One of the products picked up by Mig Jimenez’ AMMO range has been
the terrain mats that give you a ready-made diorama ready to either use cut up
or as is in your own dio scene. We haven’t seen them reviewed properly so
Clayton thought he would show you his green stuff…
“Stony
Mountain Spring” Grass Mat
From AMMO
A.MIG-8358
Price: 14,25 €
Available thru AMMO’s
distributors Worldwide.
I have to admit, when I saw Ammo were venturing into the landscaping
market I was a little excited. Whilst grass mats, static grasses and general
landscaping bits and pieces have been available in around the hobby for years,
they have generally been the territory of the model train enthusiasts and have
been somewhat overlooked by the scale modeller.
Maybe we had trouble sourcing them or maybe we were just looking in the
wrong places? Perhaps not looking at
all? I don’t know…but the fact of the matter is there was a whole world of
handy, ready-made landscaping there for us to take advantage of and we didn’t
even know.
So as it would happen, AMMO have recently released their landscaping
range to add to their already vast array of product. Within the product is a
line of grass mats, laser cut leaves and plants, but for the moment I will just
focus on their grass mats.
In reality the product isn’t really all that new at all. It is actually
an old Model Scene product rebranded with the AMMO label. There is no secret
about it as it pretty much states it on the label. This however is more than a
rebrand hitting the shelf, it is actually a very clever relationship for both
parties. The relationship now gives Model Scene (who’s market was traditionally
model railway enthusiasts), access to a marketing machine with a huge
distribution channel, as well as a leg up into a market that had otherwise
eluded them. For Ammo, it gives them a ready-made line of quality product that
fits beautifully with their core product range and caters to their target
market.
Although I have only seen the one mat in the flesh, there are 9 mats in
the range –
A.MIG-8358 STONY MOUNTAIN - SPRING
A.MIG-8357 AUTUMN TURFS
A.MIG-8356 TURFS - SMALL MIXTURE
A.MIG-8355 TURFS MIDDLE GREEN
A.MIG-8354 TURFS LIGHT GREEN
A.MIG-8353 SPRING STEPPE
A.MIG-8352 PINEWOOD FOREST BASE
A.MIG-8351 STONY MOUNTAIN GROUND
A.MIG-8350 STONY STEPPE
Today I am looking at the ‘Stony Mountain – Spring’ mat.
The mat comes packaged in a vac formed plastic packing
stapled to a cardboard backing sheet. The transparent face means you get a good
look at the product and finish if you happened to be buying this in an actual
shop. Fantastic as there can be no surprises after you open the packet.
The mat measured
130mm x 230mm.
The mat itself is constructed on a reasonably flexible felt
feel product. This will allow the mat to be contoured over dips and bumps in
the landscape.
The mat has a mix of a basic ground cover, grass clumps,
various size stones and basic ground cover foliage.
The stones on the mat are actual stones, hence they look
very convincing. The groupings and variation in the sizes all help sell the
illusion of actual ground cover.
The shrubs scattered through the mat help break up the grass
patches and look very good both at a distance as well as up close.
In terms of scale, this mat would be somewhat limited to
1/35 scale subjects, although you might just get away with 1/48. The thing that defines the scale really is
just the stones on this mat, so possibly some of the other mat offerings way be
better suited to smaller scales.
The actual foliage is quite springy, so when using the mat
in its final place, I would imagine you would need to glue your model down
ensuring the grass and foliage looked like it had some weight to it. Otherwise
it will look like the model is floating on top of the grass. That said, I have just placed a model I had
and took some pictures and it looks quite good to my eye.
CONCLUSION
This is a marriage made in heaven, where you and I, the
humble scale modellers, are the winners. Ammos’ core philosophy seems to be to
help people build and display better models and make the art or scale modelling
accessible to all people. This quality
range of grass mats really makes it very easy for every modeller put the icing
on the cake.
I am sure there will be some suggesting that you could
achieve the same landscaping result using traditional landscaping materials and
that is true, but AMMO have again simplified the mystique around the hobby and
provided an out of the box solution.
If I had one criticism it would be that the size is a little
smaller than I would have liked. That
said, the size and proportion of the mat is such that it will house most 1/35
scale subjects comfortably. It’s just the guys wanting to produce a large area
in a diorama that may need to start saving their pennies as matting out a large
area would start to get quite costly.
So all in all, I am a fan. I love the look and the
simplicity of these mats and would highly recommend them for anyone wanting to
enhance their models and display them on a landscaped base.
Clayton Ockerby
www.theworkbench.com.au
or his Facebook page…
Thanks to the guys at AMMO
for supplying these mats for us to use – Clayton will surely be trying them out
more in his upcoming builds
