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 Horst wrote:

 Anotherguardsman wrote:



Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Horst wrote:

 filbert wrote:
I still use the WolfLair Army Builder too but I wonder how long data file support will continue for that.

Battlescribe is OK, I'm not a huge fan of the printed layout - I would rather it look more like Army Builder's does but it is useful enough to have on PCs where I don't have an Army Builder license.

I've just been using it to build lists, then writing the lists out in a format I like better later. For tournaments especially, I'll write out the list like a worksheet, with checkboxes for relic choices and pregame stratagems, since those can change on a game by game basis.

Do you have an example of how you write your revamped lists out by chance? I'm curious to see how you do it is all.

Sure. This is a list I took to a tournament yesterday. I generally always used the 3 traits option for the Knights, and usually used the same ones, but I just fill out the sheet and hand it to my opponent before the game starts so he knows what I have.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1U1-oq5s2eOjPFDK8dAFwtjGCT1QjG18m7QnbXfyRkZ8/edit

I like the way that looks and how easy it is to tell what you have overall and putting in different loadouts for units wouldn't take to much extra effort either. Thanks, I downloaded it to see how I would like using it myself in the future!


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 BaconCatBug wrote:

 wuestenfux wrote:

 BaconCatBug wrote:

 wuestenfux wrote:
Well, battlescribe is not very printer friendly.
Are the other tools mentioned more printer friendly?

It is printer friendly if you take the time to customise the output.

Well, I've copy and pasted the text into a .doc file.
But customization takes quite a while.

No, I mean Click "Share Roster > Custom" and customise it there.

I did not know that myself either, thanks! It makes it much easier to get a grip on what I've got for ease of reference!

If datacards went back to having point values I would use notepad & Pen as thats actualy quite enjoyable. Going between 3 books comparing diferent unit costs and then checking gear costs is not...

I was always old fashioned pen and paper kind of guy. But as my army is split across an index, codex and CA2018 it makes sense to battlescribe. Have a home made excel for backup check.
Battle scribe is actualy really nice on mobile. Easy to share, exoirt to text. Not a fan of the desktop version but if you sync with drop box you can cross platform.

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:

Just Tony wrote:Am I the only person left on the planet that uses a codex, tablet, and only occasionally a calculator?

Probably. Tablets suck, the mud dries out too quickly, and the stylus is always spreading it everywhere, and they're so heavy to carry. Upgrade to papyrus paper, like the rest of the modern world.

G00fySmiley wrote:

Martel732 wrote:
You should have your list before you show up or even know your opponent. Or, have a number of lists and randomly select them. That's what I do a lot. List tailoring is complete BS.

yea... it does suck to show up to play a game and then somebody want to play, you start pulling out models for your take all comers and they start building thier list seeing what you are unpacking >_< there is one player here who is notorious for that, if I unpack my horde orks suddenly he has flamers all over the place. if i bring my mechanical orks... battlecannons and lascannons for days with coincidently zero flamers.

In my home group, we always tailored to each other. I don't understand this aversion to it. We knew what each other played, and how we played them, and built our lists around what we knew that person had available and usually brought, and what we expected them to bring. I think an important part of list building and the strategy thereof is predicting what your opponent is going to bring to the table, how they're going to fight, and how you're going to make sure that fails.

We consider list tailoring cheating. Or damn close to it.

Also, to chime in on the list tailoring debate: real world militaries do it ALL THE TIME!!!! You wouldn't roll a tank hunter battalion in when you're facing masses of light infantry. Intel is collected and the proper forces are thrown at the problem. If we can pull that off currently, there shouldn't be ANY problem pulling that off 40,000 ish years from now.

There are two problems with list tailoring:
- Some armies can't do it as well as others
- Not everyone owns all the models to list tailor

Of course, the person tailoring can claim to not be doing it or insist that its ok to list tailor, but this will backfire eventually if people are not ok with it.

The guy who always list tailored in our gaming group (among other grey area practices) has recently found himself fresh out of opponents. Including me, there are only two people left willing to play him, out of a group of more than 10 people who play regularly at our club. And yes, he has been talked to about these problems.

If you aren't making sure that your opponents are having fun as well, you will end up not playing against them anymore.

 Just Tony wrote:
Also, to chime in on the list tailoring debate: real world militaries do it ALL THE TIME!!!! You wouldn't roll a tank hunter battalion in when you're facing masses of light infantry. Intel is collected and the proper forces are thrown at the problem. If we can pull that off currently, there shouldn't be ANY problem pulling that off 40,000 ish years from now.

That's great. But in a game, it's still cheating.

Martel732 wrote:

 Just Tony wrote:
Also, to chime in on the list tailoring debate: real world militaries do it ALL THE TIME!!!! You wouldn't roll a tank hunter battalion in when you're facing masses of light infantry. Intel is collected and the proper forces are thrown at the problem. If we can pull that off currently, there shouldn't be ANY problem pulling that off 40,000 ish years from now.

That's great. But in a game, it's still cheating.

Miscalculating points for an advantage is cheating.

Playing with loaded dice is cheating.

"Conveniently" misremembering which unit was in which transport until it's revealed that the PERFECT unit for the job just happened to be in the right place is cheating.

Altering measuring to gain an advantage is cheating.

Tailoring your forces to deal appropriately with a foe would fall under strategy, tactics, or possibly both. Not cheating.

 Just Tony wrote:

Martel732 wrote:

 Just Tony wrote:
Also, to chime in on the list tailoring debate: real world militaries do it ALL THE TIME!!!! You wouldn't roll a tank hunter battalion in when you're facing masses of light infantry. Intel is collected and the proper forces are thrown at the problem. If we can pull that off currently, there shouldn't be ANY problem pulling that off 40,000 ish years from now.

That's great. But in a game, it's still cheating.

Miscalculating points for an advantage is cheating.

Playing with loaded dice is cheating.

"Conveniently" misremembering which unit was in which transport until it's revealed that the PERFECT unit for the job just happened to be in the right place is cheating.

Altering measuring to gain an advantage is cheating.

Tailoring your forces to deal appropriately with a foe would fall under strategy, tactics, or possibly both. Not cheating.

depends on the club's rules/event rules and to an extent social contract.

If your group flgs league etc has no rules against it... sure. but if you are in a league and it allows for changing lists between games btu that lists must be set before you know the army you are facing then it is cheating.

In my case it is mostly social contract, in our club there is an agreement that we bring take all comers lists and have them ready before the game. The opponent in question never has the "right points" for the 2k games that are always played and had to "add a few points" which always mean he has full las cannons vs mechanized forces and anti horde vs horde.

my answer is I bring 3 lists at every points level (digital) a casual, a mixed, and a d#)k stomping top tier tournament list. guess which one he always gets (when he is the last person available to play a game, which means i got to game night late if i am t a table with him)

ValentineGames wrote:

 wuestenfux wrote:

ValentineGames wrote:
Pen.
Paper.
Calculator.

I don't use unreliable trash

Well, a builder shows you all options at a glance and also takes into account the index.

And?
I'm sure people can turn off their call of battlefield games and spend 30 minutes writing a list.

I'm still amazed by the human brain.....

At three different game stores having tournaments in my area, OVER 60% of the hand made army lists had errors from people like you....and all of them thought they were super duper smart.

I also don't understand how so many of the "Paper, Pencil, Calculator" people think that reading over your codex and writing it down has anything to do with the building portion that App users are interested in. I use my free time to build 6 or 7 different list styles at different point levels in 30 minutes. Then I look at what I have created and build a final list that meets what I want to play.

I have done the PPC method a lot......when I had nothing better to use. Excel sheets are great, but suffer from a maintenance level that Army Builder Apps do not.

 Just Tony wrote:

Martel732 wrote:

 Just Tony wrote:
Also, to chime in on the list tailoring debate: real world militaries do it ALL THE TIME!!!! You wouldn't roll a tank hunter battalion in when you're facing masses of light infantry. Intel is collected and the proper forces are thrown at the problem. If we can pull that off currently, there shouldn't be ANY problem pulling that off 40,000 ish years from now.

That's great. But in a game, it's still cheating.

Miscalculating points for an advantage is cheating.

Playing with loaded dice is cheating.

"Conveniently" misremembering which unit was in which transport until it's revealed that the PERFECT unit for the job just happened to be in the right place is cheating.

Altering measuring to gain an advantage is cheating.

Tailoring your forces to deal appropriately with a foe would fall under strategy, tactics, or possibly both. Not cheating.

Well i wouldn't play vs a foe who was able to tailor. How much strategy is there in spamming plasma vs marines? feth that.

Its cheating just like misquoting rules or altering measuring.

 Just Tony wrote:

Martel732 wrote:

 Just Tony wrote:
Also, to chime in on the list tailoring debate: real world militaries do it ALL THE TIME!!!! You wouldn't roll a tank hunter battalion in when you're facing masses of light infantry. Intel is collected and the proper forces are thrown at the problem. If we can pull that off currently, there shouldn't be ANY problem pulling that off 40,000 ish years from now.

That's great. But in a game, it's still cheating.

Miscalculating points for an advantage is cheating.

Playing with loaded dice is cheating.

"Conveniently" misremembering which unit was in which transport until it's revealed that the PERFECT unit for the job just happened to be in the right place is cheating.

Altering measuring to gain an advantage is cheating.

Tailoring your forces to deal appropriately with a foe would fall under strategy, tactics, or possibly both. Not cheating.

So "cheating" may be the wrong word, but "unfair" would certainly fit.
Imagine you roll up with an all-tank army and "allow" your opponent to quickly tailor their list to be better "prepared" for the game.
So they drop all Heavy Bolters for Meltas and Lascannons. That's not going to be a fun game for you as your opponent just removes tank after tank.

And where do you draw the line? When do you stop tailoring and counter tailoring?
Use the above example, in which you present an all-tank list for your opponent to tailor against.
Now that they have done so and presented their list, what stops you from just saying "JK, my army is all Infantry now, let's play" and you pull out a list of all Infantry that you already had prepared.

This is the issue with list tailoring and why it is so unfair that it may as well be cheating. The best approach is to have a few all comers lists available, rather than list tailor once you see the opponent's list.
Now, if an all Knight player wants to be gracious and give you the opportunity to make changes just to be able to compete, that's their choice. But they don't then get to say, "Oh and by the way, now that you've ditched all you anti-infantry, I forgot to mention, I have the loyal 32 in the list too."

-

 Da-Rock wrote:

ValentineGames wrote:

 wuestenfux wrote:

ValentineGames wrote:
Pen.
Paper.
Calculator.

I don't use unreliable trash

Well, a builder shows you all options at a glance and also takes into account the index.

And?
I'm sure people can turn off their call of battlefield games and spend 30 minutes writing a list.

I'm still amazed by the human brain.....

At three different game stores having tournaments in my area, OVER 60% of the hand made army lists had errors from people like you....and all of them thought they were super duper smart.

I also don't understand how so many of the "Paper, Pencil, Calculator" people think that reading over your codex and writing it down has anything to do with the building portion that App users are interested in. I use my free time to build 6 or 7 different list styles at different point levels in 30 minutes. Then I look at what I have created and build a final list that meets what I want to play.

I have done the PPC method a lot......when I had nothing better to use. Excel sheets are great, but suffer from a maintenance level that Army Builder Apps do not.

Yeah I don't see why you would want to burden yourself with all the extra hazzles involved in paperworking the lists when battlescribe does all that for you? I mean double check the numbers first time and if they're fine you know they're fine next time or something.

I love laying down if I have ten minutes off, and churn out a few lists based on some idea. No way that's working if I have to do it by hand.

The effort involved in maintaining a spreadsheet is being greatly overstated, IMO. Slaanesh Daemons got massive points cuts in CA:2018, it still only took me four or five minutes to update all six of extant lists, 'cause I only had to change the numbers on my master sheet and OpenCalc did the rest. Granted, that's more effort than 'none', but it still isn't very much effort at all.

And again, it allows you to track other stuff than just points. I can see at a glance what in my collection needs to be bought, what needs to be built, what needs to be painted and what's finished. I know what bitz I have and how many I have of each. I know how many of my Daemonettes have purple hair (63, or 66%). I know how many (fake) people there are living in each (fake) city on my (fake) planet, Kronstaat IV, and how many of them are conscripted into the Defence Force. I have a list of names I've used and names I'm going to use. I have an ideas list, a to-do list and a shopping list. I know exactly, to the cent, how much it will cost to build up to 12.5k points at current prices.

I can even tell you how many square inches of space I need to display my current collection. It's 380.

Your level of anal retentiveness may, of course, differ.

 Galef wrote:

 Just Tony wrote:

Martel732 wrote:

 Just Tony wrote:
Also, to chime in on the list tailoring debate: real world militaries do it ALL THE TIME!!!! You wouldn't roll a tank hunter battalion in when you're facing masses of light infantry. Intel is collected and the proper forces are thrown at the problem. If we can pull that off currently, there shouldn't be ANY problem pulling that off 40,000 ish years from now.

That's great. But in a game, it's still cheating.

Miscalculating points for an advantage is cheating.

Playing with loaded dice is cheating.

"Conveniently" misremembering which unit was in which transport until it's revealed that the PERFECT unit for the job just happened to be in the right place is cheating.

Altering measuring to gain an advantage is cheating.

Tailoring your forces to deal appropriately with a foe would fall under strategy, tactics, or possibly both. Not cheating.

So "cheating" may be the wrong word, but "unfair" would certainly fit.
Imagine you roll up with an all-tank army and "allow" your opponent to quickly tailor their list to be better "prepared" for the game.
So they drop all Heavy Bolters for Meltas and Lascannons. That's not going to be a fun game for you as your opponent just removes tank after tank.

And where do you draw the line? When do you stop tailoring and counter tailoring?
Use the above example, in which you present an all-tank list for your opponent to tailor against.
Now that they have done so and presented their list, what stops you from just saying "JK, my army is all Infantry now, let's play" and you pull out a list of all Infantry that you already had prepared.

This is the issue with list tailoring and why it is so unfair that it may as well be cheating. The best approach is to have a few all comers lists available, rather than list tailor once you see the opponent's list.
Now, if an all Knight player wants to be gracious and give you the opportunity to make changes just to be able to compete, that's their choice. But they don't then get to say, "Oh and by the way, now that you've ditched all you anti-infantry, I forgot to mention, I have the loyal 32 in the list too."

-

If the rules of the meta (codified or otherwise) are "No list tailoring", then list tailoring is cheating in that meta.

If the rules of the meta are "Lists must be written before showing up", and I join that meta, once I "read" those rules, my options are:
1) Find another meta (or convince people to play otherwise)
2) Write my lists before showing up
3) Cheat

By not writing my lists before showing up, when that's the rule, I'm cheating just as much as the guy who rerolls all misses when he's only allowed to reroll ones.

Now, I can say "I didn't write my list beforehand, anyone want to play that way?", and if anyone takes me up on it, it's not cheating (see option #1), but that's quite different.

"It's not cheating if the meta allows it" really, really, really goes without saying.

 Excommunicatus wrote:
"It's not cheating if the meta allows it" really, really, really goes without saying.

"It is cheating if the meta does not allow it" is very close to that, but they're not quite the same.

That said, while it might go without saying for most, we see some weird positions here.

It's nothing personal, but we're a disparate group in location and playstyles so there has to be a grundnorm to work from. That grundnorm must necessarily be the RAW, IMO.

Otherwise every answer is just "it's legal in X meta".

One option is to define the universal "what is legal" to be RAW from what GW has released.

Another option is to accept that there is no universal "what is legal", and accept that it *will* vary from meta to meta.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
In this particular case, RAW doesn't require rules to be written before you show up, and opponents to be randomly selected. But it was interesting and enlightening when people shared that about their meta.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
(Also, in case there was confusion, I'm not talking about "list tailoring" specifically. I agree that "list tailoring" for competitive advantage is not acceptable. Note that my reasons for why my list isn't written yet are not about that.)

The second option makes discussion so wide as to be meaningless. It doesn't need to be stated that there's X meta somewhere that tolerates Y; it's taken as read.

You need a concrete starting point. That point is the RAW. IMO. Pontificating and prevaricating on what some metas may allow is just noise.

I know that all sounds horribly impolite, but it isn't meant to be taken personally.

It wasn't taken as impolite; we're disagreeing, civilly, about the ideal form of discussion.

There's another thread that's going deep down the RAI vs RAW vs HIWPI right now, so we probably don't need to go too deep down this road.

This "list tailoring" discussion came up due to a claim that the one true reasonable way to play was to have a single list before you show up, and randomly select who you play; in that regard, I find it important to remember that different metas are diffferent (while it may seem obvious, it appeared to be missed by the discussion at that point), and that it's reasonable for a meta to not follow that yet still not have a list-tailoring problem.

That whole subtopic was entirely predicated on variance between metas, but I don't believe that subtopic has been a waste of time; I found it interesting and insightful.

As we all live in different metas, I find discussing the differences helpful. As was shown, the answer to the OPs question can vary based on other factors of the local meta.

There's nothing in RAW about sharing my list with you before we play. There's nothing about even knowing your opponent's faction, even. At least, not to my knowledge.

Regardless, I'm not showing anyone my list, even before a narrative game. The temptation is too great for most.

I started off with all my lists on "Army Builder" and found it reasonable to use.

Battlescribe took a little bit to figure out, I did look into the structure a bit and can understand why they do what they do but it can be a bit odd at times.
It works well when mixing the various detachments.

I agree that if you are good with a spreadsheet, these army builder programs have little extra to offer.
I do find after getting a few tables of information together it is much easier to figure things out: the bits and pieces of information everywhere is a bit irritating.
I found a notes field is invaluable for listing the sources and their updates as rule/weapon/unit gets updated.
I have found the only problem is you can fuss with the darn thing forever with so many options to play with.
Really need some form of OCR for entering the wall of text for anything and everything.

I feel that a list needs to be selected before anyone lays eyes on what the other guy has.
I have too often seen people wait before producing a list hoping I would unpack my army first.
I have begun to lose a fair bit of trust with some people out there.

Martel732 wrote:
The temptation is too great for most.

Unfortunately agreed. I tend not to share my list until I am deploying, at which point I give my opponent a summary of what each unit can do. Although, this has more to do with the fact that most players have wild misconceptions about what Eldar units can do, so I'm just in the habit of trying to clear that up early in the game.

In practice, all my opponents and I share before hand is what Factions we have. There is enough diversity in most armies, that this isn't always a dead give-away as to what you are bringing.
In fact, I've used people's assumptions against them in the past. In 7E, people always assumed I'd be taking Scatterbike and WKs, which granted I did for tourneys, but in casual games, I "toned it down" by taking Shuricannon bikes instead, dropping some bikes and adding Grey Knights (of all things) or Dark Eldar (which were not as amazaballs as they are now).
But taking units that we unexpected, I often could catch players off guard and still "win" even with sub-par choices mixed in.

-

This is why, when I build my list, I do my best to not see what the other guy is unpacking/building their list. i'll go around a corner or something, if necessary.

i only play in tournaments or pre arranged games so we always know our opponent and the points we are gonna play, so we go with the lists done from home.

The more competitive we want the game to be, the less we'll tell the other about what we are bringing (Unless we are preparing for a big tournament and we want to try stuff agaisnt the meta lists, of course)

It's entirely possible to make the BattleScribe output look nicer. Here's what I produce: http://dode74.com/40k/1200%20Raven%20Guard%20v2.html

To make it, output the list as HTML. Then edit the HTML using notepad or similar (I use notepad++, which is free).
When editing I remove all the content between the <head>...</head> tags and replace it with the following code:
<head> <meta name="viewport" content="width=670"> <link rel="stylesheet" href="gizmoscribe.css"> <link href="https://fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=Ubuntu" rel="stylesheet"> </head>
I also remove a class for some para tags at the Force Org section to enable printing to use less paper, but if you're not planning on that then there's no issue.

This modified html file goes in a folder with a css file I downloaded from github called Gizmoscribe. I've modified it slightly to give the Space Marines logo in the top corner, but otherwise it's identical.

These can then be uploaded via FTP for use on a tablet/phone or opened locally in a browser for printing.

I think a lot more can be done with the .ros outputs from BattleScribe since it's basically XML, but I need to learn some XSLT first...

Martel732 wrote:

 Just Tony wrote:

Martel732 wrote:

 Just Tony wrote:
Also, to chime in on the list tailoring debate: real world militaries do it ALL THE TIME!!!! You wouldn't roll a tank hunter battalion in when you're facing masses of light infantry. Intel is collected and the proper forces are thrown at the problem. If we can pull that off currently, there shouldn't be ANY problem pulling that off 40,000 ish years from now.

That's great. But in a game, it's still cheating.

Miscalculating points for an advantage is cheating.

Playing with loaded dice is cheating.

"Conveniently" misremembering which unit was in which transport until it's revealed that the PERFECT unit for the job just happened to be in the right place is cheating.

Altering measuring to gain an advantage is cheating.

Tailoring your forces to deal appropriately with a foe would fall under strategy, tactics, or possibly both. Not cheating.

Well i wouldn't play vs a foe who was able to tailor. How much strategy is there in spamming plasma vs marines? feth that.

Its cheating just like misquoting rules or altering measuring.

Then we would never play. I would not turn a game away even if someone put every speck of thought in taking on my specific codex. I look at it as a challenge. Different strokes, I guess. STILL not cheating.

Galef wrote:

 Just Tony wrote:

Martel732 wrote:

 Just Tony wrote:
Also, to chime in on the list tailoring debate: real world militaries do it ALL THE TIME!!!! You wouldn't roll a tank hunter battalion in when you're facing masses of light infantry. Intel is collected and the proper forces are thrown at the problem. If we can pull that off currently, there shouldn't be ANY problem pulling that off 40,000 ish years from now.

That's great. But in a game, it's still cheating.

Miscalculating points for an advantage is cheating.

Playing with loaded dice is cheating.

"Conveniently" misremembering which unit was in which transport until it's revealed that the PERFECT unit for the job just happened to be in the right place is cheating.

Altering measuring to gain an advantage is cheating.

Tailoring your forces to deal appropriately with a foe would fall under strategy, tactics, or possibly both. Not cheating.

So "cheating" may be the wrong word, but "unfair" would certainly fit.
Imagine you roll up with an all-tank army and "allow" your opponent to quickly tailor their list to be better "prepared" for the game.
So they drop all Heavy Bolters for Meltas and Lascannons. That's not going to be a fun game for you as your opponent just removes tank after tank.

And where do you draw the line? When do you stop tailoring and counter tailoring?
Use the above example, in which you present an all-tank list for your opponent to tailor against.
Now that they have done so and presented their list, what stops you from just saying "JK, my army is all Infantry now, let's play" and you pull out a list of all Infantry that you already had prepared.

This is the issue with list tailoring and why it is so unfair that it may as well be cheating. The best approach is to have a few all comers lists available, rather than list tailor once you see the opponent's list.
Now, if an all Knight player wants to be gracious and give you the opportunity to make changes just to be able to compete, that's their choice. But they don't then get to say, "Oh and by the way, now that you've ditched all you anti-infantry, I forgot to mention, I have the loyal 32 in the list too."

-

One assumes that showing up to a random store would necessitate an all comers list. That's a given. Knowing your opponents, however, and being a regular changes that paradigm slightly. Granted, certain clubs may prohibit anything remotely competitive or logical when it comes to a freaking war game, and that should be considered of course. But saying ALL list tailoring is cheating is patently false.

In your above example, my brother alluded to running a Slannless Lizardmen army in one of our upcoming games. I built my list magic light because of it, and was woefully unprepared to stop the spells coming from his army. I outnumbered him grossly with High Elves, so I was still on an even keel, mainly because the balance is done with points. Modern 40K is less forgiving, but as I only play 3rd Ed. nowadays it's hardly a concern.


Back to army building programs, an old gaming acquaintance of mine regaled me with discovering that you could assign a Sgt. Lysander to every squad in an Imperial Fists army within Army Builder. That right there killed any trust I had as to the infallibility of army building programs, and why I stick with analog with a quick math check by a third party.

Here's my preferred abicus-aged method.





For each of my armies I simply compile a couple double-sided, colour-coded, laminated cheat sheets. The sheets generally include:

1) Unit profiles and special rules (including unit costs)
2) Weapon profiles (including costs)
3) Legion/Chapter traits
4) Warlord traits
5) Special army rules (such as daemonic summoning, etc.)
6) Stratagems
etc.

Each sheet has a date on it, including what publications have been taken into account. I update this 3-4 times a year as needed and print off a new set for each army. Took me a couple of hours to input the information originally but it's easy to update and change as rules/FAQ/s and Chapter Approved books come out.

Notable changes are highlighted with the corresponding publication/PDF that changed it so I can reference it as needed. I bring my codices to the game as well, but use these 99% of the time. I tailor the sheets to units that I own, and stratagems I use etc. (so extraneous information isn't included for units I don't own, weapons I don't use, or stratagems which don't apply to my army). They are essentially an entire codex boiled down into two or three double-sided sheets (and mine include Forgeworld units, weapons, etc. as well)

As far as building the actual army lists I also have a pre-typed list of units I commonly run (including cost, wargear, etc.). I generally play with the same units with the same equipment so I can bulk out an army in a moment or two and then spend a few minutes finding out how to add/subtract a model or two to fit the game limit.

In my Opinion the biggest advantage of my opponent using battlescribe or similar is that I know that they didn't feth up their army selection by missing some mandatory selections (3x FA for brigade), added up points wrong or missed mandatory wargear that costs points. They also don't forget to select their psychic powers and warlord traits and they didn't use some datasheet from the index which they are no longer allowed to use.

When someone is using pen&pencil to write their list, checking their list for errors is pretty much mandatory as people get too much wrong. In a time where everyone can have an army building tool installed on their calculator (= mobile phone) I see no reason to rely on such an error-prone method.

As for the list tailoring... I usually build three lists before going to a game when I decide to go play somewhere, one for 1500 (2v2), one for 2000 (1v1) and one for 3000 (1v2). Every list is prepared to tackle anything any of my opponents could bring.

RE: Tailoring. It's not cheating, full stop. It's a jerk move to do unless it's agreed upon (some groups enjoy trying to "one-up" each other), but it's not at all "cheating".