I got into Warmachine a few years ago, mostly because I really liked the models. As I’ve mentioned to everyone I play sci-fi games with, I really enjoy dreadnaughts, and Warmachine is a game all about dreadnaughts. I also really like the game because of its focus on smaller scale – a small game can be no more than a warcaster and a couple of warjacks, which makes putting together a list and getting it somewhere so much easier. I also found that I really liked the card to store all the information about a model, and, as a result mostly ended up using that to create armies.

The Spreadsheet

Compared to my Warhammer spreadsheet, my Warmachine spreadsheet was more used to manage my collection than individual armies. While I did have a few setups that I used more often, my spreadsheet was more about what I had and how it fit together. For instance, if I wanted to build an army with three Juggernauts, I wanted to know if I had the right models and parts to do that (since I had magnetized two of my heavy warjack kits). Most of this was pretty straightforward, but it helped me organize some things.

The Problem

The main problem with my spreadsheet was what it didn’t tell me. In particular, while I could see all the units I had, and various ways I could group them into an army, it didn’t tell me how many models I had, or how many points I had total. To do the collection management and army management aspects of my spreadsheet, I had effectively grouped models by their cards. While this was convenient in some aspects, it again was too coarse of a division to be able to do interesting things (similar to my Warhammer database), so, I knew it was time to move out of the spreadsheet space and into database space.

The Database

In creating my Warmachine database, I used a lot of similar aspects as how I created my Warhammer database. The main difference was how much simpler Warmachine is because you don’t have to worry about equipment. In Warhammer, a fair part of army creation is pairing equipment to the model. In Warmachine, this entire aspect is eliminated, so you really only have to worry about which models you are bringing. Also, since all of this information is distilled onto the model’s card, there’s no need to track it outside of the model itself.

This database, however, is currently suffering the same fate as my Warhammer database, in that it really wants a user interface, and I haven’t really gotten around to creating one. I will probably use this one as a test type for my Warhammer database, however, if only because it is significantly simpler…