Krautcover Signature Series "A Tale of Grimdark" Review

Pricepoint

I picked this up for £7.50; this is one of Krautcover’s two (at time of writing) Signature Series mixes, which are more expensive than both their basic Groundcover range at £4.50 and their more complex Basecover mixes at £6, owing to the 3D printed parts in the mix. This gets you a 140ml tub, generously stuffed with material.

What Do You Get?

 

Inside the tub you can see it’s a mixture of primarily stones, some bark and wood of a couple of types, and some red granules that could be red brick or terracotta, and a decent ratio of brown grit that looks quite true to life as dirt. It looks quite dense when you open the tub, but as you can see from the three random scoops I’ve taken, a lot of the material is of a much finer grit than the tiny pebbles.

So What Do I Think? 

I’ll admit that the only misgiving I had about this product going in was the bones. The ones in the picture on most storefront looked quite clean and of a bright creamy colour that made me think of the old Games Workshop skeleton kits from the 90s, and I was convinced they were going to stand out a mile. And of course, this being Grimdark™, is this just going to be a Tub O’ Skulls and no other bones?

 

As you can see in the attached picture, the skulls are about the same size as a Games Workshop basing skull, with the details a little finer, so these should fit well with most ranges at 28mm. Sadly, while the single long bones (the humerus and femur for you anatomists in the audience) are a nice addition, it’s just these and the skulls here in terms of skeletal remains, it seems. Their “Kraut Bitz” pack, a frame of these skulls & bones available separately, contains other bones & bits such as rat skeletons that would have played well here, so it’s not clear why only these two kinds of bones were included. For basing single miniatures this may not be a problem, but for larger squads or terrain you may find yourself wishing there were a few more tchotchkes for your minis to be stepping through.
As for the colour, the dirt grit has done a good job of darkening and filling the recesses of the skulls, putting to rest my concerns about them looking like plastic. This could still be a problem if you’re someone who wants to artisanally place their skulls and make sure they’re painted to the same standard as your models, but at that point you may want to try sieving the mix and replacing the bones altogether (see the Does it Sieve? section below).

QA

Here's where we talk about any quality issues I found while playing around with the material for review.

You might have spotted this in the above picture where we looked at the bones - as the bits are 3D printed, this is presumably a support that didn’t get trimmed off when the parts were prepped to be mixed in. Easily trimmed off with a craft knife, and you could maybe pass this off as a spine depending on how covered up the bit ends up being, but could be noticeable on your finished base.

A tiny bit of plastic, perhaps a shred of some kind of packaging material that got in when the larger materials were being ground up or shredded. If you’re using this to represent rubble or other detritus, this might not be a problem, but for more natural settings this would be an issue.

Does It Sieve?

Here's where we look at how well the product sieves down, as this often broadens the possibilities of how you can apply a basing product. 

Sifting this mix through a basic kitchen sieve leaves you with a pile of larger rubble that could make for either more rocky debris or accents to mix in with grasses or other dirts, and a fine mix with a range of complimentary colours that can be useful at other scales.

Does It Scale?

Does this product work at larger and smaller scales than 28mm? Not without sieving, for obvious reasons; the bones in the mix will make larger models look like they’ve been slaughtering pixies, and smaller ones like they’re in a giant’s graveyard. However, once it’s been sieved the dirt works quite well for smaller miniatures - pictured are some 20-25mm minis “from the old days” that I’ve based with this mixture for a “dungeon/cavern floor” texture.

This would probably also make for an attractive “ruined city” mixture at even smaller scales, too, where the twigs would be broken timbers and the rocks rubble from a bombed-out building. Just be sure to pick out the bones!

Final Score - 4 out of 5 - Greener Pastures

This product looks appealing, seems to have no issues in application, with a little sieving and picking out bits it plays well with other basing materials, and the only issue I ran into was easily rectified once I spotted it. The lack of variety in the mixture of bones is unfortunate, but more of a missed opportunity than anything.