You just can’t stop Isaac from our US Trade team from kitbashing everything in sight. Show him a plastic kit, and five seconds later he’s gone at it with a pair of clippers and emerged with something far beyond the designers’ wildest expectations. Honestly, trying to get him to build a kit the way our sculptors intended is a real challenge! Fortunately, he’s really good at what he does, and his latest Konflikt ’47 project is no exception.
Konflikt Fever has crossed the Atlantic, and Isaac is showing all the symptoms of having a serious case. He’s embarked on a frankly bonkers series of conversions and kitbashes, and today we’re showing off the first couple of a set of squad leaders for each faction. Sharpen your scalpels and break out the needle files – let’s get chopping!
IP – Konflikt ’47 is a convertor’s paradise, and Basic Infantry present almost limitless opportunities to bring Bolt Action models into 1947. I always like to make use of as many different kits as possible to really bring my units to life, and one of the best ways to do this is by really going to town on my NCOs. Making each squad leader a character in their own right makes my force feel that bit more special, and it doesn’t hurt that they’ve been doing well for me on the tabletop either!
Axis Volksgrenadier
We’ll kick off with my main army, and my favourite unit from that faction – Axis Volksgrenadiers.
This might seem an unusual choice of favourite, but if you want to find out why Basic Infantry are actually incredibly important in Konflikt ’47, read THIS – ed.
I started with a German Veteran Infantry body, and paired it with the rolled-sleeve arms from the Commonwealth Infantry and USMC sprues. This gave him a hard-bitten look right off the bat, and once it was topped with a spare Stahltruppen head (an essential feature of all my Volksgrenadiers), he looked properly Konflikt. This all fit together with little to no modification required – now he just needed a gun!
You can see that I’ve got three different German weapons on the workbench – an FG 42 from the Winter Fallschirmjäger, an MP 40 from the Blitzkrieg kit, and the ‘loose’ StG 44 from the Winter German Infantry. One of the really cool things about Konflikt ’47 is working out what kinds of weird and wonderful small arms might be in use – and then bringing them to life in miniature!
With a little bit of careful cutting and gluing, I’ve created my own custom ‘MP 47’ for him to wield – this could serve as an SMG or Assault Rifle in-game, depending on how I’m building the squad, and clearly marks him out as someone chosen to test an experimental new gun. This process is also nice and simple to replicate, letting me arm other members of his squad in the same way if I want to.
I married the MP 47 up with an open-handed USMC arm, and a Commonwealth arm holding a Thompson SMG foregrip, giving him quite a modern ‘operator’ pose which I think looks very cool. Some standard German belt gear and magazine pouches completed the look!
Soviet Bloc Infantry
I don’t have a Soviet Bloc force (yet!), so I built this NCO up as a gift for my buddy, whose been absolutely thrashing me on the tabletop lately. Hopefully, this will persuade him to go easy on me!
I started out with almost no modifications to the awesome new Soviet Infantry plastic kit, and built him up to this stage with a Nagant revolver and some basic belt kit and rucksack. I find starting from a historical base in this way ensures that, no matter how whacky the rest of the kitbash gets, the final model stays grounded in history. For me, that’s an essential part of what makes a model feel ‘Konflikt’.
For his weapon, I decided to take inspiration from the new Soviet Bloc Starter Army.
The fearsome new Moroz Gul sculpts all sport Korobov assault rifles, which have a ‘bullpup’ configuration where the magazine is behind the trigger. I decided to make a bullpup SMG of my own, using the loose PPSh from the Soviet Weapons sprue and the left arm holding a PPSh on the new sprue. This one really was just a case of ‘cut-and-shut’ to get something that looked completely new, but still very Soviet.
All he needed was a head! I had the last-minute idea to combine a Firefly masked head with a Soviet officer’s cap, and this turned out even better than I hoped. This required a clean cut and some careful scalpel work, before some filing to fit, but simply by taking the tops off the two heads and swapping them, I got something I was really happy with. I imagine this guy as a veteran who’s survived the initial horror of facing the first Axis Rift units, and is now ready to get his own back!
I’m currently working on these guys’ British Commonwealth, United States, and Empire of Japan counterparts, and once they’re done I’ll be sure to show them off too! This is just a tiny taste of what you can do with a big pile of sprues and a little imagination – can you imagine if someone was mad enough to apply this treatment to their entire force…
Stay tuned for the second part of this article to see Isaac’s latest creations. If he’s got you inspired to pick up the clippers and get creative, our Bolt Action range provides the perfect base for all manner of conversions – the sky really is the limit!
