Konflikt '47 - USA 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 USA force, a project that I’ve expanded from the Starter Set models into a 1500pt army. With both this USA company and the Axis force, I decided to focus on specific Konflikt ’47 units rather than bring across my Bolt Action units.

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 has 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 late war US uniforms, which is something I’ve not painted before. So I purchased a MiG Ammo US army uniform paint set and got stuck in.

The USA are an organisation that has moved beyond the real-world forces into a Christian Nationalist crusading army, but I didn’t want to bring any overtly religious iconography into the paint scheme. So, I stuck to a realistic olive drab tone across the board. The box art paint schemes include bright ‘red, white, and blue’ patriotic pauldrons, which is something I intended to avoid. However, painting these dark green initially, I changed my mind and went for a slightly more muted but none-the-less ‘star spangled’ approach. I think it was the right decision.

I’ve tried to keep each unit visually cohesive on the table, with olive green predominating. The USA use Rift-tech Tesla weapons, and these appear to be glowing blue. I stuck with painting them in that colour as it contrasts well with the green, and is visually distinct from the green glowing Axis weapons of my other force.

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

• Platoon Commander (Firefly)
• 2x Firefly Airbourne Squads (6) with super-SMGs
• 1x Rifle Squad (6) with ATRDs (anti-tank rockets)

Heavy Support Platoon

• Platoon Commander
• 3x HMG Teams

Armoured Walker Platoon

• Grizzly Medium Walker
• Linebacker Jump Walker

Armoured Platoon

• M4A9-T Sherman with Tesla cannon

Here’s the group shot with the whole company assembled so far.

Here is the boss. I’ve yet to name him but he is a Firefly character with a Tesla jetpack and super-SMG. I gave him ‘Guts’ as a skill which seems appropriate for a leader of a US force.

The Fireflies are highly mobile, hard-hitting but fragile core troops for the USA, very much in the mould of the Rocketeer pulp sci-fi character. As you can see here, up close my painting is crude as I go for speed over perfection. I call my painting technique ‘slapdash’. But at arm’s length on the tabletop is does the job.

Rounding out the assault platoon is a small unit of basic infantry. I figure the mobile US forces still need some grunts to hold objectives. I kept these basic but did add some anti-tank rockets in for a bit of extra punch.

For heavy support I went fully into a heavy machinegun deployment as it seems to synch up with the US ‘Arsenal of Freedom’ special army rule that favours rapid fire weapons.

Next is the armoured walker platoon, led by this Grizzly medium walker. This was a Warlord resin kit and was a real pig to assemble. Firstly, Warlord uses highly aggressive mould release for their resin kits, and you must REALLY scrub them clean to get paint to adhere. Even so I missed a few spots! Also, there was a lot of flashing to clean off, and the upper deck part was severely warped. Even with hot water and bending I couldn’t get it to fit and ended up having to chop it into four pieces to get it to fit on piecemeal. These walkers are tall, and so to get them to fit into my storage boxes I left the tope halves separate, using powerful magnets to connect them. It has the bonus that the top halves swivel!

Next it the Linebacker light walker that comes in the Starter Set. This was a very good quality plastic kit so much easier to assemble. Oddly the pilot modelled into the cockpit is super small. While these models are 28mm scale, that pilot was barely scaled for 15mm! I used a 28mm head to upscale it a bit though, which took some trimming and finagling to get it to fit once I’d put the clear plastic back into the canopy. I painted the cockpit full red to represent a red-light soaked fighting compartment which covers any embarrassment.

  

 

Finally the armoured platoon rounds things out with a Sherman Tesla tank. Again, a nice easy plastic kit to assemble, but the Tesla turret is resin, so needed heaps of soap to clean it off again.  Also, the power rig on the back of the turret is metal, making the turret heavily unbalanced to the rear. I’ve kept it unattached so that I can swap out for another turret if desired.

Overall, a fun force to assemble and paint. I’m looking forwards to throwing them at the Axis on the table.