Gamers Grass "Dry" Tuft Starter Box

 

Pricepoint

Direct from Gamers Grass (in my case bought at their stall at Salute 2026) this box will cost you £23, essentially the combined price of the tufts if bought separately, and less than a pound for the other items in the box. While this doesn't make this a discount box, what it is is a curated set of their range based on a common theme, with other themed boxes also available.

What do you get?

 For your money, you get:

• One strip each of their 2mm Beige, 4mm Beige, 6mm Dry and "Spikey" (12mm, or XL) Beige grass tufts
• A 30g bottle of white PVA glue
• A Pair of Tweezers
• A booklet of advice on how to use the box's contents

So What Do I Think?

Frankly, I think this is an excellent product. Used in their most basic form, each of these strips would be enough to cover one small project, such as a unit or two, but comined this would probably be enough for an entire small army such as a Combat Patrol or Spearhead, or a handful of medium sized terrain pieces if used sparingly. It seems like a reasonable amount for your money, and since each strip represents one pack of that tuft if bought separately you're not simply buying a "sample platter" that'll run out on you mid-project. It also makes purchasing a follow-up pack convenient, if you decide to expand your project later.

As for the mixture on offer, while having three of the same shade at different lengths may seem uninspired, they have at least made sure that it's a natural looking hue that matches the plant life you'd see in this environment, and it should work when mixed with other basing materials from other manufacturers.

The 4 and 6mm tufts come up to a 28mm figure's ankle, with the 2mm coming up to the same figure's shoe sole. We'll see how this measures up against smaller figures later on in the Does It Scale? section. Pictured below is one of the XL tufts, applied before I put on the rest of the basing materials (and did something about my peeling nail polish):

 

As you can see, these come all the way up to the same 28mm figure's pockets or belt, so more than one of these is liable to cover up a lot of your model. While this variety doesn't track directly onto any species of long grass I'm familiar with, it does at least give the impression of a long tufted grass.

The glue is perfectly serviceable, but I'm not a fan of the screw top on the bottle. If you've ever used a dropper bottle of ProAcryl paint, you'll be familiar with these, but I find that both those and this bottle have the same issue where you unscrew the lid to open the hole & apply the glue, screw the lid shut and a final bit of glue will spunk out of the tip* that you'll have to wipe off. It's a little wasteful if you're applying the glue directly, but if you follow the guide in the booklet and apply the glue to some card & dip your tuft in then you'll be able to recoup some of the excess glue.

 *It's my website, that's the verb I'm using.

Speaking of the booklet, rather than being just a leaflet advertising the exciting range of other products available at Gamers Grass Incorporated, it's a solid guide not only in how to use the products but how to use them realistically. A couple of the tips made me raise an eyebrow (gluing the model on AFTER the basing materials seems like a recipie for breakage) but others actually taught me a thing or two. A lot of it comes from their own Youtube video guide on the same product but, let's face it, in this day and age you're already using your phone to watch video essays while you hobby so it's nice to have the guide in offline format, too.

What I wasn't expecting to be one of my favourite parts of the kit was... the tweezers? But as it turns out, they're very well machined, with a good firm pinch that certainly beats the old pair I scavenged from a makeup set a housemate threw out some years back. They also withstand scraping dried glue and paint off them after a bit of clumsy hobbying, and I've ended up using them for other jobs too, like sorting through piles of bitz.

QA

While I wouldn't necessarily class the below as "Quality Issues", I'll just put in a mild warning here about issues you might encounter while handling these tufts, so that you don't run into them yourself. 

Here you can see that the heads of the longer tufts can get tangled into each other, causing a daisy-chain effect that pulls off other tufts and risks damaging the one you wanted to use. If you notice it happening, just stop what you're doing and gently loosen the tangled heads.

Between sessions using this strip I accidentally folded the strip while putting it away, and some light pressure caused the shorter tufts to come off the backing paper and attach to the tufts on the other side. The stuff sticking the tufts together isn't "glue", per se, so these tufts aren't inseperable now, but it'll be annoying to make sure none of the tufts come loose between uses. While you don't need to keep the packaging, keeping your tuft sheets in a baggie or tray that'll catch loose tufts between uses is always a good idea.

Does it Scale?

The Baleriac Slingers below are from Warlord Games' slightly strange 13-ish mm "Epic Scale", so it should give you a good idea of how it'll work at 10 or 15mm. The tallest tufts in this set wouldn't work at this height, but the medium height tufts work well as small bushes your models would be picking their way through, and the tiniest tufts work as low level grass.

The Terminators below are Epic 40,000 models at 6mm scale. All but the shortest tufts are too big at this scale for normal grass, but if you're using models with a bit more room on the base a tuft or two of the next size up may work as bushes. I may end up doing the same myself if I manage to lose any more of these tiny Marines and need to fill their spot on the base!

I don't think these tufts would work at larger than 30mm scale or so, but that's common for most tufts. If the shortest tufts were a different colour such as green, they might work as moss, but otherwise they'll be too short for even mowed grass, and the longer tufts would be smaller than most flowers at 54mm scale.

Final Score - 5/5 - Paydirt

This is a fantastic all-round product, both as an entry level thematic basing set, a selection of Gamers Grass' products, and as a refill pack for follow-up purchases. While not containing as many different colours as their other two starter boxes, it sticks to its theme and any further shades from their range or other manufacturers can be mixed in as desired with ease.

And if nothing else, it's a very good pair of tweezers.