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!

Konflikt 47: An Army In A Month

I've been slowly working on assembling my US Army force for Konflikt 47 and since I think I've finally decided on a paint scheme I decided its time to get serious about getting them painted.  To that end I've decided to paint one of my soldiers a day for the whole month of March.  I'm travelling out of state for about five days but I should be able to pick up the slack from that break easily enough.

And to make it even more of a challenge (since going from barely painting to doing most of an army isn't enough) I'm also going to do updates on my progress on the blog each week.  Kind of a crazy idea but I've been enjoying picking my brushes up again not to mention the blogging so why not, right?  Now to see how this actually works out.  Wish me luck!

Konflikt 47: Well That Makes Things Easier...

After my last post I decided to do a quick search to see if maybe there already is a campaign system out there for Bolt Action/Konflikt 47 and what do you know?  The folks over at WWPD.net came out with their own version of this the end of last year call the Road To Victory.

This system starts each commander out with a 2nd Lieutenant, two squads worth no more than 110 points each, and two more random units.  The campaign is designed to be played with two players over five or six games with each player receiving two more random reinforcing units after each game.  Overall its not a bad little system and even has substitution rules for switching out your random roll for an inexperienced infantry unit or an armored transport.  There is also an experience system of sorts so which is nice plus in my opinion.

Even so I'm tempted to modify it slightly to use cards instead of tables for the random units.  This way you can tailor it to the units that you actually own plus it would be possible to add in some kind of special events.  Maybe bonus reinforcements of some kind or the troops are spread thin so you have to press on with your current resources.  Good to see that most of the work is done for me already though as its much easier to modify an existing set of rules instead of creating your own from scratch.

Of course I should probably try to get in a game first...  Need to get myself over to the LGS to remedy that soon.

Fresh Troops For The Western Front

The end of last year I was able to get a great deal on some 28mm WWII US infantry (from Dreamforge Games) and a Sherman-T (from Warlord Games) so I could start building a force for Konflikt 47.  I must admit that I've always been interested in trying out WWII minis but dealing with the "rivet counters" is just too annoying.  "You can't actually field that unit because we are playing in the fall of 1944 and the Germans stopped using those in the spring of '43."  Thankfully that's something that just doesn't come into play for Konflikt.  Gotta love alternate history!

 

Since then I had started assembling a force but I've been stuck trying to figure out the best mix of troops to field.  Yeah, I know.  I'm gripping about rivet counters but being a power gamer... not something I'm proud of but I had inspiration strike and come up with a great solution to my problem.  Why not just make a full platoon according and pull from that?  After all, its easy enough to just break up the by the book full units into smaller units plus it lets me add some kind of story element to the whole thing which my brain likes to latch on to for some reason.  To that end I started work on the second platoon of (insert random company name here...) company, freshly sent to the frontlines on the western front in the spring of 1947 which is when the "official history" in the core rulebook ends.

For my overall force, I'm thinking a squad of veteran troops, two squads of regular troops, and a squad of inexperienced troops.  Some fairly basic unit selections for now but as time goes by I'll gradually expand their numbers.

Ideally I'd love to get in a campaign using this kind of idea; form one unit platoon of infantry at the beginning of the campaign and you use them as your pool of troops moving forward, expanding or replenishing them as the campaign continues.  After each game both the winner and loser receive a number of points that can be used to rebuild the existing units or purchase new ones.  There could also be a random chance of something unique happening.  Maybe the platoon requisition officer is able to get ahold of more supplies or they are chosen to test some new technology for the high command.  Of course things wouldn't be all good.  It would only make sense for there to be some negative effects as well; the supply lines being disrupted, sickness effecting a number of the troops.  I really like the idea of the story growing as the campaign continues so I'll have to look more into this... though I should probably work on assembling some more troops first.