Picture the scene – you’re looking over your lovingly painted late-war Bolt Action force with pride. You’ve poured many hours into the project – delicately assembled infantry, guns and armour and carefully researched and applied a paint scheme. It’s certainly been worth it, and now it’s finished, ready to take pride of place in your display cabinet or dominate on the Bolt Action tabletop for years to come. Yet, as you gaze down at your handiwork, there’s a little voice in the back of your head that just won’t go away. Even worse, you know deep down that what it’s saying is right.
“They’d be even cooler with giant ‘mechs and some funky tesla weaponry…”
Before you dive in with the plasticard and brass rod (although that way lies some awesome conversion possibilities), fear not – Konflikt ’47 is here to save the day! In an alternate timeline where nuclear detonations opened ‘rifts’ in space and time, through which came vast amounts of advanced scientific knowledge, the Second World War still rages on, albeit much, much more strangely. Mighty walking tanks do battle with hideous genetic monstrosities, and strange new weaponry lights up the battlefield. Based on our beloved Bolt Action’s ruleset (with some fun new additions), Konflikt ’47 (K47) brings a whole new way to wargame the 1940s. Best of all, you can use your late-war Bolt Action collection – but there’ll need to be a few changes!
Let’s look at a hypothetical late-war British collection, the kind any Bolt Action player would be proud to have. With the fantastic British & Canadian Starter Army as a basis, with an AEC Mk III armoured car, a sniper team, and the ubiquitous 25pdr gun added, we have a versatile and flexible set of models that can be tailored for a wide variety of games and scenarios in Bolt Action. However, if you were to take this force unmodified into the Weird War of K47, your plastic Tommies would probably go on strike! No walker support? No fancy rift-tech kit? Not a chance, boss! Despite this, your collection is by no means useless for K47 – it just needs a couple of additions and a bit of tweaking!
In order to shape your force for K47, it’s important to understand the type of things you’ll be facing in this brave new wargaming world. The core of any K47 army is simultaneously very similar and very different to what we know from Bolt Action – infantry, but now with much, much more variety. They might be wearing powered armour, toting high-tech weapons, or have been genetically… tweaked. They might even be shambling corpses! Nevertheless, none of them particularly like eating .303 calibre rounds courtesy of a ‘mad minute’ of rapid fire! Your good old infantry sections are still completely viable and can be dropped in to form the core of your new K47 force with no changes necessary – always a good start. Similarly, your officer, sniper, and Forward Observer remain entirely valid, as does your Medium Mortar. So far, so normal, right?
We might want to consider adding some heavier firepower at this stage – while rifles are all well and good (especially in the hands of British infantry), the number of nasty beasties that might be running around the battlefield means you’re going to want a fair whack of anti-infantry firepower. A big section of Automated Infantry with HMGs is one of the best things we can add to any British K47 army. They cost a lot of points, but these wonderful mechanical men (and their .50cal Brownings) are the perfect counter to things like Shreckwulfen or light walkers – with their addition it’s already starting to get funky!
The artillery pieces remain perfectly serviceable, though it should be noted that the 6pdr may struggle a little with the heavier armour that is more prevalent within Konflikt ’47, meaning a 17pdr might be a wise investment. Still, nothing that we absolutely must add here. As for the armour, however, that old Churchill probably isn’t going to cut it, especially when there are all sorts of heavy mechs wandering around that would love nothing more than to catch up to it. We might consider a Grizzly Walker if we take a 17pdr, to act in the traditional ‘medium tank’ slot, or stick with the 25pdr and see in the future of tank combat with a mighty Centurion Mk II with its deadly super-heavy gun. To replace the AEC, an Automated Carrier brings a pair of light autocannons to the fight – perfect for chopping down heavy infantry or menacing light vehicles!
Here we can see just how little it takes to turn a perfectly good (and nicely historical) British Bolt Action force into a true Weird War killing machine for Konflikt ’47. With the simple addition of a rift-tech-infused squad, and a couple of vehicles, you’ll be well on your way to victory and glory in a completely different game – almost like we drew it up that way, huh?
You can easily use similar principles to convert existing Bolt Action armies of any nationality into perfectly viable Konflikt ’47 forces, giving them both dual purpose and extra depths of flavour. Just be mindful of the battlefield roles that your rift-tech units are going to fill when they are subbed in for your regular Bolt Action units.
Grab yourself the Konflikt ’47 rulebook and find out what rift-tech options you can add to your Bolt Action army. Remember, if you order direct from the Warlord Webstore, you’ll receive a special edition figure – Slammer Samuels, an experimental Heavy Tesla Rifle-toting US Paragon super-soldier!
3 comments
It’d be LOTS easier to get people into K47 if you didnt have the audacity to charge $125 USD for a tank I can print up for ONE DOLLAR and 18 Cents… and it’ll look better, feel better and paint up WAAAY better than that garbage you’re trying to shove down people’s throats.
K47 is a fun idea… the only people stopping it from being successful… is Warlord Games.
John, there’s nothing stopping you printing a few models and using their ruleset! A lot of people, like myself, don’t have a 3D printer and like Warlord’s sculpts.
Warlord have only just acquired full rights to the IP, so let’s see what they do with it before being too critical.
Konflikt 47 is what got me back into gaming, particularly miniatures gaming. I like the utility of being able to use Bolt Action miniatures for both Bolt Action and Konflikt 47. I’m hoping for a Version 2.0, that brings Konflikt and Bolt Action Version 3.0 together. I’d also like to see another Konflikt expansion. Hopefully the new Konflikt honcho, Andy Chambers, has some designs in this direction….
In the group I game with, we refer to the decidedly British Bias of Warlord Games as the “Cheaty British”. Somehow the machinegun-happy British Automatons suffer no penalty for employing an MG without a loader. Same with the British Galahad armored infantry. I can only imagine how a man in an armored suit, with an LMG attached to his arm, somehow reloads it single-handed/left-handed! This without getting into my favorite small arms argument about how supposed British LMGs, like the Bren and Lewis, are actually just magazine-fed automatic rifles like the BAR, since they’re not belt-fed like a TRUE LMG.
Then there’s the rip-off of the German players. The Fallschirmjaeger’s FG42, because it fires a full-length/power rifle cartridge, should be considered an automatic rifle, not an assault rifle (which fires a reduced length/power rifle cartridge). How’re Russian units getting panzerfausts? And using them without penalty? If any army should be using captured equipment, it’d be the Germans. It’s only the whole of WWII history. SS Shocktroopers got down-graded to “Regular” in the Resurgence expansion. The Hauptmann Heinrich Gross unit is an expensive mess. It loses almost as many capabilities as it gains; the whole unit can’t move “fast” because only Gross has “Fast”. The sniper loses forward deploy and the whole unit loses the chance for small unit defense ’cause they’re now a crowd of five people. Why does a German Heavy infantryman with an LMG need a loader, when the Brit doesn’t? Where are Americans getting assault rifles from? I guess Tiger Fear became such a neutered mess that it was given up on. Etc, etc, etc.
Anyway, thats just some criticisms. I still love me some Konflikt 47. The Warlords Game group at the local hobby show, White Knight Games & Hobbies, recently ran a Konflikt 47 league….
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