We attended: Monte San Savino 2025

Our Ivan brings you a report from the best miniature painting competition in the world.

In a small town in Italy, one of the largest and most prestigious miniature exhibitions in the world has been held every year since 2006, bringing together miniaturists from all over the world. The Knezović clan decided that it was a shame that Croatians did not come to the Monte San Savino Show, so after a great time at Kontrast, a miniature exhibition in Warsaw, we decided to visit Italy as well.

The exhibition is held in Tuscany, and all the content related to it is located within the walls of the castle around which most of the town is located. The exhibition is set in an exceptionally beautiful setting of a medieval castle, with which no other similar miniature event can be compared. The town itself allows visitors to easily get to know each other, as most of them gravitate to the square in the center of the castle.

We set off on Friday, November 14, 2025,...

Science behind Acrylic Paints

In this article, our Dunja takes us behind the science of acrylic paints!

Acrylic paints – high pigment content and good coverage. If they are well formulated, they stay where you apply them, don't leave "brush marks" and dry slowly enough to do what you want on the miniature, yet still fast enough.

Composition:

• Binders (eng. resin) – form a film – in our case probably pure acrylates, I suspect they are styrene acrylates.
• Fillers – in addition to adding volume to the paint, they also affect the viscosity, coverage and appearance of the dry film
• Pigments – the main division is into organic pigments and inorganic pigments. Inorganic ones are more covering but have less vivid shades, while organic ones are often quite poorly covering (yellow for example) but their shades are vivid and bright

Additives:

• Anti-foam
• Rheological modifiers – affect the behavior of wet paint on the substrate (e.g. spillage) and the behavior of the paint ...

We attended: ModelMania 2025

Necropolis Board part 1

In October we started with our first board for Necropolis, and with an appropriate theme! – the Eternal Autumn configuration from the Necropolis rulebook. The configuration is such that it only requires 3 trees, which we considered too boring, so instead of one tree, we plan to build a cubic lime kiln and 2 streams.

The board is inspired by Hawthorne's story Ethan Brand, where several characters talk about the unforgivable sin (next to a lime kiln in the middle of an American pastoral idyll). Aesthetically, we're aiming for early fall with rural motifs, along with gnarled trees (ala Burton's Sleepy Hollow) and a few pumpkins.

For now, we are very far from any aesthetic choices because we have dealt with the basic structure of the board: the housing is made of pine glued boards for the floor and pine profiles for the sides. After we glued everything with Drvofix, the entire housing was finely sanded. The size of the Styrodur board that fits into the ho...

WE ATTENDED: AmuletD20 Grand Tournament 2025

In early October I had the opportunity to visit my neighbors from the Amuletd20 association. This time it wasn't an artsy Turnip28 event, but a huge tournament in AOS and Conquest games.

Besides the main event, there were tables playing Kings of War, as well as Warhammer: The Old World, where I came with my Chaos Dwarfs.

Unfortunately, I think TOW was the least represented with four players, but this little community was wonderful! Players helped each other with the rules and the games were very friendly. In addition to my choirs, there was also an army of High Elves at the event, as well as two armies of Brettons.

I spent my event fighting the noble knights of Brettonia, and I believe that my dwarves were helped by the atypical mobility obtained from the monsters (Wyverna, Lammasu and Bale Taurus) accompanied by the antithesis of HŽ (Iron Daemon) and a spell that increased the infantry's mobility.

The Kings of War tables ...

Back to Basics Workshops in Medveščak Library

During October and November, we held our Back to Basics miniature painting workshops for the youngest at the Zagreb City Libraries.

The first set of three workshops was held in the Youth Department of the Medveščak Library on October 2, 9 and 11, 2025.

During the workshops, our youngest participants painted chibi figures from the UMS Agram line and made a castle from upcycled materials.

More photos can be found on our social media.