Since the infancy of the information age, people have sought to use computers to make gaming as a whole easier, be it a simple spreadsheet to do all the calculations for you to the kinds of virtual tools suites that TSR/WOTC have promised for D&D and seldom delivered on exactly as promised for a number of reasons. For the hobby of Miniatures gaming the ideal tool is something that lets you generate army lists quickly and accurately so that you can spend less time with laborious math duties, and more time with laborious painting duties. This is especially true for minis gamers that play more than one minis game. After all these points never mean the same thing 1500 points in warhammer might take a couple of hours but 1500 points in A Call to Arms would require a bill gates like buying power for miniatures and months to complete, even if it was a 1500 point patrol. So the idea of an accounting progam that is pre set up with info for many popular miniatures games sounds awesome. A great chance to bang out army list on the fly and to look at options virtually before they ever hit the battlefield, how awesome is this. This is the premise of Army Builder, by Lone Wolf Development the current industry standard. Unfortunately this “perfect tool” is still a pipe dream.

Let’s start with the basics, the program is of course windows only (tough luck Mac dorks and Linux losers, no one can write a version in Java apparently!) which is minor as I have just picked up a laptop with windows 7, so I am O.K. though It would be smart as alternative formats become more popular to universalize via java rather than assume no games use Macs (By the way every other computer I have is a Mac, does it show?) After all DOJ’s Heromaker is written this way and Works like a charm on my Mac and my PC, and is from a less computer focused source. But again this is minor, and won’t bother any of you who have a PC nearby. As with most PC programs of this type upon loading from the CD I could do nothing until I updated to the newest version (guess this was my fault for buying in the store rather than on line) and then gives you a listing of games you can download. There are quite a few including Warhammer and Warmachine, AT-43, Babylon 5 A Call to Arms, Void and more. Also included was a toolkit to make your own army lists (more on that later) once you have updated and downloaded the software is ready to use. Now the good news it does what it is supposed to do, assuming you have up to date rosters. It prints out a clean and neat army list with all of the included options and nice mini synopsis of special abilities I was able to belt out a 1500 point Ultra Marines list in a matter of moments without the Codex, by simply looking at my minis (to remember how many of each type I had) and adding/ removing wargear. It also checked not just for validity of points but allowances on units, I.E. you cannot make an all HQ army at 1500 points without the system letting you know this is not tourney legal. It was also accurate with the newest Space Marine Codex. Making this a very nice tool for the Warhammer 40,000 player, And I would Wager (though I do not play it so cannot guarantee) a good tool for Warhammer Fantasy as well. So to recap it’s a great tool for Warhammer players.

Now for the Bad news. In short the tool lacks for most any other game I play. Take for example Flames of War, I am just getting into this game and putting together my first army of Panzergrenadiers. I figured since the Germans are the primary axis power I would most likely have a better chance of getting to play against American, British and Russian players, and I got the starter cheap at the Warstore.com. So looking at the box for Army Builder it states clearly on it that it supports many games and listed smack dab between Warhammer 40,000 and Warhammer Fanstasy is Flames of War. Good enough, I’ll download that and see what we have here. And what we have is an incomplete mess. The onlysupport for Flames of War as of this writing that I have found is for British forces surrounding the army book Monty’s Meatgrinder. Which does me no good as again I am not playing British! If I had decided to go with a minor group, say the Finns then I could maybe understand them not having army lists yet maybe they are just too minor but the 3rd Freaking Reich?! That’s kind of like doing army lists for Rowhan in Lord of the Rings only missing Gondor, The Dwarves, Elves and Shire completely and the missing all of the forces of Darkness. This may sound like petty griping but if they are going to put it on their package as supported I think it should be more than one faction especially when there are other very major factions left to deal with. I found a similar issue with AT-43 as I do not Speak French I cannot use the info and even when I try to go in to the Red Block to see if maybe I can discern what forces are what there are no forces that I can find. Not to mention taking 3 downloads to find an English version of Confrontaiton which is for another edition than the newest. Wargods of Aegyptus has the exact same thing it’s in French so I did not bother meaning that this functionality is lost to me. And Their Warmachine support is enough past due that the free application tabletop hero does a better job for less mone. Then there is Clan War. I just decided to pick this game up recently due to my interest in Legend of the 5 rings, a full banner advertisement in the back of the book and demo CD for army builder in the back, but no files on their website, huh? So I search till I find the files for Daimyo edition Clan War only to find they are not compatible, thus forcing me do use the demo verision of Army builder as well To build my Scorpion army which is humerous when They keep trying to get me to buy a full version of software that I OWN, LOCK STOCK and BARREL! One other thing definitely worth mentioning to all you heroclix, Pirates of the Spanish Main, D&D Minis and Star Wars minis players is that if you bought this software to build your armies, SURPRISE! You are not supported at all. To get support for these games you need to buy Lone Wolf’s Card Vault software for Magic the Gathering and other CCGs, that is where they will support CMGs, and other collectable games.

Of course my main gripe could be fixed by one thing and I am sure you know what that is. I mentioned earlier that there was an authoring kit included in the package to allow you to build your own army lists. And while this is true I paid $40.00 plus tax for software that claimed to do just this without all the extra work. It will be as much work if not more for me to catalog all the main armies from a game into their software template. Now granted this may help other gamers who also bought Army Builder, I feel as if this is why lone wolf software is getting paid to do this, not to give me the tools to do their job, If feels like going into Mc Donalds paying for a big mac and then having to go back to the kitchen to make it. Hell I could have done the whole thing in an Excel Spreadsheet or for most games find one authored by someone distributed for free. Part of paying for software of this type is not to have to do the work. And for some games (such as Victory at Sea and A call to Arms) army list generation is simple enough that the software will not add anything to the experience period, and in both cases there are free websites that will generate professional army lists for free. (Burger’s ship viewer) So the fact that the support is sloppy and lopsided seems like a big issue when that is the main reason to invest in a copy of army builder. When you have a decent AB file and the game is as popular as say warhammer (because let’s face it this product would be dead and buried if they screwed up either warhammer game.) It may be worth owning otherwise try the demo before you bother to make sure it will work for you also check out the many free alternatives that may be as good if not better.