Gav Thorpe has joined the design team working on Warlord Games’ weird-science World War 2 wargame Konflikt ‘47. Thorpe is just the latest in a string of former Warhammer 40k designers and authors to join the team, which is led by fellow Games Workshop alumnus Andy Chambers.
Thorpe worked on Warhammer 40k third, fourth, and fifth edition, multiple Warhammer 40k Codexes, several editions of Warhammer Fantasy Battles, and spin off games including Inquisitor and classic dungeon crawler Warhammer Quest. He’s the author of multiple Warhammer, 40k, and Horus Heresy books, and won the 2017 David Gemmell Legend Award for Fantasy for his novel Warbeast.
Despite putting out so much work for Games Workshop, Thorpe is a freelancer. In recent years he’s collaborated with Andy Chambers to develop miniature wargames based on series from the 2000AD anthology comic: Judge Dredd, Strontium Dog, and ABC Warriors.
Warlord Games announced Thorpe’s addition to the Konflikt ’47 design team in a blog post on Monday.
Konflikt ‘47 is a spin off from Bolt Action, Warlord’s hugely successful 28mm scale WW2 wargame, which follows an alternate history and adds loads of weird war elements. Signals received from interdimensional rifts result in both the Axis and Allies developing new super-advanced technology, and second world war drags on, worse and weirder than before.
Thorpe says “I grew up with World War Two model kits, and my first ever homegrown simple rules set used old 1/72 scale figures”. He adds ”I’ve played many WW2 games of different scales and types ever since”. He says he’s a huge fan of “esoteric knowledge and alternate history”, which will make Konflikt ‘47 “loads of fun to write”.
Warlord announced last week that Cam Rogers had joined the team. Rogers is a narrative lead from the videogame industry whose resume includes Warframe and AAA title Quantum Break. Thorpe says “Cam is a highly knowledgeable addition to the team which has been a lot of help”.
Another name that might be familiar to Warhammer fans is William “Bill” King, a prolific author responsible for the Gotrek and Felix franchise, and also a game designer. Warlord announced King’s addition to the team on August 12. Thorpe says “I’m a big fan of Bill’s work and have met him a few times but this is our first collaboration”.
We don’t know yet when we will see the fruits of this team’s labor, nor whether the next edition of Konflikt ‘47 will use the upcoming Bolt Action third edition rules or follow a different path. We think there is very good cause to be excited. The whole project is shaping up like a comeback tour for the 1990s Warhammer design studio.
Bolt Action was originally designed by Warhammer 40k creator Rick Priestley and another ex-GW designer, Alessio Cavatore. It plays like a sequel to Warhammer 40k third edition with all the rules that exist to differentiate the sci-fi Warhammer 40k factions ripped out. Particularly, there’s no toughness stat, and only anti-tank weaponry has strength values, because all bullets are equally lethal to unarmored humans. More realistic morale rules and an interesting activation system take their place.
Konflikt ‘47 starts from this framework and finds new ways to put super-science in. There are power-armored troops and werewolf supersoldiers in Konflikt ‘47, but whereas in 40k Space Marines feel like the base-line, in Konflikt ‘47 all the super-science stuff feels like weird exceptions that are still (somewhat) grounded in reality.
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Source: Wargamer
