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Been going to a few more tournaments as of late and especially after coming back from LVO I think it’s about time I look into purchasing any army builder program so my list look more official. As it has been I usually just type up my list and point cost but after coming back from LVO and seeing everyone else’s list handed to me with entire unit break downs and such I feel I need to step up my game. So the question is what program should I use? I had 6 different opponents and each one handed me a different printed out army sheet. So what are some good ones that keep current with updates and datasheets and which ones should I just leave alone? Greatly appreciate the advice.

I use Battlescribe. Big perk is that it’s free. Their formatting for output has gotten better.

Army Builder is another popular one.

There are a few that I know of.

Quartermaster (which I don't know anything about).
Army Builder - costs money. I like the interface, but that's about it. I still have not figured out how to make multiple detachments with it.
Battlescribe - My personal favourite. It is free to use, or you can buy Pro for a few extra, non-essential goodies (such as naming units/models). The interface is dependent on whoever built the catalogue you are using. It also gives you a few options for how the list prints out.

Been using Army Builder for years now. It's awesome. Print-outs are very good quality. Generally speaking any new release gets added to Army Builder about a month after release. They were a bit slow getting 7th Edition added, but it happened eventually.

Interface-wise they've gone a bit downhill with 7th Edition for 40k. It's still good for creating your army list, adding and subtracting units, selecting wargear, and that sort of thing. But they really need to improve the interface when it comes to creating Detachments. It's pretty painful to do, and a lot of improvement could be made here.

BUT there are way many more pluses than minuses. I've used a couple other tools over the years, and in the end I always go back to Armybuilder.

Battlescribe is what I use. Great on mobile devices, many formats to chose from, can print out nice lists or get formats for use online.

Battlescribe is great. I used to use Army Builder, but it costs money, the printouts are confusing as hell, and it only works on PC platforms.

Battlescribe works on my iPad and iPhone and syncs all my rosters over them using Dropbox. Really handy.

http://cmdctr.net

Free online excel based army building program. I like it because it exports into a PDF which I can email myself and pull up on various devices. I also like the format it prints in. Only downside is you have to manually enter in all the stat lines, points, etc.

Battlescribe is the way to go. Usually updated ridiculously fast after releases.

Did we mention free?

I'll second/third/fourth the suggestions for Battlescribe. Very effecient to build a list using the standard 40k dataset, and the printouts have a lot of options. In addition to the list-building, it also compiles all your unit/weapon profiles into a nice table, and lists page references for all your rules should you want to save time codex-flipping.

Thoroughly reccommended (although can anyone tell me where the Print button is on the Android version? I'm probably being dense, but I can't find it on the new version)

I purchased army builder, I really like it, it does cost some money but the roster output is very nice and the Ipad app is pretty handy.

 Byte wrote:
Battlescribe is the way to go. Usually updated ridiculously fast after releases.

Did we mention free?

Same here. fast update (@Kangodo is my hero) and easy to build armies.

I just don't like the final format... too much information. I always need to edit to print one or even two less pages

Another vote for battlescribe for me, doubly so due to being easily usable on the mobile so you can put a list together on the fly at your FLGS easily as well as the fact that it's free.

Given how much I use it, I probably should get the pro version.

 Vector Strike wrote:

 Byte wrote:
Battlescribe is the way to go. Usually updated ridiculously fast after releases.

Did we mention free?

Same here. fast update (@Kangodo is my hero) and easy to build armies.

I just don't like the final format... too much information. I always need to edit to print one or even two less pages

in case you didn't know, you can cut the roster sheet down to just a list. Go to the Options on that page, uncheck the points/profiles/references you don't want, and you can cut it right down, should fit on an A4 sheet unless you have a huge list with a ton of units.

I've been using Army Builder and Quartermaster for a while.

But for tournaments I type them out. Sometimes the points just aren't right in these programs, so for important events I don't trust them.

Thanks for all the tips. I always new about Army builder but was interested to hear what else is out there. I only have a PC (no tablets or I phones for me) so sounds like I’ll give Battlescribe a go first and if it doesn't suit me can go back to Army builder and throw down some money for it knowing that it serves the community well. Thank you for all the feedback.

Battlescribe is my preference. The ability to save favorite unit configurations is a huge time saver.

Quartermaster is great but the templates provided are often slightly wrong and modifying them is a PAIN!