Today is a special day. The Army Painter – a worldwide supplier of hobby products, such as paints, colour primers, glues, brushes, tufts and more, is now twelve years old! It’s hard to believe that the company which entered the market in 2007th introducing a medium sized offer of hobby products grew to be a giant we know today. I remember when Army Painter appeared for the first time in a hobby store I ran. Easy to say I fell in love with some of their products and stuck with AP to this day.
So, let’s celebrate Army Painter’s 12th birthday with a review of my favorite AP product of all time – the Army Painter Super Glue!
The Army Painter Super Glue comes at a suggested price of 4,99€. Compared to a small tube of glue this might come across as expensive, but taking into account how much stuff you’ll be able to glue with a single bottle of AP’s glue and the fact it will stay functional long after first use – it’s totally worth it! Not to mention Games Workshop glue, which comes in four 5ml tubes, that once opened don’t stand a chance against Army Painter’s king of a glue!
I simply love this glue. I use it for twelve years now and used up more than a hundred bottles. I prefer it over any other Cyanoacrylate glue and I totally recommend you to try it out. I just can’t imagine hobbying without it. For me it’s essential.
Best to ask in your local hobby store, but if you want to support the great company Army Painter had become – head to Army Painter Website and order from them directly.
The Army Painter – a worldwide supplier of hobby products, such as paints, colour primers, glues, brushes, tufts and well… fck’n barbaric ‘Quickshades’. The company entered the market in 2007th introducing a medium sized offer of hobby products meant, as the name suggests, to paint entire armies. My personal adventure with Army Painter started pretty early, as I was a hobby store manager back in the days they’ve appeared. Easy to say that throughout ten years I had a pleasure of getting to know their entire range to a point, where Army Painter’s products had no secrets from me. Since 2007 the Army Painter’s offer had grewn potentially expandindg their paints range more than thrice and introducing some revamped products as well. This brings even more opportunities to get to know some new cool stuff.
When it comes to my opinion about entire AP’s range – I have mixed feelings. AP do have some fantastic products like:
Still, they also produce stuff like:
Atop of all the above they also produce Hobby Tools, different glues, paints, Licensed Warpaints and Battlefields XP Tufts – and today I would like to take a closer look at the latter.
For me the most important trait of a product is the quality. There’s plenty of products priced closely in the market, but among them there are some which exceed in quality. That’s where I aim, when deciding if I should purchase a range of particular products or not. In case of Army Painter’s Battlefield XP Tufts I used them for a very long time due to easy access and limited competition. Back in the days I wasn’t entirely happy with the AP’s tufts, as their quality varried between good and very bad. Old tufts were applied randomly, rendering a significant part of the product useless, be it due to not enought material being used or some tufts being applied to the fold in the foil, they came attached to. New tufts in the contruary, are applied selectively, numbering the exact 77 ideal pieces in a straight raws and varrying in shapes and sizes. This makes the new tufts superior to their previous incarnation and most of the current competition in the market. One might say that they are as close to being perfect as possible.
They come in a variety of colours and designs. I really dig the entire range. One thing that set’s me on edge and lowers my rating from ‘awesome’ to ‘very good’ is the number of differently coloured blades mixed with the main colour. Oh’ Army Painter – why, for the love of God, you do things like this? These black hair are more horrific than your graphic layout and it is ‘a thing’…
Jokes (or not) aside, I miss the old Swamp Tuft’s strong green colour, not to mention old Winter Tuft. I do hope that with all the new designs and revamps you will bring more tufts to the fold and fill the void in my heart. Either way – be it mixed or solo, all the new Tufts look very good.
I have the exact zero issues with new Army Painter Battlefield XP Tufts. They come in perfect shapes, hair held firmly in the adhesive base. All hair are pointed upwards and on the sides. Colours are mixed well and in some cases different colours are also of a different length. Being arranged in straight raws makes these tufts easy to grab, while adhesive base has enough glue to keep them in place once used.
I have a little fetish of mine, tending to apply tufts over Super Glue and AP’s tufts behave very good when done so.
Army Painter’s Battlefield XP Tufts are very well priced. They are priced close to previously reviewed Paint Forge products, offering 77 pieces in a variety of sizes, including big ones. Would be awesome if they were cheaper, but that would be just too good, to say the least.
Army Painter’s Battlefields XP Tufts look cool, are very user friendly, easy to apply, of solid quality and come in a variety of colors – and the price is exactly what I would expect of these. Solid stuff.
All in all I’m happy to finally be reviewing the Army Painter, with which I spent like ten years of solid painting by now. In my opinion some of their products are totally undervalued by hobbyists around the globe. I plan to bring more AP’s products on to the review table in the future. Mostly, the ones I like to use and have plenty of, like Washes or the best of the best Miniature & Model Super Glue.
Where to purchase? If you are lucky, then your local hobby store has some, but if not – go straight to the source at Army Painters Online store. If you happen to be managing a hobby store in Poland, then I strongly recommend you to contact THESE GUYS, they are very friendly distributors based here in Rzeczpospolita Polska.