BATTLESCRIBE TUTORIAL

I’m no battlescribe expert, but in this short tutorial i’ll try to pass on what I learned by fiddling with
data files and the GitHub Desktop app. Hopefully this will ease your learning curve just a bit.

Things you’ll need

Battlescribe (duh) and GitHub Desktop application.
This guide assumes you’re familiar with how Battlescribe Roster Editor works, and the paths in
which data files are stored.

TIP
If you use a Dropbox folder for your BS data turn off the Dropbox client. It will sync every time
you save, slowing down your internet connection.

You can find Battlescribe tutorials at the Battlescribe Wikia you can find on Reddit,
https://www.reddit.com/r/BattleScribe/wiki/index
Additional informations about GitHub Desktop can be found at
https://help.github.com/desktop/guides/

GitHub Desktop
The “official” Battlescribe files are developed here, so it’s better to join the community rather than
try to find another way.

First thing of all, you need to sign up at github.com and

TIP
GitHub is a community of people
coming together to put their efforts
towards a common goal. Since
everything there is done on a
voluntary basis, try to be clear and
avoid aggressive tones when
reporting bugs and such things,
otherwise people may feel their
efforts go unappreciated and drop
the project entirely.
Basically, don’t be a dick.
download the GitHub desktop client from
https://desktop.github.com/ for your OS. It’s available
for macOS and Windows (if you run Linux you can set up
a Windows VM with Virtualbox, or dual-boot your PC).
Follow closely the GitHub Desktop tutorial, because it
will teach you the basis of forking and merging
repositories the right way.
Subscribe to the BSData and Heralds of Ruin repository
(https://github.com/BSData)
Click on the “Clone or download” button, then select
“Open in Desktop) to download and open the repository
inside GitHub Desktop.

Now you’re all set up to start editing the data files!

Battlescribe Data Editor
Open the Battlescribe Data Editor, then click on “Open Data File”.
Navigate to the GitHub repository files (the default path on macOS is <username>\Github\, on
Windows is <windows path placeholder because I don’t know>), then open the .cat file of your
faction.

I have no mouth and I must scream.

On the left you’ll find all the categories in which the datafile is divided. Let’s explore them one by
one.
Cost Types: the unit of measure of everything. Of course the default is “Points”, meaning that all
the values specified in the entries are Points.
Profile Types: weapons, models and abilities all have different defining stats. For example, a
Weapon profile type will need the Range, S, AP and D values, as well as the Abilities entry.
Category Entries: this is where the macro categories are defined. Also global caps on weapons, for
example the “1 in 5 Tacticals can have a Special Weapon”. You can assign a Selection Entry to one
or more categories, we’ll see to that in the “Shared Selection Entry” section.

Sanity is for the weak.

Both the Tactical Marine and the Tactical Sergeant are part of the “Tactical Squad” Category you
can see in the above image. Thus, when one adds 5 Tactical Marines or 4 Tacticals and a Tactical
Sergeant the maximum limit on Special Weapons is increased by 1. I’m not 100% sure on how it is
associated with the Special Weapons entry in the Tactical Squad Shared Selection Entry, but it
works.
Force Entries: mercifully, Heralds of Ruin has few restrictions on this. This is where you would
define the requisites and the limits of a detachment, for example 1 Leader, 1-12 Core and 0-3
Special.
Shared Selection Entries: now we get to the meat of the question. Here you’ll find ALL the
weapons, equipment and unit entries. Some entries are greyed out with a “not local” between
parenthesis. Those are the weapons defined in the game system .gst file. Beware! If you edit the
.gst file you’ll change that entry for ALL cat files! Usually you won’t touch the game system file
unless something like Chapter Approved massively change the points cost.
Shared Selection Entry Groups: here you define all the Special Weapons Lists, Armoury list etc.

Shared Profiles: some abilities are either defined here or in the relevant Shared Selection Entry.
The place for all the profiles should be here, but for some reason every data editor went its way.
Shared Rules: rules should go here, but again it depends on the data editor.
Root Selection Entries: these are the proper entries you add to your Roster while making a list.
Assigning each entry to a Category (Core, Leader, Special) is crucial, otherwise it won’t show up in
the Roster Editor.
Root Rules: see Shared Rules issue.
Creating a new entry.
A model is composed by various statlines and entries combined together.

The numbers represent the ideal order in which you would create the profiles and entries in order
to have a complete Tactical Marine entry. First you would create all the weapons profile and rules,
then define the single weapon by linking together the Profile and the Rules together with the
points cost. After that you create the Weapons List to list all the possible weapons options and
define restrictions. Finally, you would create the Tactical Marine entry with its Profile, then link
together all the weapons and weapons list you just created.
In this step by step tutorial we’ll insert the profile of Stick Marines shown below.

STICK MARINE (Core)

NAME M WS BS S T W A Ld Sv Pts
Stick 6” 3+ 3+ 4 4 1 2 7 3+ 14
EQUIPMENT - Pointy Stick (8 pts)
- Bubble Gun (3 pts)
RULES - Sharp Sticks
OPTIONS - Any Stick Marine may replace his Bubble Gun with a Nerf Handgun (10 pts).
- If you have 5 or more models with the Stick Marine Squad keyword, one model may
replace his Pointy Stick with an item from the Pointier Sticks list.
- May take a Beakie Helmet for 1pt.
KEYWORDS INFANTRY, STICK MARINE SQUAD

Pointier Sticks List

Name Pts
Power Stick 10
Uber Stick 15
 WEAPONS PROFILES
Name Range Type S AP D Abilities
Pointy Stick Melee Melee User -1 1 The Pointier End: Wound rolls of 6+ inflict Mortal
Wounds instead of normal damage.
Power Stick Melee Melee +1 -2 2 The Pointier End
Uber Stick Melee Melee x2 -3 3 The Pointier End
Bubble Gun 24” Rapid 1 0 1
Fire 3
Nerf 12” Pistol 2 0 1
handgun 2

Beakie helmet The bearer of the Beakie Helmet is more aerodynamic on the charge, thus gaining +1 to
his Charge rolls.

Wow, that’s a lot of stuff, isn’t it?

Let’s break it down into steps.
Weapons
Let’s create a new weapon entry. Click on the Shared Selection Entry, then on Add New…->Shared
Selection Entry.

Get used to scroll this list from hell.

You’ll notice it added a new object to the list. On the right-hand side, you can find its
properties list. Let’s rename it “Pointy Stick”.
 That was easy, wasn’t it?
Once you name it you need to define the Selection Entry type. There are three categories:
Upgrade, which is weapons, equipment and the sort. Model, which is self-explanatory and
Unit, which defines a group of models. We don’t need that last type in HoR, so we can
safely ignore it.

Once we define a weapon as an “Upgrade” we can assign its points cost.

The Pointy Stick is a mighty weapon of the Adeptus Astartes, clocking in at 8 points.
But where do we write down our mighty stick’s statline and awesome powers?
Easy, just click on the Add New->Profile button.
Then, under the “Characteristics” section change the Profile type to “Weapons”.
Now we can add the stats of our mighty weapon! (Don’t mind my bugged Battlescribe
screenshot below)

What is this, a textbox for ants?

Cool, we added a weapon!