OOAK Table Tennis Forum

I played the rubber on a Stiga Tube Defensive and a Re-Impact W990 (Explosion). The Stiga is a rather classic Def+ blade, the W990 is a new allround blade with a thin balsa core, medium soft outer ply on the forehand, harder outer ply on the backhand.
The Guard should have the same top-sheet as the Guard special, but it seemed less tacky to me. With the 0.8 mm sponge it is also about twice as heavy as the 1.8 mm Guard Special. The top-sheet is very inelastic which, on bal contact, results in the same shallow dents as happens with the Special. The dents are even more shallow with the Guard, almost invisible, but they are obviously there to stay. The top-sheet's pimples seem to pull at the firm orange sponge, which shows tiny hollow spots at the outside where it is glued to the pimples. The rubber comes with a glue-sheet which works well, but even pressing the rubber firm and flat onto the blade its surface is slightly uneven.
The Guard is much slower than the Special, although the difference in thickness of the sponge is a factor here. It has very little grip on the ball, even the sponge doesn't do much in this respect. It doesn't take on much spin and doesn't add much either. It does, however, bottom out pretty soon on harder impact.
Blocking it is a pretty solid anti, except for its bottoming out, but it is slightly higher throw than the Special. Chopping it doesn't do much, except bringing the ball back. Attacking it is fast and straight because it bottoms out.
There was little difference between the blades using the Guard, which seems to indicate that it does have its own character and clings to it.
I would certainly not recommend it as a chopping rubber, but for players who do not use their backhands much and when they do tend to be passive or hit flat, this anti would work, and probably on most blades too. If I had to give it a place in the ranks, I would situate it between typical chinese half-anti's such as Friendship 804 or Meteor 835 and all other antis. It is not a half-anti, maybe a quarter-anti. I do like its versatile and lower throw Special brother much better, which I tend to see as a cheap alternative to Hallmark Mirage.
Still, those dimples are a pain...

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Without opponent, no match.

Thank you very much Kees, this anti has always interested me - usually all I see is Joola and Butterfly anti rubbers, so it's nice to see a GD one with great test feedback!

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Tibhar CO-S-3
Yinhe Mars v2 2.0mm
Yinhe 955 0.8mm

I could not quite make up my mind with this anti either... I really liked some aspects of, and could not adapt to some of the other aspects. In the end I gave it up, as the change required to make this work for my game were too major, but I felt that if I persisted and made the changes to my game, I'm convinced I could make it work...

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This anti is too thin-sponged to be of real & lasting use close to the table blocking. It may do that, to all appearances, well, but that is because most balls bottom out and so are sent back in a straight line, while the sponge takes off a good part of the speed, so a lot of balls will land on the table more or less by accident. Really it is a chopper's rubber, to be used for tangential contact, like most LPs. Used this way, it can vary spin very disruptively. Its "Special" brother is much better at blocking, as its sponge is thicker and, at low and medium impact, slower (in my opinion).
Years ago Double Fish (also Prasidha) sold an anti 820B which may have been a bit like this anti... I guess that's where GD got the idea, and then they modernized it lending from Neubauer/Hallmark a bit.

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Without opponent, no match.