The latest Kings of War: Champions release is Z'akke - for Salamanders. With the release of 4th edition, Salamanders have become the first all 3d printed army for Kings of War - so this Champions company is as well.
Maybe it is a mandela effect, but I thought I saw where you could buy this on the Mantic vault directly as a package (or it was there briefly and then removed). However you can buy the models for the separately in the new Mantic Vault store. Additionally if you are a vault subscriber for January 2026 then you got the fire tokens and Haelthorn Salamanders. Z'Akke, the Ghekkotah and Kaisenor Lancers were part of the Salamander all-in army deal.
I was going to talk some more about 3D printing - but then realized that was taking over the blog - so it will be it's own blog entry.
This will be, of course, about the models. 3D printed models don't have sprues (though they do have supports). As such, these don't have any part numbers. Usually each part is in an individual .STL file, but it is quite common (and more efficient) to print several parts / copies at a time - which then makes it a bit more difficult to then match the part to the name.
The simplest file is the fire tokens. These are actually stls of the inferno tokens from the Hellboy board game. The print-on-demand box on the Mantic web site comes with 3. I decided to make a full 6 (one per turn). It isn't likely that anyone would need all 6 - there is always the one time.
I figured that I didn't need this to be a piece of solid resin, so I hollowed out the model and then drilled a hole in the bottom so it could drain. Saves a few pennies on resin. I printed 6, but one of them failed. I will probably use the Hellboy ones anway. (I could have printed these in clear resin - but changing it (especially to clear) requires a very thorough cleaning of the vat and build plate because if any of the colored resin is still in any crack or crevice, it will make the clear resin cloudy.
Then comes Z'akke himself. Being a single model, it only has one of each part.
First is the custom base that all the Champions champions have. This doesn't have the Mantic stamp on the bottom (but I end up covering it up anyways).
Z'Akke's legs
Upper body / head
Left arm
Right arm
Assembly is easy and straight forward.
First I glued the legs to a
Shogun 40mm magnetic base
Then the body goes on top of the legs
Then the right arm
Then the left arm to finish it off
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| Love the detail on the baby phoenix |
And that is all it takes
So next are the Haelthorn Salamanders. It bothers me slilghtly that they introduced a brand unit that is ONLY in Champions instead of being available for full Kings of War.
There are four models, with 4 parts each, so I grouped them by part because by the time I printed and took them off the build plate, I didn't remember which model was which. Plus all the parts are completely interchangeable.
For the bodies, there were actually two printing errors - a very minor one on the tail of the left most body, and the left calf/foot of the far right. This happened again, though on that the tail is better and the knee has a foot attached. The third set just has a flat spot on the tail and the full leg.
I really didn't have a pattern for the first four - when I build the next ones I will try to make sure I have at least different arms on each body.
The troop base will have 8 on it - if I need to use the misprinted models then they could go in the back where they are less visible.
Next are the Ghekkotah Warriors
One of the interesting things about the Ghikkotah warriors is there are 2 fully built models and 4 models that are parts (body, 2 arms and head).
There are two models that, when I rant the auto supports, did NOT support their feet - instead keeping these on the build plate. My experience is that you rarely want to build directly on the plate, and never at the same time as you have supports - because the first layers used for the supports not blend into the part touching the build plate - this is what happened to the feet on the 2nd pre-built model. I'm still going to use him (in the back), but will need to put a rock or something where the one foot would be.
There are four bodies
There are 8 heads
Then there are 6 right hands (I didn't realize that the big blade was 2 handed until assembling them).
There are 6 close combat arms, a bow arm and 2 that are holding arrows (that I think misprinted). For Champions, this unit does not have any ranged attacks - so not using the bow or arrows.
I'm not sure if I like shields or 2nd hand weapons more. If I were making these for an army, I would probably have a regiment with shields and a second one with 2 hand weapons
Very simple smooth assembly - the 2 handed weapon is slightly tricky as it always is (especially with super glue).
The last unit is the Kaisenor Raptors. I tried to put them all on one build plate, but they were simply too big to all fit. So this time I actually split them up by model.
Raptor A
Raptor B - I had problems printing this one. The first time the body, head and raptor arms failed. The second time I got the body, but still didn't get the head or raptor arms. So I pulled just those parts and resliced them - and found that the head has two tiny pieces floating way above. I had deleted these weird supports that didn't go anywhere and it failed a second time. So I tried again, this time leaving those floating pieces (making sure they were on the build plate), and was finally successful.
Raptor C - no issues with this one - easy print and assembly
Raptor D - On this initial print the head failed. I reprinted it with the missing parts from B (see above) - but still had an issue with one of the raptor arms - so I printed out 2 of each of them. One of those failed, but because I had an extra I now had all the pieces.
It wasn't until I was assembling the model that I discovered I was missing a piece - I simply forgot to print it. The head for this model has a separate jaw.
I know I have mentioned this before, but Mantic is fully embracing multi-basing. If you look at the box picture there are only 4 models in this troop, and unless I put mine together weird, there is flat out no way you could fit five on the 125 x 50 base. I do love the dynamic poses - and that you can switch heads and arms as you like to give a variety of models. It also looks like the forearms on the raptors are also interchangeable - however I'm not sure if those are actually different (or if you can even tell if they aren't).
And so you have the full company. This is a slightly more advanced company than others, for both modelling and play. The fact that it is all resin (instead of resin for the champion and all else hard plastic sprues) means you need super glue for all the assembly.
Really nice models with great detail. (though I've seen on Facebook that one person felt the Ghekkotah Hunters had too much detail).
One thing that is new with this company is Mantic has made all the company cards available for FREE!
https://www.manticgames.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/Zakke-Company-Box-Unit-Cards.pdf. In addition, Ronnie has stated that Champions will be coming to the companion soon. I'm really curious how that will work (i.e. can you print the cards from the companion?). I'm not so sure how I feel about that (I am running a Champions tournament at Adepticon in March, and I'd love to be able to use it for scoring the tournament). I actually kind of like that Champions is a game without proxies - companies all come with their models. Once it goes on the companion - then people will start proxying units.
The addition of the fire tokens and the strategy behind them (the champion can give one out a turn, a unit can use spend them to increase the number of attacks they have OR to heal), the jungle fighter rule where units touching terrain are elite in combat (but only one unit has pathfinder to not be hindered by charging through terrain), and the nerve of the Haelthorn Salamanders going up as the game goes on.
The one drawback I have it not to the company itself, but that the Haelthorn Salamanders ARE NOT in the Kings of War Salamanders list. To me, one of the biggest selling points is Champions is a way to get started with Kings of War - and until this company ALL the models in Champions have been usable in Kings of War (there are a couple models that have to be part of a larger unit rather than single ones, but all of these except the Abyssal Nagarri can be used as heroes (ok, 4th edition now calls them champions instead of heroes, but that gets confusing with the company champion)).
This doesn't mean that the Salamanders won't get the Haelthorn Salamanaders later (though since they just got the redo in the Invasion book, I kind of doubt it).
Because it is all fun and games . . .
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