For those not in the know, Silfor Grass Tufts (made by a company called Mininatur) are little tufts of, for want of a better description, static grass that, with a little pva glue can be applied on to the base of your meticulously painted mini.
Ok, doesn't look like much in the pic but on that sheet of film are stuck hundreds of little tufts - these are 2mm "spring" tufts, normal pack. You pick them off with a pair of tweezers or peel them off and then apply with a bit of pva glue to your base.
I was first introduced to the tuft by Dave T. He had brought into the club some of the Mexican figures that he had painted up for the KWC display table for 2009. His bases were made from cork tiles onto which he had applied some filler, textured and painted and these little green tufts. When questioned further about the tufts he produced the box with this film covered in the tufts and proceeded to demonstrate their application. Hmm, I thought, interesting but then he told me the price of them and I then I thought - nope, too expensive - not for me, nothing wrong with good old static grass. But Dave persisted with them and by the time he had finished the all of the figures for the display table in addition to being beautifully painted, the bases looked really effective.
So when we are at Claymore that year, one of the stalls was selling packs of the stuff, they come in different sizes and colours and in small and normal size packs, so I plumped for a small pack of the 2mm spring green tufts.
As I have said in an earlier post ("Brits Update"), I hate basing figures, but this stuff started to take some of the pain out of the process. No more slapping the pva glue onto the base trying to avoid getting it on your figure's feet and then dunking the base in the tub of static grass, trying to shake the excess off back into the tub, only to find small piles of the stuff covering your workbench, and then the figure moults grass thereafter until it becomes practically bare and you have to repeat the process all over again.
Now you just peel, dip and stick - sorted.
While everyone has their own preference and style for basing figures, gone are the days where you would simply cover your base in the static grass (or coloured sawdust as it was when I first started). A lot more "modelling" and texturing is done on bases now and I think the tufts really compliment these techniques.
My Gripping Beast Byzantine Skutatoi all tufted up.
Don't get me wrong, I still use the loose static grass - all my Blood Bowl figures have their bases covered in that, but then again that's because they like to play on grass pitches, not on artificial ones, but I am definitely sold on the tufts now, and they last for ages.
They can be had from various outlets - I see that Army Painter has started their own range of them too.
So Dear Reader, I would be interested to hear your own thoughts and experiences on using the tufts, good, bad, indifferent and whether there are any other basing materials that you use and which you think make all the difference to your models, so please feel free to leave your comments here and let the debate commence!
