Goonhammer Historicals: Kitbashing Konflikt '47

I might have been bitten by the Weird War bug when we reviewed the Konflikt '47 starter sets in September. I've previously stayed away from it in modelling, leaving it firmly in my videogames, but there was just something quite interesting about sticking Zombie heads on Warlord plastics - once I'd done three, I absolutely had to expand them out to a full force.

While Konflict 47 has a lot of very cool concepts, the price per model is very high unless you’re picking up one of the few plastic sets, and single piece metal models aren’t always the best for conversions. Instead, I wanted to see if plastic ranges could stand in for a full Axis army - drawing mostly from the largest and most eclectic collection of plastic multiparts in 28mm: The Wargames Atlantic catalogue.

Theming

Kitbashing a whole army does present some challenges. Different ranges - or even kits within one range - don’t always mesh well together, losing some of the unified look that makes a single-range army work so well. Sizes and scales can differ - something particularly difficult when making a dieselpunk or other historical/scifi mashup. Historicals tend to be slight, reasonably human scaled weapons, arms and heads, while scifi ranges tend towards the heroic and chunky.

Sgt Rock Vs the Army of the Dead - a major inspiration for this army. Credit: DC

To keep a consistent theme and look across an army made out of multiple ranges, I find sticking to a couple of principles goes a long way. The main principle, as always, was that Nazis are pathetic, mindless drones who shamble about like a bunch of evil bastards, and deserve a good kicking. The modelling principles for this army they were:

Everything’s a Zombie - inspired by Sgt Rock Vs the Army of the Dead, this is a fully zombified Axis army. Every model will get at the very least a zombie head.

High Pulp - Konflikt 47 is a dieselpunk setting, but I’d like to take it a little further into 60’s inspired Scifi and earlier into pulpy nonsense. There’ll be a lot of Wolfenstein, Hellboy, She-Wolf, Italian exploitation movies and cheap, flimsy, comic book vibes.

WW2 Scale weapons - I’ll avoid chunky unrealistic scaled weapons (unless they have a very identifiable ww2 antecedent) and stick to historical range weapons whenever possible

Unified paint scheme - I’d like to draw elements of this army from across the European Axis Powers, doing a suitably comic book grim uniform for each. To keep it from being a hodge podge of various colours though there’ll be unifying spot colours of blood and very bright zombie flesh.

Striking basing - a single, simple basing scheme that works across everything (I haven't finished this yet, because the Krautcover grimdark basing I ordered is still to arrive!)

I tried to keep everything more or less in scale - Left to right as Big to Small! Kitbashed Axis for Konflikt 47. Credit: Lenoon

The Plan for the Army

I haven’t managed to get a game of Konflikt in yet, so the plan for the army is, as always, a matter of making what I fancy. I’d like to arrive at some happy-in-principle concepts for each of the troop types I’d like to include, so that I can either expand these into full squads (or several squads), or fold them into miscellaneous Officers, Hangers On and Accompanying Observers.

Zombies! Kitbashed Axis for Konflikt 47. Credit: Lenoon

More than that, I haven’t even got the core rule book, so I am largely flying blind based on the Warlord Games website and getting started Axis list! That still gives me enough to go on, and the core troops I’d like to model are:

Company Commander Platoon Commander Schwertruppen Stahltruppen Fallschirmjaeger Paracadutisti Falco Totenkorps

The challenge - both to make this article informative and to make sure I don’t spend hundreds of pounds on what is essentially a small modelling project - is to use plastic wherever possible. Purchasing a single squad of all of the above direct in metal (and the Stahltruppen plastics) mounts up - at 40 quid a piece to boot. Instead, I’ve looked to Wargames Atlantic with a few other pieces here and there.

The core WA kits I want to use are:

Panzer Lehr Zombies Iron Core Valkyr Iron Core Panzerjaeger Raumjaeger Infantry

That’s nearly all German or German-inspired Scifi, but this is an Axis army so we need Italians (at least) - the Wargames Atlantic Italian Infantry and Warlord Bersaglieri sprues provide a range of options.

If I can make this look like a horde of horrible zombies that still fits in with WW2 and Dieselpunk aesthetics, I'll be very pleased!

Stahltruppen

Konflikt 47 Stahltruppen. Credit: Lenoon

We reviewed these fairly positively, and they were the inspiration for the whole project. This is straight headswap kitbash, the easiest possible type of converting! Stahlhelm heads from the Zombie set, a small spacer of clipped off sprue between head and body, and that’s it! Nothing else needed and they fit the theme well.

Totenkorps

With WW2 Zombies as a theme, Totenkorps were a must - the zombified remnants of the Wehrmacht and National Republican Army, reanimated and sent back into the line of fire. I wanted a shambling horde of zombies, so decided on two squads, one Italian and one German.

Scale Shot - Warlord Metal, Warlord Italian Plastic, WA Panzer Lehr, Warlord Metal, Victrix Plastic Kitbashed Axis for Konflikt 47. Credit: Lenoon

German zombies were very easy - German soldier bodies, arms trimmed down to the wrist or elbow and replaced with Zombie arms, and appropriate Stahlhelm heads. Highly effective conversion with whatever bodies I had to hand - the dynamic posing of the Victrix Germans making some lurking, prowling Zombies and the stiffer Panzer Lehr making for good standing/shuffling dead. They scale well with the Warlord metal Totenkorps

Italian Zombies! Kitbashed Axis for Konflikt 47. Credit: Lenoon

Italian Zombies were a more involved kitbash. I used two approaches here. The first was to do the same as with the German Zombies - using Bersaglieri helmets cut from the heads on the Warlord Sprue on Warlord and Wargames Atlantic bodies, with Zombie arms. The second was to use some of the Zombie bodies from the WA set. They’re very tattered and tired, with rags of uniform remnants on them, but the Italian heads are so distinctive that they sell tattered rags as uniform. I used various wild and wonderful Italian heads here, trimmed and replaced with zombie faces, as well as Italian clothed/weapon arms to add a more uniform look. Most of these heads went on well, just match the angle you’re cutting at between head and headdress.

Schwertruppen

Schwertruppen are equipped with grade 1 power armour - supposed to be an early form of powered suit, the kind of thing adopted quickly after Konflikt’s rift-tech gets going. Options for power armoured models are fairly limited in 28mm unless you go for very identifiably “franchise” options - Warhammer 40k, for example. I wanted something that would fit in with the Konflict Aesthetic, but be clearly differentiated from other forms of armour.

Kitbashed Axis for Konflikt 47. Credit: Lenoon

That was tricky. The Stahltruppen are huge, while the official warlord metal Schwertruppen are very small, and the armour looks (to me at least) more like chunky anti-ballistic armour than a powered suit. I had two options from the Wargames Atlantic range: Iron Core Valkyr or Panzerjaeger. The Panzerjaeger are closer in scale and theme to the Warlord Schwertruppen, and the Valkyr sit somewhere between human scale and the terminator equivalent of the Stahltruppen.

Left: WA Kitbash plastic, Right, Warlord Metal. Kitbashed Axis for Konflikt 47. Credit: Lenoon

The three kits together have a nice graded size contrast between Heavy/Power/No Armour, so I chose the Valkyr for the Schwertruppen. This is a nice kit - look out for a review shortly - that’s a straightforward multipart Space Marine equivalent, and stripped down - without robes, shoulderpads and the huge, chunky weapons, they feel like a refined and improved atom/dieselpunk aesthetic, a few more curves and sweeping edges. This was another straight headswap, though I mixed in a Gladiator head from the WA Citizens of Rome kit to give me an Italian Schwertrooper (no idea what this would be in german). Weapons were spares from the Stahltruppen kit to give some consistency in appearance across the squads, with LMGs provided by the Panzer Lehr and WA Italian kits.

The LMGs Kitbashed Axis for Konflikt 47. Credit: Lenoon

They’re not quite on-aesthetic for Konflikt, but I think they work well for my version of the aesthetic. I could imagine them striding through the halls of the Barbican, which is exactly the vibe I’m going for.

Platoon Commander

Kitbashed Axis for Konflikt 47. Credit: Lenoon

Can you say “straight headswap”? I bought two Schwertruppen for scale purposes and this one got promoted to an officer. He’s holding a panzershreck rocket because the model was, but other than that this is a WA zombie American Police head, with a bit of sanding. If I take a Panzerschreck team, he’ll receive a demotion.

Company Commander

The Zombie police heads look so nice for Nazi/Gestapo heads (I wonder why?) that the idea for a Company Commander came full formed. Age of Sigmar Vampire characters have a very interesting aesthetic that chimes well with gothic and pulp horror, particularly in the kind of fantasy ww2 exploitation movie space. Thigh length leather boots, long sweeping jackets, and ridiculously over the top collars/coats really hits the “cartoonishly evil uniforms designed by hugo boss” vibe I’m going for.

Kitbashed Axis for Konflikt 47. Credit: Lenoon

While Warhammer doesn’t often scale well with Historicals, Vampires tend to! Eerily spindly hands and legs at 32mm heroic work well with normally scaled 28mm. This meant that both Commander models (I couldn’t resist doing two) could cope with direct hand swaps without anything looking disproportionate - a Luger and a Baretta work perfectly for the aristocratic Prussian look. The Rat Prince required very little work to fit in. I replaced the sword arm with a pistol, cut the rat tails off the bottom of the robe and switched out a head - done.

She's not painted yet, but I couldn't resist. Kitbashed Axis for Konflikt '47. Credit: Lenoon

The Thirsting blade was a bit more of a conversion. The head swap - usually very simple - became quite tricky, requiring a little sculpting and fixing to give a zombie head pigtails and officer's cap. The hands were filed down a little and transplanted from the WA Panzer Lehr kit which, incidentally, has lovely in-scale weapons. I think this has created a good assassin/femme fatale pose, which works well.

Fallschirmjaeger

Converting the crack anti-gravity paratroopers was a bit of a challenge. The official models look up-armoured compared to standard infantry, but well below the Schwertruppen. They are equipped with bulky anti-gravity projectors and assault rifles, making them a potent mobile threat. I wanted them to look half way between unarmoured and power armoured troops, while keeping the traditional “loaded down with pouches and kit” look of ww2 paratroopers.

Fallschirmjaeger Kitbashed Axis for Konflikt 47. Credit: Lenoon

Each Fallschirmjaeger was made with the following pieces:

WA Zombie Head WA Iron Core Panzerjaeger shoulderpads WA Iron Core Valkyr backpack WA Raumjaeger legs and pouches WA Panzer Lehr arms or Victrix German arms

Plastic assault rifles are hard to come by, but the Victrix set includes a few, so these were chucked into the mix for this squad. The backpacks fit well despite the Valkyr models being a lot bigger than the Panzerjaeger, and I glued these on upside down to allow for the “heavy” bit of an anti-grav device being on the bottom! Luckily antigravity backpacks are made up, so they can look however I like.

Scale Shot - Warlord Left, Kitbash Right Kitbashed Axis for Konflikt 47. Credit: Lenoon

I think this kitbash has a really nice weight to it and everything works well together. The slightly larger Raumjaeger legs give a pleasing heft to the bottom half of the models, offsetting the effects of the shoulderpads to create a bulky - but not power armoured - silhouette.

Paracadutisti Falco

The Fallschirmjaegers went well, so I thought, smugly, it was worth doing the other ever so slightly different anti-gravity troopers, the Italian Paracadutisti Falco. In game these are a close range unit, armed with SMGs, so I wanted to slide them into the small gap in size and heft between the Fallschirmjaeger and the Totenkorps, with enough visual difference between the two paratrooper units to make them obvious on the tabletop.

Falco - I like how this came out. Kitbashed Axis for Konflikt 47. Credit: Lenoon

The Falco troops were a different mix of kits:

WA Italian or Warlord Italian Legs WA Iron Core Panzerjaeger bodies and shoulder pads WA Italian or Warlord Italian arms WA Iron Core Valkyr backpack WA Raumjaeger pistols and accessories

Primed to show off construction. Kitbashed Axis for Konflikt 47. Credit: Lenoon

I cut the torso off the legs just below the waist, letting me use the Panzerjaeger bodies with no further modification. As always with the Italians in this army, I used the excellent bersaglieri heads because you’ve got to love all those feathers! The backpacks were used identically to the Fallschirmjaeger, but when I come to expand this squad beyond the test models I’d probably want something a little smaller. They fit right into the size I wanted them, but more differentiation between the units would be good in future.

Volksgrenadiers

After all that, I realised that I probably wanted some standard grunts - those guys with rifles that every ww2 army needs. Bodies, rifle arms and zombie heads, nice and simple. After making (and painting) a couple, I noticed there was absolutely no difference between them and the totenkorps unit - a problem if I want this to be easily differentiated on the battlefield.

Kitbashed Axis for Konflikt 47. Credit: Lenoon

After a bit of thinking, the solution was easy - bodies with rifle arms would become Volksgrenadiers, bodies with only outstretched hands or knives would stay as Totenkorps. That left two very ragged looking Italian zombies that had rifles but looked better as shambling walkers as opposed to regular, if zombified, troops. A simple solution beckoned - bend the barrels and paint the weapons rusty and worn, giving me a straightforward differentiation between the two units. I will, eventually, bulk this unit up to two full units with various kit options, using another sprue of WA Panzer Lehr, German Sentries and Italian infantry.

Slightly more dead Kitbashed Axis for Konflikt 47. Credit: Lenoon

Unclean Wehrmacht

It's a good base for a rotting horde of fascist bastards and, really importantly, clearly looks like an antagonist force. I want these guys to get the shit kicked out of them on the tabletop - they should do, they're dead fascists, so the challenge is to make them stay dead! I think I've nailed the look of evil pieces of shit commanding a terrible horde of scifi weirdness, and I can't wait to get them on the tabletop, hopefully to lose in spectacular fashion. I'm hoping to revisit this force in a few months to create some of the weirder and wilder genetic experimentation monstrosities you can find in the Konflikt Axis list, but first I should probably get the rulebook!

If you like the kitbashes in this article and want to give them a go, why not pick up the WA kits I used via our affiliate link? It'd be much appreciated!

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Tags: historicals | ww2 | Konflikt 47