Tufts For Basing

Tufts (if you don't know, are little sticky clusters of static grass) are absolutely great for basing your miniatures and for spicing up your wargame terrain.  I make extensive use of tufts in my basing - but today I'm hear to impart some knowledge around tufts as not all tufts are created equal.

I'll briefly cover three primary tuft providers below - The Army Painter, Silflor and Tagima1 Miniatures.  The first two you've likely heard of ... but that last one is likely new to you.  GW has tufts ... but I don't use them ... there is much better on the market.  My primary objective here is to spread the word about Tagima1 Miniatures tufts ... a new find for me and something I think every gamer should be made aware of ... they have an outstanding product.

Quick tuft ranking:

1. Tagima1 Miniatures (best)
2. Silflor (very good)
3. The Army Painter (not so good)

The Army Painter

Link: http://www.thearmypainter.com/

I've used The Army Painter tufts for some time now (but no longer --- more on that in a moment).  I used their Wilderness tufts on all my French and Indian War minatures, the Highland tufts on my Old West miniatures and the Swamp tufts on my WW2 Bolt Action miniatures.  As you can see below, for around $7-8 USD you get a strip of tufts.  One of the main reasons I used The Army Painter tufts over Silflor was because I really liked the color mixes offered - most of the Silflor tufts I had were essentially single color tufts.

Unfortunately, the quality of the tufts with The Army Painter is the worst I've seen.  The majority of packs I get I can only really use 1/3rd to a little over 1/2 of what is actually in the pack.  The reason is because usually around 1/2 of the tufts are too spares or flattened to look anywhere near good.  I've had enough as I've found a much better supplier that is both cheaper (or the same price) and provides 100% usable tufts.  So from this point on I'll not use any The Army Painter tufts ... my pain is over.

Here you can see your standard The Army Painter
tuftstrip --- sparse and inconsistent clusters that
are flattened and unusable.

Generally what you see in the front of the
pack for The Army Painter is the better
side of the tuft strip.

Tagima1 Miniatures

Link: http://www.tajima1.co.uk/index.asp?pageid=282517

My good friend Roy Scaife found Tagima1 Miniatures online and ordered some of their tufts to check them out.  Once they arrived he brought them over to my place and I was thoroughly impressed - to the point that we both submitted a rather large order straight away.  I've now had a chance to use both the desert tufts (yellow) and wild tufts for my Dead Man's Hand and SAGA Irish basing - they are just AWESOME tufts.  Every single tuft is usable and the adhesive is really good so that you don't have to glue anything down ... just pull them off the paper and stick them to the base.

In addition to great quality, the wide range of not only basic tufts in all the colors one would want but also landscaping tufts (pictured below) is just outstanding.  These guys are my tuft guys for the foreseeable future ... I'll be ordering more for sure.

I think these are the best quality and best priced tufts on the market that I've seen ... I can't recommend them enough --- and the customer service was outstanding as well.  Do yourself a favour and head on over to their website to see for yourself.  Check out the pictures below to see a couple of the sets I have from them.

Silflor

Link: http://www.sceneryexpress.com/SilflorMiniNatur/departments/1040/

You really can't go wrong with Silflor ... they have a large and outstanding range of tufts as well ... but my one knock against them is the color mix on their primary basing tufts are a little too plain for me.  They are high quality and have an extensive range the goes beyond just tufts (wheat fields for example).  I will likely continue to use them to supplement my other stuff.