read through IG army lists made in army builder (as an extreme example). These are SO DIFFICULT to decipher.


The biggest problem with army builder, IMHO, is it isn't frequently clear when units or characters in a unit are associated with each other.

You often have a separate section for squad leaders or characters, but there is no visual representation that makes it instantly clear that the squad leader is related to what unit...and they all look the same. So when you glance at the army list you just see a bunch of entries and then you have to struggle to figure out which ones are transports, which ones are just rules summaries, etc, etc, etc.


So in short, I despise the print-outs that everybody that uses army builder seems to make. I don't know if there is a streamlined version you can print out of army builder that solves these problems, but if there is, nobody ever uses it from what I've encountered.


Therefore if you can't tell, I create my own army lists using excel, so that they just have the unit name, the number of models in the unit, the options I've taken and the points cost.

I don't need statlines or rules summaries on my army list because its my ARMY LIST. If I want that stuff I should make up a separate cheat sheet for myself (and/or my opponent).

But for my opponent to, at a glance, see what is in my army list, there's no reason he should have to search through all that crap to find it.

When I played in tournaments, I used Excel to submit lists and print out for use.

I have AB as an extra tool for TOing when my club needed me to verify legality (teamed with codex) - mainly for point counts - as a disturbing number of current generation teens in my state cannot do simple addition or subtraction.

Most tourneys I've been to don't allow handwritten lists on the grounds that most people can't be trusted to write legibly, let alone coherently (see also their numeracy skills).

I type them out on Word, listing wargear and piece-by-piece points costs. I wouldn't really trust anyone's list that had stats on it, especially one that was hand typed, sometimes errors creep in, malicious or not. If I had a question, that's what a codex is for.

I don't really play tournaments, but I use BattleScribe:
http://www.battlescribe.net/ for any and all armylists (except on-the-fly ones where I don't have access to it)

Like ArmyBuilder, but free. Prints a list of wargear but no stats, so combine with the PDF reference sheets they put on the GW website + a heavily bookmarked codex and your good to go!

E.g. Got a big mek in your list? get one of those post-it note page-marker-things and mark the place in the codex of the big mek entry, can find it almost instantly!

From memory AB 3.3 onwards has the option - you choose "output as text file" then there is a radio button for "tournament style" - it reduces and removes all the extras

It also neatly indents the unit upgrades and dedicated transports, so you can easily see parent unit -> upgrades.

nosferatu1001 wrote:From memory AB 3.3 onwards has the option - you choose "output as text file" then there is a radio button for "tournament style" - it reduces and removes all the extras

It also neatly indents the unit upgrades and dedicated transports, so you can easily see parent unit -> upgrades.

See that sounds fantastic, yet I've NEVER seen anyone actually hand me a list at a tournament like that!

I use a combination of excel and word to create stat blocks for each unit with point costs and wargear. When I give my opponent a copy it has a cover sheet that is a summary of what I am fielding.

yakface wrote:

nosferatu1001 wrote:From memory AB 3.3 onwards has the option - you choose "output as text file" then there is a radio button for "tournament style" - it reduces and removes all the extras

It also neatly indents the unit upgrades and dedicated transports, so you can easily see parent unit -> upgrades.

See that sounds fantastic, yet I've NEVER seen anyone actually hand me a list at a tournament like that!

I like that format alot. Here is an example of what it looks like (all costs are listed piece by piece for each upgrade, I just changed them all to xyz to comply with the forum rules):

1500 Pts - High Elves Roster

Total Roster Cost: 1483

Archmage (1#, 235 pts)
1 Archmage, x pts
. . 1 Silver Wand, y pts

Noble (2#, 194 pts)
[(#]Noble, 99 pts = (base cost x + Great Weapon y + Dragon Armour z)
. . 1 Great Eagle, X pts
. . 1 Reaver Bow, X pts
. . 1 Enchanted Shield, X pts

Lothern Sea Guard (20#, 282 pts)
19 Lothern Sea Guard, x pts = 19 * x (base cost x + Shield x) + Musician Mus x + Standard Bearer Std x
. . 1 Sea Master, x pts = (base cost x + Shield x)
. . 1 Banner of Eternal Flame, x pts

Archers (10#, 125 pts)
10 Archers, x pts = 10 * x (base cost x + Light Armour x) + Musician Mus x

Sword Masters of Hoeth (14#, 245 pts)
13 Sword Masters of Hoeth, x pts = 13 * x (base cost x) + Musician Mus x + Standard Bearer Std x
. . 1 Bladelord, x pts
. . . . 1 Ironcurse Icon, x pts

Great Eagle (1#, 50 pts)
1 Great Eagle, x pts

Ellyrian Reavers (5#, 112 pts)
4 Ellyrian Reavers, x pts = 4 * x (base cost x + Bow x)
. . 1 Harbinger, x pts = (base cost x + Bow x)

Lion Chariot of Chrace (5#, 140 pts)
1 Lion Chariot of Chrace, x pts

Repeater Bolt Thrower (3#, 100 pts)
1 Repeater Bolt Thrower, x pts

Validation Report:
Edition: 8th Edition; Game Type: Normal Game; Army Subtype: High Elf Army
Roster satisfies all enforced validation rules

Composition Report:
Points of Lords: 235 (0 - 375)
Points of Heroes: 194 (0 - 375)
Points of Core: 407 (375 - Unlimited)
Points of Special: 497 (0 - 750)
Points of Rare: 150 (0 - 375)

Created with Army Builder® - Try it for free at http://www.wolflair.com

I despise Army Builder as well. The printout isn't simple and easy to read compared to what you can do in Excel.