About Sprue & Brush
What to buy first for your first army or first Gunpla kit.
Why this site exists
The advice available to someone starting this hobby tends to be one of two things: a wall of jargon written for people who already know the answer, or a list of product links with no reasoning attached. Neither helps you decide whether you need a wet palette before you need a better brush.
Sprue & Brush is built around the opposite approach. Every page answers a question a beginner actually asked, names the drawback as well as the upside, and says plainly when the cheaper option is the better one — including when that means we earn less.
Right now that is 77 pages across 7 categories, covering 67 products in 29 ranked roundups plus the comparisons and guides around them. The complete list is on the sitemap page.
Who writes it
Brijon M. is the hands-on owner behind MadGrey LLC. He builds and paints miniatures and model kits, and he started Sprue & Brush because the advice he found when he was starting out was either a wall of jargon or a list of links with no reasoning attached. Every page here is written to answer the question a beginner actually asked, name the drawback as well as the upside, and say plainly when the cheaper option is the better one.
Every article, review and guide on this site is written under that byline. There is one author, not an anonymous content team, and the editorial policy sets out what that author will and will not claim.
How recommendations are made
This matters more than it usually gets credit for, so here it is without hedging:
- We do not run a test lab. No page here says we tested a product, because we did not. Recommendations come from the manufacturers’ published specifications, how a product is designed to be used, and the stated reasoning on each page — reasoning you can read and disagree with.
- Every roundup publishes its criteria. Each one opens with a “how we picked” section listing what was weighed and why, so a pick you disagree with is a disagreement about criteria rather than a mystery.
- Every pick lists its drawbacks. A roundup whose top choice has no downsides is a roundup nobody checked.
- Commission does not set the order. Where the cheaper product is the better buy, that is the pick. The review policy explains the mechanism.
Why you rarely see a price on this site
Because a stale price is a lie with a number attached. Prices here render only from a live data layer with a freshness gate — if the data is older than 48 hours, every number disappears by itself and the button falls back to “Check price on Amazon” instead of showing you something out of date.
That is deliberately a design where the failure mode is silence rather than a wrong figure. It also means that on a new site like this one you will mostly see “Check price” buttons, which is the honest state of affairs rather than an oversight.
How it is funded
Affiliate commission. As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases made through links on this site, at no extra cost to you. Nothing on the site is sponsored, no manufacturer has paid for placement, and no product has been supplied to us in exchange for coverage. The full statement is on the affiliate disclosure page.
Publisher
Sprue & Brush is published by MadGrey LLC, whose other work is at madgreyllc.com.
Corrections and disagreements
If something here is wrong, say so. Factual corrections are the most useful mail we get and they get made — contact@sprueandbrush.com, or use the contact form.