MathHammer App Review

Initial Thoughts

MathHammer is a term coined to by the 40K Fanbase to refer to the likelihood of dealing/surviving damage for/from certain units. While it also serves other purposes, this is what I would say is the basis of mathhammer, and why it is important to some of us in the community to know what the ‘probability’ is behind our dice rolls in order to optimize our target priority.

This being said, a quick google search for “mathhammer 40k” will produce several results many of which are free web-based apps. So why would we be interested in paying for a piece of software that serves the same function? I came into this very skeptical

Interface

The app design leaves a bit to be desired for my taste. I feel like some of the options take some exploring to get a grasp of them, and I spend 3 days giving this app a try to familiarize myself with what it has to offer but at the end of the day I find the GUI cumbersome and not as user friendly as I’d like it to be. This also might be due to being a cell phone app and thus less room to work with, but I can certainly see room for improvement with the design.

Function

The app works, it delivers as far as mathhammer goes (I did not double check the math though) but the results seem to be in-line with what i would expect from certain things. It gives you a break down on the ROI (Return on Investment) so that you can see how well spent your points are when pitting unit vs units, this is very neat and one of the best features in the app. My favorite feature is being able to compare 1 unit to multiple defenders until I discovered where this was located I was not quite whelmed, but this is definetly the secret sauce for my sensibilities as I enjoy being able to quickly analyze how my unit will perform against a white range of popular enemy units with 1 button press.

Value

YMMV when it comes to determining if the app is worth purchase over just using a free one. I think if you are attending tournaments this is a must have app, as it can do a lot for your list building and even in-game decision making by having access to checking ROI. More casual players may want to hold off until there are improvements to the interface and it becomes easier to use.

Suggestions

I am on the fence with this app, it has a lot of potential to be something indespensable to every 40K player. I would like to see a cleaner, clearer, easier interface where you can quickly check things. Also including common built it profiles would be great, my favorite free app does exactly that with a profile for guardsmen, space marines, vehicle, knight readily available to compare to. This app can certainly take that several steps further but requires the user to engage the not so friendly interface to enter profiles and then compare them. Also I’d enjoy a feature that compares several attackers to 1 defender (the opposite of what it’s able to do currently) since it is quite handy to quickly determine which unit in my list is best suited to deal with a specific target. Saving an storing profiles could be improved with sorting elements aswell reducing the amount of scrolling. Last but not least I was not thrilled about not being able to choose which weapons I wanted to review on a specific profile, If my unit is equipped with 4 bolters and 1 missile launcher and I want to compare how the missile launcher in this unit performs against a vehicle I would like to be able to do that without the app also including the 4 bolters I listed in the unit profile. In the age of split fire lacking this level of function feels like a missed opportunity.

Overall

I give the app 3 Imperial Servo Skulls out of 5. The app is decent for all, good for tournament players. It can certainly see some improvements to push it to the next level and make it a must have.