#MESBG Zit's Oxy Morons

Afternoon #WarHamFam and #WarhammerCommunity I recently discovered the Battle Companies Manager website. It's brilliant site developed by Pat Gaunt, that helps manage your warband for Middle Earth Battle Companies. I have to say I think it is absolutely fantastic. It requires some effort out of the gate, you need to have all your stats and create some basic profiles for unit types, weapons and various rules. But once they're created it's really easy to add new models to your warband. Here's what's currently in mine.

I'd been using paper up to this and then I was both keeping track on paper and via the site on my phone. I was amazed at how easy it was to keep track with it.

I did mess up by closing chrome and it reset my actual game progress, lucky I had that paper copy too. Since then I've locked Chrome so I can't repeat the mistake.

It is free, but supported by adverts, mainly for Element Games so it's not the end of the world. But they can be removed for as little as £1. I was so impressed with how good the tool was I did so and will probably donate again in the future.

There's clearly a lot underpinning the site , it knows when upgrades happen to add points to your warband total. It hold each wounded model back to allow you to do all the injury rolls.

If a model misses a game it covers the profile image with blood and won't allow you to use them next time round.

Models with injuries have icons on their profile to help remind you they have a limp too. The whole process is really streamlined, even with using the book for all the actual rolls on the chart.

You'd have to write this down on a sheet anyway. Having taken all these unit pics it also helps to identify who is who too.

Experience is handled in a similar fashion and it will tell you when a model is advancing and whatever new skill or stat change can be easily applied or you just add a new special rule depending on what you roll.

As mentioned when these things are added it will automatically increase their base cost.

When you add new wargear, so long as you specify how much each item costs it will also calculate the value of the warband.

And with any injuries it will subtract those from your warband value too.

And when you come to start a game and add in your opponents value it will calculate any rerolls for you or them and any extra influence points earned because of the difference. It will also allow you to keep track of those rerolls during the game.

And automatically create your Influence Point scores at the end of the game depending on the result. I am so impressed with this, I can't recommend it enough. It's so well executed, usually you find some flaw, perhaps that is grasping how to populate your profile templates beforehand [see the links below to help overcome that] and when I lost my score data. It's also much easier to do the initial data entry on a PC, than on a mobile phone. The ability to click anywhere with a mouse, type and delete with a keyboard is really straightforward. But, everything else is functional, well designed and helpful once it's in place, even on mobile phone. I'd say it's a no brainer for free, but it's actually even better paying for it as when you print your warband it doesn't have the ads in either, which is handy. And also, that ability to print, so you can have both digital and paper versions is very handy. Go check it out.

Here's an interview with the creator: www.youtube.com/watch?v=8XWyARdUwv8

And a 'How to...' guide: www.youtube.com/watch?v=ta2bzJWCkYs