Konflikt 47: That Escalated Quickly If Briefly

My last post I had only managed to get three of my first squad finished.  Then that night I sat down and completed five more so things had started moving along at a pretty good clip.  Here's a shot of everything that I have painted so far for my troops (minus the Tesla Sherman).



Officers in the front, sniper team on the left, medic on the right, and three squads of six behind them.

As I've been working on them my overall force structure has been slowly evolving.  Originally I had planned on two squads of eight but after digging around on the interwebs I found some interesting information about how US Army squads in WW2 would typically split into two six man teams equally dividing the support elements.  I like the flexibility that this offers so I decided to emulate that with my own troops.  Of course this did make my individual squads more expensive (coming in at 100 points each for six regular soldiers) but I thought I might as well give it a try.

I was also thinking about mixing up my uniforms a little to represent the inconsistent supply lines that they would be experiencing being entrenched in Europe in the spring of '47.  I was hoping I might be able to bum some bits from a friend of mine that is playing German to add some variety to my own troops but unfortunately he doesn't have much left so I had to press ahead with the stock bits for the US.  I think this would have been pretty cool and I'd love to do it in the future so I'm going  to have to keep it in mind.  I have decided that I want to do this with my vehicles though since I haven't picked up many of those.  Specifically I'm planning on getting a couple of SdKfz 251 half tracks for transports for my troops.  This was something that was done during the war though there were issues that had to be dealt with such as repairs and being shot at by your own side.  Still, I love the idea and can't wait to make some headway with it.

On the gaming front I finally managed to get in a game of Konflikt at my LGS!  It was only a small 500 point game and we were focused on trying to get our heads around the rules so not much by way of pictures to share but I did have a lot of fun.



The one and only picture I took of our game.

After playing the game I did decide to change my unit structure a bit more.  For the game I fielded two regular six man infantry units both with SMG, BAR, and rifle grenades, a regular 2nd Lt with an accompanying soldier, a medic, a regular sniper team, and a regular Coyote walker (for anyone checking the points, this is less than 500 points because I forget the walker, sniper, and officer were supposed to be Veterans).  At the end of the game the medic really hadn't done anything other than give me an extra order die and the rifle grenades were never even fired.  In light of this I'm going to drop the rifle grenades and medic while adding in another regular six man unit with the same overall composition.  This will give me a little more firepower in my 500 point block which should help (and its also what's pictured above).

Another thing that I noticed was the lack of any really anti-armor weapons for the US.  My opponent had three panzerfausts which was more than enough to obliterate my Coyote while I couldn't even scratch his armor car.  I definitely need to look at some heavy weapon options as I expand my list with a bazooka team being first and foremost...  Or maybe a heavy bazooka team.  Love the look of the heavy infantry and I really want to field some of them.

As for the rules, they seemed fairly straight forward though there was quite a bit of hunting to try to find information in the rulebook.  I'm planning on tabbing it to make things a little easier plus I'm working on making some unit cards for me to use so that I can have their stats available at a glance.  Not that there's a ton to remember but when you are still trying to get your head around the rules anything that makes it easier is good in my book.

Konflikt 47: Slowly Trudging Along...

Well, we are a good ways into the month and while I had been making good progress, things have definitely slowed down quite a bit.  So far I've managed to complete a whopping three minis from the first squad!

 

Even with so little done I'm far from giving up hope.  I've got some solid progress on the rest of the first squad so I should be able to wrap them up fairly quickly and I've really been able to push forward with my painting.  After all, making more time for hobby is always a good thing in my books.

Konflikt 47: Damn You Snow!!!

Another week into my painting challenge and unfortunately things haven't progress as far as I had wanted.  I have some basic work done on the first squad but they aren't done yet.  Between the snow storm that hit the northeast and not even knowing if we were going to be going out of town as we had planned, hobby had to take a back seat.  Now we are leaving for a shorter trip (A whole 48 hours in Vegas for me!!! Woo-hoo!!!) so its going to be next week that I'll be playing catch-up to get things back up to speed.  Still feel confident that I can get it done though and then I'll start planning for the future...  Walkers!  Bwah-ha-ha-ha-ha!!!

Konflikt 47: And We're Off!

Well it's been a week and I've made pretty good progress so far.  A First and Second Lieutenant, a couple of soldiers to accompany them, a sniper team, and a medic (need to make some stretcher bearers for him still...)  Here's a shot of the group.

 

This batch rounds out my command options for now so its time to get to the troops.  So far I have eighteen of them assembled and ready to paint so this will give me a solid start, plus I want to finish up my Sherman-T and start work on the jeep so this should keep me going for the rest of the month.  If not, I'll just have to start gluing some more of the other troops I have lying around which would work too.

 

My ultimate goal is to be able to field three squads of 12 troops plus the command elements and a few support units.  Once these are painted it will be easy enough to piece them out during force creation to give me access to more units as well.  This will limit my weapon choices in some cases but I like the idea of drawing from the reinforced platoon to make my army.  Call me crazy.

Of course I already have ideas for how I want to expand my forces in the future (no shocker there...).  I'd love to be able to field a couple of units of heavy infantry plus the heavy bazooka team but before that I really want to get a couple of walkers.  Like the way the US ones look so I'm excited to get some on the table though I'm not sure which ones yet.  I'm leaning towards a Coyote and a Grizzly but I want to test drive them first before I decide.  I have some suitable minis thanks to my Warmachine days so I can use some proxies before I commit to one which is always nice.  Now to get on with more painting!