Bolt Action - Review: AVOID AT ALL COSTS!!! (A Non-biased Review of a Nasty Bit of Basing Material)

(Old Man Morin warns you away from a product he had terrible luck with! The picture below is a hint! - Judson)



Welcome back true believers,

I recently received a truly beautifully painted DAK army from our old pal Patchimus Prime in the mail.  He painted it for me as commission work as part of the ongoing process of gathering painted armies for The Bolt Action World Series tournament coming up later this year (or early next year).  At my request he did not paint the bases as I wanted them to match my existing desert terrain.



Well, I sanded, painted and dry brushed the bases using the exact same process that I had used on my palm tree, rock formation and objective large bases. No problems. The trouble began when I decided to try and take things one step further.  I like bases with character.  Even though these bases were barren desert…  I wanted something more.

I bought a pack of Games Workshop's Mordheim grass tufts. I usually use the Army Painter products for this but I had to do an entire army at one time and the store I was in only had one small pack of the Army Painter grass tufts. Sure, the Games Workshop product cost literally twice as much… But it looked like it had more that twice the product and it did…

Anyway, I used a knife to flatten areas of the bases by popping off raised gravel before using superglue to stick the tufts to the flatten areas.  At this point everything was dandy. The tufts stuck beautifully and the base of the tufts were soft enough to mold themselves to somewhat uneven ground (I think the superglue helped).  For those wondering, I was using Zap-A-Gap medium super glue for the job (in a well ventilated room to prevent a dusting of fumes and to prevent highness from the same fumes).



After I had done the entire army I took it outside to see what it looked like in regular daylight.  I was horrified at what I saw.  Namely, the white bases the grass tufts are stuck to.

 This looked like crap!  It completely ruined the effect of a vaguely realistic bunch of grass. Every tuft in the army looked exactly the same…. I might have sworn… A… LOT!!!

 I then grabbed some of this and applied it around the tufts (over the white obvious bits).

 Which looked better BUT was still nowhere near perfect!

 The problem was that unlike the Army Painter product, which has clear backing, the GW rubbish has white backing strips!  WORST DESIGN FLAW EVER!!!

I used an old brush and some matte black paint to stipple some dark spots onto the centre light brown patches of the grass tuffs to dirty them up.  Is this the effect I originally wanted. No. Does it look fine now. Yes.  Am I happy about the experience…  NOT AT ALL…

I highly recommend that you avoid this product at all costs.

(If you can save any of your fellow gamers from similar mistakes, please share on the forum! - J)