Review–grass tufts from Gamer’s Grass

As long as the almost complete standstill in my wargaming persists, perhaps the best way to keep this blogg alive is by posting a review every once in a while. Let’s start off with grass tufts from Gamer’s Grass.

Allright, so to begin with, what exactly are grass tufts. Well, like pretty much all terrain and basing materials we use in the hobby, it’s yet another cross-over product from model railroads hobby. Basically, it’s a small lump of grass fibers secured at the bottom in a small drop of white glue or other type of transparent material like silicone. A bunch of such lumps is delivered on a sheet of wax paper. The idea with the product is that user is to peel individual tufts of the wax paper and glue them on terrain pieces or miniature bases either with PVA glue or superglue.

If I am not correctly mistaken, the product was introduced over ten years ago by a company called Silflor – they’re still the ‘top dog’ in this department and have by now developed a vast variety of products in this range. The thing is though that their products are rather expensive.

Gamer’s Grass offers pretty much same product While their range is smaller, it is  in my opinion at least, better directed towards the wargaming scene. Most of their tufts are about 6mm high, which seems to be optimal for 28mm miniatures. For 15mm minis, this height may be a bit overpowering on a base, so their smaller range of 4mm tufts is probably better choice. Other heights, such as 2mm and 12mm are also available.

The tufts come in different colours and heights. Individual tufts are made in three sizes and are shaped as an oval. Some shades/sizes are also available in form of irregularly shaped lumps. An individual piece of wax paper holds between (approximatly) 120 and 40 tufts, depending on size of indivudual ‘lumps’. The price is what makes products from Gamer’s Grass really attractive.

I’ve been using stuff from Silflor on a couple occasions and the comparison between their ‘top of the line’ product and what you get from Gamer’s Grass works out quite well indeed. As already said, we’re talking about lumps of grass fibers put in a ‘base’ of some sort of flexible material, so there is not much room for improvement! If I am to be completely frank, it seems to me that the material used for the ‘base’ by Gamer’s Grass is a bit more fragile. As a result, couple of tufts have desintegrated in my fingers as I peeled them of the wax paper. But with a bit of caution, they can be handled without any problems. Once glued onto a base, they seem to be able to handle the abuse expected to be caused by handling of miniatures in games and during transports.

Last but not least, couple of words about the customer experience. My order was placed through their webshop and consisted of over a dozen of different tufts. Payment was done through Paypal and order was promptly confirmed through email. The small package (with all ordered items) arrived to my delivery spot just over a week after placement of the order. Overall, a very smooth purchase without any issues.

In pictures included in this post, you can see some of the sheets that I’ve ordered. Most of them are of standard 6mm height and in various sizes. If you take a look at previously posted pictures of my early Anglo-Saxons, you can see the tufts ‘in action’. I was really satisfied with that ‘test run’ and can recommend Gamer’s Grass without any reservations.