Konflikt '47 - Axis Showcase

There’s something wonderfully chaotic about the world of Konflikt '47.

It takes the familiar battlefields of World War II and twists them into a diesel-soaked nightmare of giant walkers, experimental weapons, and supernatural horrors.

For me, that blend of history and pulp sci-fi is exactly what makes the game so much fun to collect and paint.

I recently purchased the Konflikt '47 Starter Set that includes the core of an Axis force and a USA force. While I have a German army for Bolt Action, in WWII games I’ve never much been interested in the USA, so it’s an interesting option for me to consider.

In this post, I wanted to showcase my starting Axis force, a project that I’ve expanded from the Starter Set models into a 1500pt army. With both this Axis company and the USA force, I decided to focus on specific Konflikt ’47 units rather than bring across my Bolt Action units, although I did fall back on some heavy weapon support teams from that sister game.

It took me a while to start on the Konflikt ’47 figures as I needed to absorb some of the lore of the setting to decide on a paint scheme. Folk online have a wide variety of takes and interpretations for their colour schemes, and this being a ‘Weird World War II’ setting you are mostly unconstrained by realism. The temptation is of course to stick closely to the camouflage patterns of the late war Germans, but I don’t like that pattern and find it a struggle to paint it well. As the Axis are an organisation that has moved beyond the real-world German Third Reich forces and represent a mix of national troops, all under the command of the mysterious ‘Green Vault’, I decided to lean into the obvious ‘bad guy’ colours of grey, black and, as a restrained accent, red. I also decided that they ‘rift-inspired’ commanders would have muted green in their schemes too. So for this force I went with grey vehicles, ‘feldgrau’ (field grey) power armour, and similar feldgrau colours for any infantry. For the Axis glowing sci-fi technology, I fixed on a bright green and it contracts well with the grey and runs with the Green Vault idea.  

I’ve tried to keep each unit visually cohesive on the table, reinforcing the idea of an organised, monolithic army.

Whether you’re already deep into Konflikt ’47 or just curious about the game, I hope these miniatures provide a little inspiration for your own hobby projects.

Firstly, the group shot, all 1500pts assembled. I’ve yet to play so I’ve no idea if this is a good force in terms of winning games, but I tried to assemble a variety of weirdness to try out!

It consists of three platoons.

Assault Platoon

• Stahltruppen platoon commander (rift master)
• 2x Stahltruppen (3) with assault rifles and panzerfausts
• 1x Stahltruppen (1) with 2 LMGs
• 1x Nachtjaeger (4), hideous mutations of man and beast

Heavy Support Platoon

• Platoon commander
• MMG team
• Medium mortar team

Armoured Platoon

• Panther X with Schienenkanone (platoon command vehicle)
• Puma X with Schwerefeld projector
• Vogelspinne (recce walker) with AT gun and autocannon

 

First up, His Nibbs, the overall commander. I’ve yet to name him, but he’s a master of the Rift. Wearing Stahltruppen power armour he’s effectively a walking light tank, immune to most normal small arms fire. I’ve gone with one red pauldron to denote a command figure. He wears a green coat over his armour to denote his membership of the Green Vault.

The Stahltruppen power armour infantry are similarly impressive, able to walk though rifle fire with impunity. This unit are the support team with LMGs, and sport black pauldrons to show their heavy weapon status. Although I modelled these with panzerfausts, I didn’t include the upgrade with this unit.

The Nachtjaeger are hideous mutants, whose DNA have been fused with bats and worse. These are made from some old metal ‘demon’ models I found in one of my ‘bits’ boxes. No idea where they come from, but they seemed appropriate for the unit. They needed some wings though, so I made some leathery skin flaps from sprue goo. It seems to have worked out OK. I have a feeling a unit of four won’t be too useful but it’ll do for a start.

The heavy weapons platoon has been drafted in from my Bolt Action early war German force. I may upgrade them to proper Konflikt ’47 models later but they’ll do for now. 

Finally, the armoured platoon. My Bolt Action armies tend to be light on armour as I prefer early war and infantry heavy forces in WWII gaming. But I figured I’d lean into the late war tank jamboree with some of the interesting sci-fi vehicle variations. 

It Panther-X has a Rift-tech energy based Schienenkanone, which I think has the capability of punching through its target to his others behind. It was a lot of fun to paint, and although I wanted to use transfers to mark it up the Zimmerit surface left few locations to apply the decals!

 

Puma X with Schwerefeld projector was similarly quick, easy and fun to build and paint. I did some crude ‘lightning’ effects on the projector ball. They’re a bit rough up close but look fine on the table.

 

Lastly, the Vogelspinne reconnaissance walker, which was actually the first vehicle I painted, as its in the Starter Set. It was tricky to build and the legs seemed a bit fragile so I based it up to give it a bit of stability.

Overall, its been a fun project to start. I’m hoping to get it to the games table in the next week or two. We’ve played a fair bit of Bolt Action so we’re familiar with how that works. It’ll be interesting to see you the pulp sci-fi rules for Rift technology work to change the game.