I finally gave in and conceded that my basing had to change…green flock simply isn't enough these days to 'frame' beautifully painted miniatures as anyone casting an eye over Paul Provan's 'Napoleonics in Miniature', 'Heresy Brush' or JJ Wargames will have noted. My own troops – and those painted for me by the incredibly talented Chris Meacham (chrismeacham@hotmail.co.uk) and Barry Evans (http://www.flamesofwarpainting.co.uk/index.html) – deserve better…
I'm painting 15mm Napoleonic and WW2 armies so am influenced by the guys above, but these lessons apply across the hobby. I'm aiming for Northern Europe, June – September grass… However, no one seems to have compared one vs another, both applicators and grasses. Here's a start and these are just my opinions…hopefully you'll be able to see the photo folder below. If not let me know and I'll see if I can fix it.
In summary:
1/ Large applicators: impressive but really for large area coverage e.g. railway layout, fields etc not troop bases;
2/ 'Sieve style' electric static applicators – good for smaller areas, limited by the need to attach the crocodile clip or similar to each individual base; effective.
3/ Noch or similar 'puff' bottles; cheap and pretty effective (can use old fairy liquid bottles etc).
Grasses:
Huge number of suppliers with varying colours and lengths of grass at different prices. I tested Noch, Javis, Expo, World Wargame Scenics and Realistic Modelling Scenery. They come in various size bags which can make comparison difficult, brief summary below:
1/ Expo: Big bag of generic green grass, good value, appeared to be identical to Javis Summer; bag not resealable so you'll need somewhere to stash this safely e.g. resealable plastic cartoon; grass is 1-2mm long;
2/ Javis: smaller bags, although similar value; 1-2mm long, non-resealable bag;
3/ Noch: For me, these gave the best colours (Summer Meadow & Meadow), 1-2mm long. Similar value to the others although a resealable bag! Sensible.
4/ WWS: I was most excited about these arriving as the owner has done some superb 'How To' videos online and they are excellent and the product looked fantastic, with varying lengths available; I was a touch disappointed – I ordered 4 tubs of 2mm & 4mm Summer and Autumn grass – when they arrived I couldn't tell the difference; they all seemed to be the same blend give or take a bit and weren't labelled which would have been handy. Once I managed to separate one or two, the summer was a slightly toy-town green, but the autumn seemed good. 4mm is probably a bit too long for 15mm but a little here and there would work well.
RMS: Good range of colours; the mid-green is very dark, but short (1-2mm) while the hillside green only appears to come in 4-5mm but is a good colour for late summer.
I wanted to try Antenociti's Silflor-inspired grasses but they were out of stock at the time of ordering.
Glue-wise, I highly recommend RMS's earth coloured PVA.
link
I hope this helps people to some degree – my photography is undoubtedly NOT the best, but the images should help you with any colour matching – I think I've settled on Noch Summer Meadow or Meadow, but most would have been perfectly satisfactory. I think the WWS may be an order error as they don't look like they do online – will investigate further.