Squidmar Basing Bits & Plants 'n Tufts Boxes Review

 

It's a two-for-one review this time, as I'm covering the Jungle Basing Bits and Jungle Plants 'N Tufts sets from Squidmar and GamersGrass.

Pricepoint

Separately, the two boxes are €29 for the bits and €53 for the tufts, or €76 for the two together saving €6. Like a lot of companies they charge the same number of dollars as euros (even though $29 isn't the same value as €29), so depending on your region you're paying slightly more. For the tufts box, this ends up being about €6.60 cheaper than buying the same materials from GamersGrass, who supply the contents - more on this later.

Unfortunately, given the product is despatched from Squidmar's distributors in the Netherlands, shipping completely wipes out whatever discount you're getting in this box - around 7 to 9 euro to most countries, a grisly €15.80 and further €7.46 VAT to my native UK and a brutal €60 to places further afield like Japan. This makes this the first product I've had to buy for this blog in instalments, but if you are taking that plunge yourself be aware that buying the bundle like I did doesn't increase the shipping cost, just the VAT.

Even if these do make it to third-party stores eventually, this is still a pricey set, especially if you're buying them together. Therefore if this product's going to get a decent score, it's going to have to do so on the strength of the materials, then, rather than the discount.

What do you get?

The Basing Bits box contains 2 sets of 2 sprues, made exclusively for this box by Archon Studios. 

 

The Plants 'n Tufts set contains a strip each of 5 different tufts and shrubs of 2-12mm height, sheets of 3 Laser-Cut plants, and two 35ml pots of Pigment Powder, all from GamersGrass.

 

Everything arrived in one piece, apart from one Laser-cut plant that had popped off its paper but remained useable, and a little loose flock from the shrubs and 12mm tufts (which are prone to shedding anyway).

So What Do I Think?

I'll start with the Plants 'n Tufts, and go through each component, before we move on to the basing bits.

The Tufts

As GamersGrass tufts, these are all of great quality, and individually they do the job just fine. It's unfortunately in the curation (the combination being presented together) where this set comes up short.

I've used the 12mm Jungle XL tufts before, and while they're prone to shedding they do the job of thick undergrowth - a little too thick to put under most miniatures' feet, but good for a monster's base. The others are new to me, but while they each work as a shade of green you might see in the jungle (save one) they don't quite go together. The shrubs and the darkest grass seem more like a muted, moorland colour, while the jungle XL is more vibrant and the light green is almost pale enough to fit in a desert setting.

Compare this to the GamersGrass Dry Tufts box we've looked at before. There, two of the grasses were different lengths of the same shade, and the longest one a very close match colour wise, and the other tufts were dark enough to be distinct as a separate plant. Whereas here the distinct shades of green will always look like at least two tones of grass growing among one another, and with dark medium and light in one set there's more potential for unnatural looking combinations. This moderate to distinct clash in shades will either not bother you at all or bother you immensely depending on your tastes.

 

The only one that stands out to me as a bad colour is the 2mm Moss - its mixture of mustard-yellow and dark green fibres doesn't look like most mosses I've encountered (admittedly I've not been to the jungle) and looks a little noxious to the naked eye. If your jungle is slightly irradiated, it might still work. Might.

If you're getting this set in the hopes of emulating Squidmar's own basing method on their channel - earth texture with a lot of small tufts, instead of flock or static grass - this set might not go that far, and you'll still need your own texture paste or equivalent. But as low level accents to your usual basing methods these all should work, if maybe not together.

The Laser-Cut Plants

I've not used Laser Plants before, as I always assumed they'd look too much like the paper they are when popped off their backing, but these are quite nice and crucially each one matches the shade of at least some of the tufts each. They've even been printed with a little Squidmar logo on the sheets for some reason, despite them being the same ones GamersGrass sell themselves.

There are tutorials online on how to best use these and how to reduce the glossy finish, so as a first-time user I'll defer to those, but I can say they're sturdy enough to survive being popped out of their backing and the bleed around the leaves means there's no misprints, so they're pretty much ready to use.

The Pigment Powder

From what I can tell these pigments are the same Red Iron and Green Lichen that can be found in GamersGrass' own Basing Pigments set, which comes as a pack with 7 other shades, all in 35ml pots. These ones just have Squidmar branding on them. For the price breakdown at the start of the article I assumed a price of €4.20 (nice) per pot, as that's 1/9th the price of the set, but crucially these powders aren't otherwise available outside of that set. The two pigments included in the Desert set also available from Squidmar also appear to be culled from the same Basing Pigments set.

35ml is a decent size for a pot of pigment - better than the 20ml pots from now-defunct Secret Weapon but less than the 80ml pots available from WWScenics. Both "blush" onto surfaces slightly darker than they are in the pot (in a way that's basically impossible for my camera to pick up), with the iron working for the reddish dust of jungle earth like we discussed in our Mangala Plateau review, and the green for staining surfaces like deadfall wood and ruined stone such as you get in the basing bits set a greenish tinge suggesting moss buildup.

  

If this is your first time experimenting with pigment powder, I'd recommend getting a single pot of a shade you like from another manufacturer over getting this set, but if you have bought this set it's a nice inclusion.

The Basing Bits

This set is printed by Archon Studios, who have a reputation for providing sturdy, high-detail plastic miniatures for their own ranges and for companies they outsource to. In my opinion they're slightly better on both fronts than the other ubiquitous third-party plastic producers, Renedra, even if I personally like the designs of the companies Renedra fulfils for (Perry Miniatures, Northstar, etc) over Archon's in-house style.

Quality & Detail

I'm happy to say that across the board these miniatures are both crisp in detail and free from any mould slippage or harsh mould lines - those mould lines present are easy enough to scrape off with a knife or remover. This 1/3rd of a monkey is smaller than my thumbnail:

Pictured: the face I pulled when I saw how much this bundle was going to cost me 

Most of the bits included are single piece, and those that aren't are clearly labelled on the sprue (with an arrow to make sure you know which one each label refers to). None of the multi-part items are spread across two sprues, and the bits for each are close together. The monkeys, trees and largest Hero Rocks have 3-5 parts and the trees more, but the joins in most cases are common-sense enough that the lack of instructions isn't an impediment.

The rocks do have a little stretching at their deepest points, but this is excusable as most rock formations do look like that in real life.

To the naked eye, the only bit where I saw any muddling of detail was on a single pillar, where a face's earring is smushed into his cheek, but I really had to go looking to find it. The lines where the parts go together are artfully hidden for the most part, like the horizontal line across the rock below, but may need a little filler in some places. This statue for example has a connection line running down his tongue, diagonally though his amulet and around his belly gem, but still leaves a visible line through his forehead.

The Ruins and Rocks

  

Most of the Hero Rocks in this box are chunks of Mesoamerican style carvings, pillars or stelae, and a couple of larger rocks for bigger minis to stand on, with a little hidden detailing on them suggesting that they're the rubble of bigger statues. The former are very nicely detailed, and should take more detailed painting well while still looking good if you fancy leaving it bare stone, but the latter are quite big and take up a lot of sprue space. One of the main reasons I'm reviewing the Jungle set and not the Desert set is that most of that set's bits are these kind of rocks. Furthermore the way they're sculpted means they're made up of a couple of chunks that clearly slot together and won't work as separate pieces.

 

These larger rocks have smooth, amorphous patches where other rocks are meant to sit.

There are a couple of piles of coins and a pouch full of them, which are at least somewhat detailed but will only really work for models 32mm and up. Next to a 28mm mini, they're the size of Wagon Wheel biscuits (or if you're American, Moon Pies). There's a chest, too, which is more of a vague "fantasy" design and sadly doesn't give you the option to glue it open, and a couple of smaller statues. Most of these are also Mesoamerican style to match the ruins, but one is clearly modelled after a Chinese Shishi, or Guardian Lion, which is a little incongruous but it's up to you if that bugs you or not.

The Plants

On the smaller end there's a few small tree stumps, and a couple of large Swiss Cheese Plant (Philodendron) leaves. I'd have liked a few more of the latter, as the ones here only work as fallen leaves instead of a full plant, but if you're using the laser cut plants in the Plants set those work fine instead. The biggest plants, however, are the two positively giant trees.

These are very akin to the 90s jungle trees I got back in my 3rd Edition 40k box back in the day, but rather than being poseable these are single tree trunks with "shells" of leaves that plug onto the branches in a set way, and a two-part stump to sit them in. The trunk forms a recess with a specific shape inside, and I had to twist the trunk a few times each to find the angle it's meant to sit in. The branches end in plugs meant to go into the leaves, but you could stick clump foliage onto them instead and save the leaves for low bushes. Don't get me wrong, they still look nice, but... well, I'll go into these more when we get to the scale section.

The Critters

The animals are all very cute, but not in a way that's too cartoony to look natural, and they all should work even if you're not sticking them to these particular ruins. There's a parrot and two monkeys who are meant to attach to branches, a bushbaby sculpted onto a branch you could stick to another tree, and one of the frogs is clearly posed to be sticking to an angled surface but as long as it's a flat one it could be any wall or rock you attach him to.

Speaking of frogs, just look at this little guy!

Can you believe this frog is still a two-part miniature?

He is my tiny friend and I love him. If you're wanting more animals you should probably get a dedicated "animals" set from a basing bits seller, but they're still nice accent pieces.

Will It Fit On Your Base?

One thing in common across all these bits is that they're chunky, heroically proportioned bits, with a somewhat World of Warcraft aesthetic. Even the little frog is about the size of a kitten. This can potentially impact how you use these bits.

Below are a set of 25, 30, 40, 50 and 60mm bases, with each bit lined up next to what I consider the minimum base size it can comfortably sit on while still leaving room for a miniature. In all honesty the trees probably need an even bigger base, either 80mm+ or an oval, to make sure they aren't competing for space with whatever miniature they're sharing it with.

Value

This set, despite the shipping costs, is a generous amount of bits - the below picture is the contents of one set of the sprues, meaning you get twice as much as is pictured across the entire box.  

For €29 this is an absolute steal, and even with the shipping cost added on it's at least a better value proposition than buying several £15-20 basing bits packs to get the same spread of variety.

Plants 'n Tufts Final Score - 2/5 - Fallow Soil

This may seem unnecessarily harsh a score to give, since most of the individual components are fine to good, but as a combined product this just isn't a worthwhile purchase (emphasis on the worth) over buying separately. For a minimal cost saving that's negated potentially multiple times over by shipping costs, you're getting a curated selection of tufts that don't quite mesh together and a couple of other items. Just buying the items you want from GamersGrass directly or via third-party sellers will save you more.

Which begs the question - why not fulfil this through GamersGrass directly? While GG and Squidmar have been close partners for awhile, with the former's products appearing frequently in Squidmar videos and especially in their Miniature Masters series, it seems like it would have been more beneficial to have this be a curated selection available through GG instead of shipping them to the Netherlands and then on to the customer.

Jungle Basing Bits Final Score - 4/5 - Greener Pastures

I'm much more positively inclined towards the basing bits in this combo pack. They're high quality and fairly reasonably priced, and while I could quibble at the choice of some parts and the trees in particular I feel aren't the best use of space on the sprue, this pack is a decent purchase on its own. The only real restrictions with this set come with the chunky proportions, which might not fit your model's aesthetic, but if you're painting fantasy figures they could always be ~maaagical frogs!~

What do I Recommend Instead?

When it comes to the basing bits, I don't have any other recommendations; by this point in the review you'll know if they'll suit your purposes or not. If you do get it, just get it on its own without the tufts set.

As for the tufts, GamersGrass' own Jungle basing box contains resin branch basing bits, 3 of the tufts and two of the plants contained in this pack, and three tufts and two plants that aren't (including a set of tufts unavailable outside this box) for €69.90. Or, you can buy a smaller number of tuft sets and some of their basing bits packs and tailor your choices to your own tastes. That's a saving of €9 vs buying them separately, and is carried by third-party stores as well as GamersGrass. They also sell the set of 9 pigment pots, but don't sell them individually.

The one thing they don't have is a Squidmar logo on them, but unless you're a hardcore fan of their channel, that's something not worth paying extra for.