Community Paint Challenge: Rakwas The Pale Rider
5th May 2026
Cleric
Today we have a special blog for you. To mark the release of the spectacular new digital model for Rakwas (a unique Warlord choice in the Kings of War Salamanders army list) we scoured the community to find some of the best painters out there playing our games - and challenged them to paint him up! We have Best Painted winners from Halo Flashpoint tournaments, we have previous winners of Vault painting competitions, and even some stand-out painters from our new The Walking Dead MMF Tribe!
Since bringing our Vampire Lord, Melantha on Undead Dragon to the Vault, I have wanted to do another "dragon"-type model. When we decided to make the Salamanders our first Digital Army, Rakwas found his way to the top of our wishlist! I'm really happy that we've been able to bring him to life, and all of us at Mantic have been blown away by the amazing paint jobs from our community painters.
Now, without further ado, let's meet our painters, and see their versions of Rakwas!
Luke has won a few of our Halo Flashpoint Best Painted awards, as voted by the players at those events. When we asked him if he would paint Rakwas, it was a slightly bigger model than he had previous painted for any Mantic Games, having only played Halo Flashpoint so far!
Luke: Being asked to paint a mystery model for Mantic has been a cool experience. Large fantasy mounts have always been a favourite miniature type of mine.
A lot of the heavy lifting of this paint job was done via airbrushing in the reds and drybrushing the highlights and scale work. I spent more time on the details via brush work. I'd recommend watching the Artis Opus dry brushing tutorials as they really elevate that technique!
I got back into wargaming in my early twenties and primarily focused on larger wargames. These days skirmish games are the way forward for me - it's made my hobby more enjoyable as I'm no longer having to paint hundreds of miniatures! The release of the Feet First Into Hell expansion for Halo Flashpoint put Mantic on my radar, and it's been my main game ever since. I do play other games but think Mantic have some of the best rulesets out there.
Mich Cie
Mich is a (multiple?!) time winner of our Vault Painting competitions, and felt like a natural choice to paint Rakwas! His Salamander paint jobs are always inspiring and he did himself proud with his version of Rakwas. Pop back later this week for a more detailed blog from Mich going into how he painted it, and also showing off his amazing Salamanders Champions Company!
Mich: My name is Michał (known as Mich Cie on Facebook) and I first encountered wargaming over 30 years ago. Since then, miniatures and wargaming rulesets have fuelled my imagination. I paint, build models, and play games. For the last decade, I've mainly been playing Mantic games. Recently, I've decided to offer my services as a painter as well. I run the Family of Painters website, where my son and I share our current work and projects, and I'm also on Instagram (michal.ciemniewski).
Drek
Derek, or Drek as he’s commonly known, lives in Upper Sandusky, Ohio. He’s been an avid Firefight player for the last few years and is a hardcore Peacekeeper player - sorry, I mean Enforcer player! (Come on, we all know Peacekeepers are the coolest unit!) Anyway, Drek’s been painting models off and on for some 30 years (he’s old). His current obsession is Epic Warpath, for which he recently ran the Adepticon Tournament and Big Game. He has created a considerable amount of Epic Warpath content on his YouTube Channel (Gamerdrek) as well as co-hosting the Pinned and Broken Podcast.
Brushrot Minis
Robin, known as 'Brushrot' online, came from our Walking Dead Tribe - where some fantastic painted models were showcased during the first month of the launch. We couldn't resist asking Robin to paint up a Rakwas, and the result blew us away! Again, this is a painter who had not encountered Kings of War before, and was therefore coming at the project from a fresh perspective. They're now looking at collecting more models for a possible Salamander army!
Robin: When I got asked to paint Rakwas I was initially a bit scared by it’s size - I don’t usually paint large models like this. I decided to tackle the big lizard first and wanted to make it the focal point so I went for a classic red dragon-like scheme.
I chose to paint the harder scales and the armour in a darker tone, to contrast with the red skin. Rakwas is an important hero so he needed to pop out as well, so I opted for a classic green skin to contrast the big red lizard he is riding on. In the end I chose a scheme that stands out on the table and grabs the viewer's attention - exactly what a hero like this deserves! This was a fun painting experience and once I got going, progress came fast. I still haven’t put it in my display cabinet, because I like having it on my painting desk and looking at it!
If you have been inspired by these incredible paint jobs, Rakwas is now available to buy as an STL on the Mantic Digital store here. We'd love to see more painted versions, so be sure to share them with us!
These amazing versions certainly inspired me, and I took the plunge and started working on my own Rakwas. In typical fashion though, I got distracted by other big, shiny things and so have not yet finished. I will share pictures of mine once it's done!
Finally, remember to check back in later this week, when we'll have a second blog, in which Mich goes into more detail on his Rakwas painting process.
