If you love the spectacle or strategy of maneuvering infantry blocks around a contested battlefield, but can’t cram lengthy games of Warhammer The Old World into the schedule, Mantic Games might have just the thing for you. Kings of War Champions is a new, slimmed down game set in their original fantasy world Pannithor, that the firm claims can be played in under an hour.
You may already be familiar with Kings of War, Mantic’s mass battle game, which held the standard for rank and flank fantasy games in the years after Games Workshop canned Warhammer Fantasy Battles but before it launched Warhammer: The Old World. Kings of War Champions uses the same miniatures, but with much smaller forces, for a game that fits into a much smaller playing area.
The game has borrowed a lot of ideas from Age of Sigmar’s popular Spearhead format, it seems, and not just in the stripped down play area and play time. There’s no army building here: each Company box comes with a unique champion, their bodyguard units, and reference cards with their rules.
According to the announcement video, “each champion brings their own unique list of commands that you will secretly allocate to your units at the start of each round”.
A whole range of Champions products is already on sale from Mantic’s webstore. Company boxes are on sale for $55 (£40) each, while the two player starter set – consisting of two companies, the core rules, and tokens – costs $125 (£87.50).
The champions are new models and are being produced in “master cast resin”. Mantic states in a press release that this is “easy to build, has lots of detail for painters, and is durable enough for worry-free gaming”.
We’ll go out on a limb and guess that this is most likely Siocast – it certainly matches the description. The technology is used in miniature ranges like Corvus Belli’s ‘Infinity’, Reaper’s ‘USA’ line, and Creature Caster miniatures, and it does what it advertises.
We had a great back stage tour at Mantic’s facility in Nottingham UK in early 2024, learning how they go about creating their growing range of miniatures. The firm’s model range began life as a budget alternative for building Warhammer factions, but it has flourished in the years since – you can read about in this article.
Source: Wargamer
