Beard in cycles using hair planes?

I’ve made game models before so I tried to do what I’m used to and added hair planes. The planes have no geometry and I have just quickly stacked some on top of another to see what it looks like in the renderer. Is it possible to achieve a good result from doing this if I’ve got a good shader/material for the hair or do I have to mess around with the particle system? This is not something I’m familiar with, thanks a lot. (Note I want it to be really thick and fluffy looking)

Ok tried with the particles, but it seems kind of stiff, i have increased the steps in the particle settings but still it’s quite stiff looking, anyone know why that might be? Also the hairs don’t want to stick to his chin, but rather likes to float in the air after I added the curl kink…-_-