Historicals: Konflikt ‘47 – Komparing the Editions

The new edition of Konflikt 47 by Warlord Games is here, bringing fresh life to the Weird War 2 space. The marketing for this new edition has garnered a lot of interest in people like me who have not been in the historical wargaming space, so in late August I got my hands on a First Edition Soviet Starter Army plus a few metal and resin kits to add to it and got to painting. After convincing a few of my gaming buddies to make the jump with me (this didn’t take much, weird war is cool), I sat down with my friend Nathan to play a game of first edition followed by a rematch in the new edition so we could look at how the rules have changed.

Bolt Action has always interested me, I’ve seen people playing it locally for years and the rules are very different from what I’m used to playing. The way it’s balanced around the Order Dice system and lack of regular saves is something that I’ve wanted to try for a while now.

For those of you not familiar with the basics of Bolt Action, which Konflikt ‘47 is based on, check out this article here.

Our first game we played at 1250 points, my Soviets versus his Japanese, our lists were as follows:

Soviets

Japanese

We met up at a local game store and set up a table, using some terrain to make a semblance of a city outskirts with some blown out ruins, a few undamaged buildings, and two forests with roads running across the whole thing.

Japanese Heavy Infantry and Ghost Squad advance from the “forest”

With my ten order dice to his nine, I had the advantage of waiting out his tank and walker before committing mine to the field. This plan hit a snag when I learned that the Japanese in first edition have the ability to deploy their units on the board Hidden, meaning they were already on the table with an Ambush order, meaning if I come on and he has line of sight he could fire on me. He deployed his anti-tank team in a building with a pretty good sightline down one of the roads in the city we were fighting over, and put his Ghost Squad in a forest on the left flank, ready to move out and put their compression rifles to work when my infantry units showed up. This made me a bit nervous, as yes he’d need to roll hot on his antitank team to pop my armor but I’ve seen stranger things happen.

Soviet Armored Officer and his trusty Inexperienced Infantry move into range of the Japanese Paratroopers hiding in a building

Turn one was cagey, with him pushing the right flank with his infantry squads (paratroopers and veteran infantry alike) and my units pushing the middle and left flanks, hugging buildings to prevent as many shots as I could. He brought on his armored infantry near his Ghost Squad and pushed towards my infantry behind a building. His Chi-Ha rolled on off the middle of his board edge and had line of sight on my infantry, so he unloaded but with the lack of premeasuring this edition he was only able to touch me with his compression turret, machine gun bullets flying into the dirt a few inches short of the Soviets. The Chi-Ha has a second MMG mounted to the back of the turret, which seemed weird to me but came into play later in the game (spoilers!).  With that out of the way, I brought my T34/ZP on and fired on the armored infantry, with the machine gun applying a pin marker and not much else, then the Zvukovoy Proyektor fired. In this edition, Shockwave weapons draw a line from the tip of the barrel straight through to the target and hit on a 4+, causing D3 pin markers and depending on the target either D3 Pen +1 hits against infantry and artillery or cause a Crew Stunned result against vehicles. The T34 hit both the armored infantry and the Ghost Squad, putting a total of 4(!) pin markers on the armored infantry and blowing up one of them and 1 pin on the Ghost Squad. This felt good, but I had hoped to do more real damage to the targets. In response his Sasori light walker came on and flew up the board, taking advantage of the roads on the table to move into a great spot to fire on my T34 putting pin markers and status effects on it.

Soviet T34/ZP

Turn two was where the action really started, with both he and I trading shots off with our vehicles and infantry. Pin markers were thrown across the table, and both sides pushed to the middle to take ground. The cover save system was very valuable, as otherwise my Soviets just disappeared as his compression weapons did great and terrible things to me. His Antitank team had my Cossack walker in a bad spot and he spiked his one shot and took it out but not before it was able to throw some statuses on his Chi-Ha. His compression weapons in this edition gave an additional hit if he hit with all three shots, which was decent but compared to what is in his new rules it didn’t feel all that great. This rule also really slowed down the game when his Ghost Squad fired at my inexperienced squad, as instead of just rolling a pile of dice we had to fire each individually to check for the extra hits. My armored infantry were charged by his paratroopers, with their Fanatics rule they were able to make it in without having to care about their pin markers. Close combat seemed a little anemic compared to my read on the new edition, which a lot of veteran players of Bolt Action have told me looks much nastier in the new rules. At the end of turn two, most of the standard Japanese infantry was gone and my vehicles were shouldering wrecks with the Sasori scuttling around throwing fire at anything it could see.

Uh-oh

Turn three began with Gregor and his friends charging into his Ghost Squad and picking them up and then being charged by his armored infantry and were cut down due to some incredibly bad rolls on my part. With all the infantry out of the way of the tank, his Chi-Ha advanced between two of my units. This allowed his turret to face my infantry with attached Daughters of the Motherland while the front mounted MMG and the second one on the back of the turret glared angrily at my rifle squad. The compression gun didn’t do a whole lot, due to the shield effect from the Daughters Zvukovoy Protektor but the MMGs lit up my other infantry and killed all but two of them. My antitank gun shot at it and immobilized it, allowing my brave infantry to hit it with antitank grenades and wrecked it, and then began the long drawn out cat and mouse of my squishy units trying to stay away from his Sasori while it evaded my heavy infantry.

Commissar Drugov and his Ursus fighting the Japanese in close combat

The game ended in a draw, with the final score being 8-9. Overall we had fun, playing Nathan is always a good time and I am stoked to see how it goes in the new edition.

The first edition rules feel a bit clunky, showing cracks where the Weird stuff is just kind of bolted on. For example, ZP weapons are cool, but don’t do anything much more than just apply pin markers unless you’re really lucky on your rolls. Several times while playing we caught ourselves trying to do things Warlord revealed about the new edition; like how the Compression weapons add up their penetration values when firing at a vehicle which would have really helped him early in the game. The lack of premeasuring also is a hang up from what I’m used to playing (I haven’t really touched anything other than GW in about 16 years) but felt bad when things didn’t go well, I really like the sound of premeasuring after committing to an order in the new edition. A lot of the issues with this previous edition stem from it being an add on to an existing game, rather than a ground up redesign to focus on the weird. The ideas behind Konflikt first edition sounds awesome, but it suffered from how it was implemented.

The following week I met up with Nathan again and we played the new edition. Army rules have changed dramatically along with the process of choosing platoons. So, we made our adjustments, fiddled with points to get someplace close to 1250 and met back up to roll some dice. Here are our lists:

Soviet Bloc

Empire of Japan

We played the mission the core book suggested for first time players, again kill points coming in from board edges.

Turn one done; notice the two units of infantry and the Kempeitai sitting there in the middle in Ambush. Surely they’re just waiting to shoot me.

Turn one I ran up the board, trying to get my units in position to throw dice at his battle frames and getting my anti-tank weapons into good spots to cover a lot of ground. He was a bit cagey, and had a lot of units in ambush. This seemed odd to me, but that was because I forgot how the Japanese worked in the new edition, this would come to bite me turn three. I issued a Run order to my T34/ZP trying to get it in range of the infantry in back, hoping to see how the new Shockwave rules worked.

Japanese Chi-Ha takes aim at the T34/ZP out in the open.

Turn two we started blasting, with my T34/ZP taking aim at his infantry with a Fire order and then coming up about an inch and a half short. This was bad news, as he’s out in the open now. His Chi-Ha rolled around the building on the right and thankfully whiffed into my tank. At this moment I realized I forgot my Soviet Bloc rules and began rolling dice for Harmonic Resonance. This rule is crazy good, you roll a D6 for each enemy unit on the table that does not have the Fearless rule and on a 5+ they get a pin marker. Over the course of the game, this led to 13(!) pin markers across his army. My anti-tank teams fail me, both rolling ones to hit. Surely this won’t be a theme. I move my infantry into the building in the center, preparing for a big push next turn. His Ke-Ho Walker scuttles up the roads and fires at my Kossack, failing to do much and in return my Kossack scratches his imperialist paint. His Ghost Squad make a return and the changes to the Compression Guns are felt immediately as all his attacks double up on hit, with only my light cover saving the HMG team but losing a model. He then exhausted a Rift Die and teleported them across the board, threatening my left side. I didn’t expect this and left a hole just big enough for them to fit, leading me to stress about them long term as my HMGs were nowhere near them now.

Welp

Turn three he pulls first, and hits with everything on the Chi-Ha. Compression weapons in the new edition (when activated with a Rift Dice) grant an additional hit if every shot with a weapon connects. This has an extra rule against a single model unit, where you combine the total Penetration of all hits into one roll so he hit my T34 with a +12 die. Sadly he didn’t roll a one, and then rolled a 6 for damage leaving my tank a smoking wreck. In response my Heroes of the Soviet Bloc move up to shoot his infantry that’s been sitting in ambush, expecting to be fired at on the way in. This is not the case, as I had forgotten that the Japanese can charge at 12” in Ambush, leading to their demise but they take half my squad with them. His Walker takes a Rally! order to get rid of all the pin markers it’s gotten, allowing me to try out the new and improved Daughters of the Motherland on his Green Infantry. The changes to Shockwave weapons means that I’m no longer just throwing a few hits and a bunch of pin markers in a line, rather I roll to hit and add them all up to generate a template equal in size and Penetration value to the number of hits. The Daughters Zvukovoy Avtomat has three shots at a range of 6” with Assault, meaning I’m looking for 2’s and it ends up netting me double 3” templates on his bunched up soldiers. The unit is wiped, as 13 hits needing 2s makes short work of them.

Lots of pin markers thrown around this game

In turn four I put the Slow status on his walker, effectively leaving it a sitting duck for my following turn but giving it another shot on my Kossack. My Officer in Mark 2 Guards armor does a whole lot of paint scratches on his Chi-Ha, and the Anti Tank teams once again fail me. His units are pretty well pinned down, but make a few charges and take out some more of my weaker units. A back and forth of hitting but no real damage happens on the left flank, with our walkers just staring each other down after firing and nothing happening as we both roll poorly.

The game ends in a draw, as I got 8 points to his 7. Two draws; hopefully next time is the tie breaker.

The new edition felt incredibly smooth compared to the old one, with things happening a lot faster and the Rift-Tech really taking center stage for both of us. The changes to Platoon structure really put the Weird into this Weird War game, rather than a couple of units added to a standard army. The changes to how the existing Rift Units worked felt great, with their background showing in their rules (the Ghost Squad being able to teleport after an Advance or Fire order was really neat!) and the Rift Dice mechanic was super smooth, really adding tension when it came time to see if they came back Active or Surging at the end of turn.

Overall, I’m very excited to see where Warlord takes Konflikt ‘47. At their recent open day, they said they have tons of ideas for the future of the game and I am very much looking forward to what they come up with. The change to how army lists work (making them PDFs so they can be updated on the fly) is good, allowing for the addition of new units as needed (like the Italian Belligerents being moved to the US and British Commonwealth lists from the Axis). How the Rift Dice work is also fantastic, it makes you feel the weight of them when you burn a dice and have to risk not being able to use it again next round, this is probably my favorite change in the edition as it makes the Rift Units the stars of the show and not something tacked on. This ruleset is easy to grasp with a lot of depth when you add in all the special rules and abilities from your Rift units without feeling unnecessarily crunchy.

If you are on the fence about starting, take the plunge! I’m already looking at starting a second army, with those Starter Sets on the horizon full of new sculpts taking the identity of each faction and pushing it further forward with modern casting.

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