New Recruit

Review by eFreeware

If you play a tabletop wargame and you already keep a roster somewhere, New Recruit is the sort of tool that tries to cover the whole ritual around it: building the army, taking it to an event and then working out how it actually performed. The app is free, carries no ads, and sits in the Tools category rather than pretending to be a game. It has been downloaded more than 100,000 times and holds a 4.9 average from 2,184 ratings, which is the sort of figure that suggests a settled, well-liked audience rather than a novelty.

What you get is three things bolted together into one place. There is an army list builder that works with a long catalog of tabletop systems, a tournament organizer that supports several event formats, and a results log that turns your games into statistics. For someone who plays regularly, the appeal is having all of that in a single app instead of spread across a notes file, a spreadsheet and whatever the event organizer is using.

I'd expect this to be most useful to players who already have a roster habit and want it tidier, and to anyone who helps run small events. The developer lists Warhammer 40,000, The Old World, The Ninth Age and Horus Heresy among the supported games, along with many others.

Building a roster without starting from scratch

The list builder is the part most people will open first. New Recruit works with a long list of tabletop games, so the same app can hold rosters for several systems rather than one. That matters if you play more than one game and don't want to learn a different builder for each.

The feature I'd single out is file compatibility. The app reads Battlescribe files, which means existing rosters can be brought across in ros or rosz format instead of being retyped. Anyone with a folder of saved lists from elsewhere will appreciate that, because rebuilding a large army by hand is the kind of chore that stops people switching tools.

Once a list is in, the app is where you keep it. I'd expect players to build a few variants for the same faction, keep them side by side, and pick one on the day rather than committing to a single fixed roster.

Tournaments, from swiss rounds to knockout

The second job New Recruit takes on is events. You can organize a tournament and join one, and the app supports swiss rounds, direct elimination and double elimination. Those three cover a lot of ground: swiss for a club day where everyone plays several rounds, and the knockout formats for a bracket that narrows down to a winner.

That range tells you who the tournament side is built for. It is not just a sign-up sheet; it is meant for someone who has to run the pairings and keep the bracket straight. If you have ever organized a small event with pen and paper, the draw here is obvious.

The same tool serves the player joining an event. Rather than one app for the organizer and another for the attendee, both ends sit in the same place, which is a reasonable design choice for a club-sized group.

Turning finished games into numbers

The third piece is record keeping. New Recruit logs your results from both friendly and tournament games, so casual matches count alongside competitive ones. Over time that builds into a picture of how you actually play rather than how you remember playing.

The statistics are the interesting part. It also shows which units perform best for you and how each faction fares. That second measure is the one I'd watch: it points at individual choices in a list rather than the army as a whole, which is the level at which most players tinker.

None of this is automatic. You have to log the games for the numbers to mean anything, and a small sample will flatter or punish a unit for reasons that have nothing to do with the unit. Treat the stats as a prompt to look closer at a list, not as a verdict on it.

What it costs and what that buys

New Recruit is free to download and shows no ads. It does offer in-app purchases, so there is a paid side to the app even though the entry point costs nothing. The sensible approach is to install it, use the free toolset and see whether anything you want sits behind a payment.

The absence of advertising is worth noting for a tool people will open at a club table or between rounds, though I'd rather judge the app on whether the builder and the tournament features do their jobs. With a 4.9 average across 2,184 ratings, the free experience appears to satisfy most of the people using it.

For a hobby where rulebooks, miniatures and event tickets already add up, a free tool that handles lists and pairings is an easy thing to try. Just go in knowing that some purchases exist.

How it compares with the alternatives

Most players come to an app like this from one of three directions. Some use a dedicated roster builder tied to a single game system, which can go deeper on that one game but leaves you juggling tools when you branch out. New Recruit's answer is breadth: one builder covering many systems, with Battlescribe import to smooth the move.

Others keep lists in a spreadsheet or a notes app. That costs nothing and is completely flexible, but it does no validation, no tournament pairing and no statistics. The trade is convenience against the work of maintaining your own structure.

A third group relies on whatever the event organizer provides. That is fine for attending, less so for running your own event or for keeping a personal record across the year. New Recruit's pitch is that all three jobs live together, which is the reason to consider it over a single-purpose tool.

A tidy home for a tabletop habit

New Recruit is a free, ad-free tool for building army lists, running or joining tournaments and logging results, and it covers a long list of tabletop systems with Battlescribe import for existing rosters. The in-app purchases are the one thing to check for yourself.

It suits players who already build lists regularly and want the roster, the event and the results in one place, and it suits the person at the club who ends up organizing the bracket. If you play one system casually and never track results, the tournament and statistics halves will sit unused.

For everyone else in the hobby, this is a sensible first stop. Install it, import a list, and see whether the rest of the toolset earns a place in how you play.