Axis With A Difference! Bryan Cook’s Konflikt ’47 Hungarian Force

Eagle-eyed Bolt Action fans might recognise the name Bryan Cook, and with good reason. Hailing from a land down under, he’s been a regular contributor to our range of Bolt Action books over the years – most notably the Fortress Budapest supplement – and continues to do sterling work on our upcoming titles. Around all the writing, he’s also found the time to paint up and photograph some fantastic miniatures, most of which tend to be for his gigantic Hungarian collection. Having jumped onboard the Konflikt ’47 hype train, naturally he’s assembled a Hungarian-themed Axis force, and today he’s showing them off – take it away, Bryan!

BC – Hey readers, my name is Bryan and I’ve been painting miniatures for about 30 years. As we all know, there are many ways to enjoy this hobby, and my favourite aspect is creating armies that evoke a strong narrative just by looking at them. The unique Konflikt ’47 setting offers a particularly good opportunity for this. It’s such a great sandbox for your imagination, allowing you to blend sci-fi and historical elements and create a unique force of your own.

This is Kampfgruppe Carpathia, my Axis army for Konflikt ’47, in which I have chosen to focus on what a force of Hungarian troops might look like in this setting. The back story behind my army is this is a specialised force that operates in the Carpathian mountains, led by a nobleman from the region, Count Báthory. This impossibly ancient-looking and creepy officer brings with him packs of horrors from the forests – Shreckwulfen – as well as men from the villages to fill the ranks of the Border Guards.

To support these local forces the best of Axis industry has been sent in the form of a squadron of Hussars operating Vogelspinne walkers and a platoon of Stahltruppen.

I’ve had a fascination with Hungary and its history for a while and have collected a large army for Bolt Action, so extending this into Konflikt ’47 was a natural progression. What is particularly fun is I can draw on different eras of Hungarian martial history other than WW2 and mix it in as the setting is very accommodating of this. Once I saw the direction of the Axis forces in the 2025 version of the game I was immediately inspired to give my own twist to my army. The heraldry on the Stahltruppen and Vogelspinne walkers is inspired by medieval Hungarian knights, Napoleonic Hussars, as well as WW2 insignia. I love that you can do that with this setting!

I have used a variety of Warlord Games miniatures to make the force. The sinister Count himself is straight out of the blister pack, no conversion required.

The basic infantry squads are all Border Guards and Mountain Infantry from the Bolt Action Hungarian range. To convert up the AT gun and weapon teams I converted Italian Alpini miniatures, mostly with just head swaps, taking plastic German heads with peaked caps and adding a moustache and feathered plume.

For the walker platoon I used three of the plastic Vogelspinne. It’s a lovely kit to assemble with very generous weapon options, you can assemble multiple full turrets with different weapons. To help tell the narrative of the army I imagined the walkers being a modern incarnation of the famous Hungarian cavalry, the Hussars. To achieve this in miniature was rather simple in the end, I used the plastic French Hussar sprue from the Napoleonic range to embellish the crew that comes in the Vogelspinne box. The platoon commander has a full Hussar body and pelisse (the very fetching short fur-trimmed jacket over the shoulder) combined with one of the three heads that comes in the Vogelspinne box.

The second Hussar crewman is the Vogelspinne crew body and helmated head, again with a stylish pelisse thrown over the shoulder. You could really do many combinations of these two sprues to make some fun looking crewmen very easily. I like the idea that these spider-like walkers are adept at crawling over the mountainous region my force is operating in, as well as their sinister appearance suiting the classic horror vibe the army has.

The Stahltruppen were much more involved as they required some sculpting on the heads, to give them the look I wanted. Here I used plastic Italian heads with soft caps and modified them with green stuff to match the style of Hungarian ones from WW2, plus adding a few moustaches of course! Most of the Hungarian feel came with how I painted the armour, adding a lot of old Hungarian heraldry and adding a few medieval maces and axes helps sell the idea that these troops see themselves as maybe 1947 versions of Hungarian knights.

The wild Shreckwulfen were ironically the easiest models to work with. They are one of the main inspirations for the army’s back story, and so are perfect just straight out of the box. These were my favourite models to paint, being big chunky monsters in very dynamic poses. I ended up painting some ancient runes on their bodies to emphasize the more occult vibe of my force rather than one of dark science.

I can play both Konflikt ’47 and Bolt Action with this collection. If you take away the Rift units, this army is actually a 1944 Hungarian Border Guards force, complete with artillery support in the form of AT guns and howitzers!

I painted the Bolt Action core of the force over about three months when Third Edition was released in 2024. Because it’s a historical force that was purely infantry, it was easy to add the whole layer of Konflikt ’47 units straight on top a year later when the new Axis range came out. Again, painting all the new Rift units took about four months of my hobby time.

Variety is the key for keeping me motivated during the painting of a big army project. I try to alternate between unit types as I paint along so I don’t get burnt out or lose interest. For example, painting a squad of monsters or an armoured walker in between each basic infantry squad is a fun ‘reward’. I can recommend using one of the many ‘to-do’ list apps out there to write up the full list of units you need to paint to make your army, and schedule them out in this alternating order. Then you can tick them off as you work through them. It helps keep you focused and not wasting time trying to work out what to paint that week/month.

One particular painting technique I employed to speed things up a bit was to paint the Stahltruppen heavy infantry the same way I do vehicles. The vehicles and heavy infantry are sprayed a dark green as a primer, then a mid green from above, getting both the main colour applied and also some basic shading in minutes. I then drybrushed a light green over all the raised edges and rivets and used a sponge to do chipping damage with a very light green. After applying decals and painting any insignia, a gloss varnish coat is applied to protect all of this. The final stage that ties everything together is an oil wash of one part 50/50 burnt umber and black artist paint to nine parts white spirit. Paint all the green armour with this wash, then wipe the model down with a rag 20 minutes later. You end up with armour which is shaded and weathered in one go.

You can find Bryan’s step-by-step guide on painting Hungarian vehicles HERE!

One of the miniatures in this army that offered a very fun modelling opportunity was the Vogelspinne. With its individual spider legs, you can make the miniature work with the basing in a very dynamic way. Informed by the army’s narrative that it is in the Carpathian mountains, I challenged myself to make the walkers scramble over dramatic irregular rocks and logs. This meant I had to make the bases first, then carefully glue each leg on while making sure they lined up with the shapes on the base, to create the scuttling effect. I used super glue to attach each of the legs with an instant bond so they lined up with the basing elements, rather than my normal plastic cement glue which takes longer to set. Tricky, but very fun!

For any Bolt Action players thinking of dabbling in Konflikt ’47 I can recommend it. I enjoyed having a familiar historical base to work from but also having so much opportunity to let your imagination take things as far as you want to create a unique force. Push your ideas further and see where you end up, I bet it’ll be somewhere inspiring for the rest of the community – happy painting!