Bixby's Hextreme HeroScape Spreadsheet

[Bixby]

UPDATE:
I have decided not to update this XLS Sheet any further. There are many other great tools out there and the effort to keep this up to date was rather high considering my limited time these days. Thanks for all of the words of encouragement and compliments on the tool. Here is a link to an online army builder that has some nice features.

http://battleplan.mythacle.com/heroscape/


Happy 'Scaping,
Matt


Introduction:
This spreadsheet has been created as a tool for the board game HeroScape. The spreadsheet has a number of tabs and features that any HeroScape player will find useful. The ideas and content on this sheet come from a variety of sources and much credit goes to the members of the fan site www.heroscapers.com Their creativity and constant exploration of the game system has been the inspiration for this spreadsheet.

It should be noted that the only cells you should enter values in are all shaded yellow and have a cell border highlighting them.

Current Version:
9

Release Date:
V9 - July 2009
V7.0 - Fall 2008
V5.2 - October 3rd, 2007
V5.0 - September 4th, 2007

Download Location:
Version 9 - http://www.heroscapers.com/community...o=file&id=1615
Version 7.0 - http://www.heroscapers.com/community...do=file&id=921
Version 5.2 - http://www.heroscapers.com/download/?dlid=883
Version 5.0 - http://www.heroscapers.com/download/?dlid=803
Version 3.1 - http://www.heroscapers.com/download/?dlid=649

Products Included in the Spreadsheet:
All official HeroScape Product is included.

Known Issues:
n/a

Major Features...

Roster Tab:
The roster tab contains all of the information about all of the units in the game. This includes all of the officially released information and some great add-on information from the www.heroscapers.com discussion forums, such as Links to all of the Books of HeroScape and Power Rankings. You can indicate the quantity of each unit you own in the yellow column provided. The Power rankings have been updated to correspond with what has been published on Heroscapers as of June 30th, 2009.

Unit Details Tab:
This part of the spreadsheet is used to examine a unit in detail. All information available for each unit is presented on one screen. This includes the Bio, official errata, card details, special abilities, and a few other odds & ends.

List Builder Tab:
This section of the spreadsheet pulls data from the roster tab and gives you the ability to look at subsets of units by a selection of filter criteria. Unlike most spreadsheets that use filters, this one only has one filter. YES – unit meets my selection criteria, or no it does not. Instructions for using the filters are located on the tab. Give it a spin.

Army Creator Tab:
This section lets you specify a draft amount and then select units for your army. The stats section at the bottom will give you an indication of your army composition as it pertains to movement, attack ratings, defense ratings, etc. The army creator will also alert you to the size of starting zone required to field your army. There are a couple of graphs that analyze your selection by faction.
This page has been formatted to print on a single 11 x 8.5 page for easy use and reference.

Collection Tab:
This tab references the Product and Roster tabs to find out what you inicated you own. It also gives you a place to indicate what you wish to buy to complete your collection. Some basic collection analysis is provided at the end of the sheet. This can be expanded in future releases based on suggestions and feedback.

Stats Tab:
This part of the spreadsheet contains some very basic statistics about the composition of units released by Hasbro. You can see at a glance the distribution of units over the various factions, species, personalities, worlds, etc.

Graphs Tab:
This is a visual representation of some of the information from stats tab.

M/A/MA Rules Tab:
Our gaming group has come up with these rules for epic games and large maps. These rules may not be for everyone, but they have been a staple of our games for over three years. If you like playing with larger groups on larger maps, give this a look.

Red Colored Tabs:
These sheets contain the control information for the sheet. This drives the validation lists, pull down menus, lookup tables etc.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Please feel free to post your comments and suggestions in this thread.
Regards,
Matt

[Aldin]

Oooooooooh - I can't wait to take this for a spin tonight!

~Aldin, spreadsheet slave

[Aldin]

Pretty nifty, Bixby. I can see you've put a lot of work into it and it will remain part of my arsenal in riding herd on my armies.

One note for those less familiar with Excel is that the order of units in the pull down lists for the Unit Details and Army Creator tab is the same as the order of those units in the Roster tab. To make them alphabetical, highlight cells B3 through AB104 and select from the menu Data->Sort. In the box choose Sort by: Column B - Ascending and hit "Okay". This will make your unit lists alphabetical without messing up the data associated with the characters.

I look forward to seeing more knobs and buttons in the next release

~Aldin, happy to have more tools with which to play

[Grim]

Very cool. Thank you for your efforts.

[ChilliDog]

Awesome, thanks for this Bixby.

[mecha frog]

I am only posting this because you asked for any other features we might like to see. The spreadsheet already scores 10 out of 10 in any category imaginable!

Pictures? I took a database course back in the day and one assignment was to reference a photo for specific entries. It would be very cool if the unit details tab had the army photo. Not the whole card, just the part with the figures.

frog

[yagyuninja]

Just wanted to say that this is fantastic.

[Bixby]

Everyone:
Thanks for your kind words.

Aldin:
Thanks for pointing out the sort for folks. I will add some Sort Macros to the spreadsheet.

Mecha Frog:
I would love to add pictures, alas, this is a spreadsheet and not a database. I honestly do not know how to add images as addressable cell content other than include as a comment but that does not let me use the image easily in page layouts. If anyone more savvy than I can assist in this I would be happy to include pictures. At this point, I really do not see how this is feasible.

[Bixby]

Eureka!! Aha!! Yippee!!

Guess who just figured out how to get clickable images into his spreadsheet. I am pleased as this was bothering me. The solution may not work well for others so I will post some of the details here.

Basically, it is not possible to include an image as row content in a spreadsheet. It is possible to have a comment in a cell that contains an image, but that can be problematic as well. The following line shows how you can have a column that basicaly contains a hyperlink to teh actual picture.

=HYPERLINK("file:///E:\Official HeroScape cards\"&B9&".jpg","Click Here")

The contents of cell B9 is the name of the actual card. The above statement builds a hyperlink to the image. As you guessed, I have a folder called "Official HeroScape Cards" with all of the official HeroScape card images. I named all of the images the exact name as the card title for ease of referencing. This works very well.

Now the downside, my directory of Heroscape cards is a folder that is 24MB in size. It works well for me, but anyone wishing this feature will have to have a folder with all of the heroscape card images in JPG format and the image names need to be the same as the card title. I could share my entire folder, but 24MB is rather large.

Any comments...

[bad_calvin]

yes, provide a link!
I think for the imagery and quick reference it is worth the heavy download.

[countblah]

Bixby Roxx.

[yagyuninja]

Cool! I'd download that.