HOW TO TRACK YOUR WARHAMMER 40,000 COLLECTION

Collect is where your models live: what you own, what state each one is in, what you have painted and what you still want to buy. This guide answers the questions people ask most about it.

Everything below happens under the Collect section, which has four boards — Armies, Buy, Build and Paint. Armies is the overview; the other three follow the hobby's own order.

How do I add units to my collection?

Open Collect › Armies and hit Add Unit at the foot of the page. That opens a unit-by-unit walk over your latest faction: swipe or tap right for I own this, left to skip, and I want to put it on your wishlist instead. Answering "I own" asks how big the squad is, how many you have, and what state each one is in.

Two other doors reach the same place:

From any datasheet — in Learn › Units, on a faction page, or from a list — open the unit and use the Add to Collection stepper.
If you already track your models somewhere else, skip the typing entirely and import them.

Adding is always additive. Nothing you add overwrites anything you already had.

How do I add a new faction?

Hit Add Faction at the foot of Collect › Armies. You get the full faction picker, grouped by grand alliance, with the armies you already own left out. Pick one and it flows straight into the unit walk for that army, so you can start recording models immediately.

The same picker sits in the faction selector in the top bar, which is also how you switch which army you are looking at. Set it to a specific faction and the whole app narrows to it — the feed, the units table, the rules search, your lists.

Your faction only actually commits when you answer your first unit. A walk you abandon without answering anything leaves nothing behind.

How do I record what's built, primed and painted?

Every model moves through five states, which the app labels:

Shame — still on the sprue, unbuilt. (If you would rather not call it that, Settings has a toggle to label it Sprue instead.)
Built — assembled, bare plastic
Primed — undercoated
Ready — battle-ready: three colours and based, table standard
Done — finished to your own standard

The fastest way to move things is the Stage board on Collect › Armies: switch the view to Stage and drag a unit's card from one column to the next. That advances the whole unit at once.

The Stage board: one column per build state, with a lane at the top of each for what you are working on right now.

For finer control, open a unit and use its Info tab to set the whole unit's state, or its Build and Paint tabs to move one model at a time. If a unit is half-done, that per-model control is the one you want — the counts on every chart and leaderboard come from individual models, not from units.

There is also an In progress lane on the Stage board for the thing you are actually working on right now.

How do I upload a photo of a model?

Open the unit, go to the Paint tab, and use the photo slot on the rail for the state you want to show. The Build tab carries the earlier stages; the Paint tab carries primed, battle-ready and done.

A few things worth knowing:

A rail unlocks when the model reaches that state, so if a slot looks unavailable, mark the model first.
You can replace a photo in place — pick the slot again.
Make Cover Photo in the photo viewer picks which shot represents the unit everywhere else.
You can also add a photo of the whole unit rather than one model.

Photo upload needs a connection. Offline, the control is disabled rather than failing after the fact.

How do I add a paint scheme?

Schemes live on Collect › Paint. Before you can build one, add at least three paints to My Paints — the shelf of what you actually own. Use Add Paint to search a catalogue of nearly six thousand paints across sixteen brands, or add a custom one via the brand dropdown's Other… if the catalogue does not know it.

With three paints on the shelf, hit Add Scheme. Name it, then fill the colour slots — Base, Primary, Secondary, plus any extras you need — from your shelf. You can add fixed technique steps too, so the scheme records the method and not just the colours.

The By Scheme board: every model assigned to a scheme on the left, your schemes and paint shelf on the right.

The scheme card tells you whether every paint in it is still on your shelf, so a recipe you can no longer mix says so.

Paint schemes are stored on your account, so they need you to be signed in. They are not available in local mode.

How do I apply a paint scheme to a unit?

Two ways, depending on how many models you are assigning:

In bulk — on Collect › Paint, switch the view to By Scheme. That gives you one card per model; drag a model onto a scheme to assign it.
One unit at a time — open the unit and use its scheme section. You can assign the whole unit at once or model by model, and record extra colours that apply only to that squad.

Each model belongs to one scheme at a time, so assigning it to a second scheme moves it rather than duplicating it. Assignment needs a connection.

Once models carry schemes, the Discover tab on a scheme shows other collectors painting in similar colours, ranked by actual colour distance rather than by name.

How do I plan what to build or paint next?

Both Build and Paint have a Next Up queue beside their backlog. Drag anything from the backlog into the queue, reorder it by dragging, and send it back with Move to Backlog.

Build's backlog is everything unbuilt. Paint's is split in two — To Prime (built) and To Paint (primed or battle-ready) — because they are different evenings' work.

The queue is a plan, not a promise. It is there so that "what do I do tonight" has an answer that is already decided.

How do I use the wishlist?

Collect › Buy is the wishlist: units you want but do not own. Add to it from any unit's Add to Wishlist stepper, or answer I want during the unit walk.

On the Buy board you can:

Drag rows to set your own priority order
Drag between Wishlist and Other unowned to promote or demote a unit
Sort by any column, or Hide a unit you have decided against (and Show hidden units to bring it back)
See an estimated total in your own currency, with links out to retailers

There is a paint wishlist underneath, too. Marking a wanted paint as Bought moves it onto your shelf in one step.

Reordering the wishlist needs a connection.

How do I import my collection from another app?

Use Collect › Import. You can upload a file or paste text.

It reads BattleScribe (`.rosz`, `.ros`, `.xml`), New Recruit JSON, and plain text in WTC, Markdown or Games Workshop app format.

Choose where it lands — your collection, a new list, or a list you already have — and what to do with units the roster mentions that you do not own: add them to your collection, add them to your wishlist, or ignore them. You get a preview with any reconciliation warnings before anything is written.

How do I export or back up my collection?

Use Collect › Export. You can export your whole collection or a single list, as:

A JSON backup — the full-fidelity one, for restoring later
An image — a summary poster, sharing the Armies Summary toggles
Text in WTC, Markdown or GW style
A BattleScribe file
Datasheet cards to print
A link with a QR code
A Tabletop Simulator spawn

Export works without an account, which matters more there than anywhere else — a collection held only on one device has no other backup.

What do the streaks do?

The chip in the top bar counts consecutive days you have done something on your models. Tap it for a calendar and a + to check in for today, or for either of the two days behind it if you forgot.

Streaks feed the Streak column on Leaders. They exist for one reason: twenty minutes most evenings finishes more models than a heroic weekend that keeps not happening.

Frequently asked questions

Do I need an account to track my collection?

No. You can use the app without one and your collection is stored on your device. Lists, paint schemes, photos and anything social need an account, and a device-only collection has no backup other than the export you take yourself.

Is there a limit on how much I can track?

There is a points cap on collections: 2,500 for free accounts, 5,000 and 10,000 on the paid tiers, and no cap on the top one. Everything else about tracking is unlimited.

Does the app tell me what to paint next?

The Next Up queues let you decide in advance. If you want a suggestion, the assistant can read your collection and answer "what should I paint next?" — it can see which models are unbuilt, primed or done.

Can I record models that aren't in the catalogue?

You can nickname units and models, pick kit variants, and add custom paints the catalogue does not carry. Datasheets themselves come from the game's own data.

What happens to my photos if I remove a model?

Removing models leaves their photos orphaned rather than deleting them. Removing a whole unit is confirm-gated before anything happens.