A Warhammer Bestiary: Fimir

Its the Easter Holiday here in the United Kingdom. That means a four day weekend for most, and the tail end of a two week break for us teachers. Subsequently, all the 'jobs' required by the 'non-leadhead' have by now been accomplished and sometime can be invested in getting some painting done. 

As you will be aware, after a bit of a hiatus I am back on my task of painting a model for each of the entries of the Warhammer Third Edition Bestiary. This time, it was the enigmatic Fimir that were see the attentions of my paintbrush. 

Few races are as iconic as the Fimir, and Third Edition was their moment of triumph, despite a rather dodgy rules/model mix up in regards of the boys in the Design Studio. Immortality would be achieved due to their inclusion in Heroquest. If you are interested in reading more about their story I would suggest having a read of Zhu's short post on the matter here, before moving on to Luke Maciak's recent account here. 

Fimir Art by Gary Chalk

Now, Fimir miniatures have a reputation for being expensive. They are also quite popular with collectors which is probably why there are several companies producing their own 'versions' of them to this day. I managed to source mine from eBay for about £7, which I feel is a reasonable amount for a larger metal model. 

The model was sculpted by Nick Bibby and represents would the elite Fimm warriors. Its a two part piece with the tail being detachable and it was an easy job to stick this on with a little bit of superglue. I used greenstuff to plug the gaps. 

I mixed up a suitably swampy green to act as the basecoat and used a contrasting brown for the leather 'coat' that the armour pieces seem to be attached to. A second, more earthy, brown was selected for the haft of the axe and the head of the weapon base coated in chainmail.

I then washed the whole model with a brown/chestnut/green ink was (diluted with a few tiny drops of water) and waited for the ink to dry overnight. This is my own version of devlan mud and has a much darker result, similar to Army Painter's Strong Tone. 

The it was a simple case of just working up the green skin to the original basecoat. Once this was achieved I highlighted further by adding Bleached Bone and Skull White to the original mix. The teeth and claws were done in exactly the same way, only with a turgid (rather turdy, actually) brown before being edged with some browny/black ink. 

Returning to the basecoat colour for the leather I worked that up back to the original base before adding Bleached Bone to the mix. I have found that using a khaki or beige to highlight reduces the 'washed out' look I was getting on some of my other models. The gold was based coated in a gold/yellow/chestnut ink base and then washed over with brown (this was allowed to dry) and then orange ink. It was a simple job to highlight this up with the base colour and then use a final highlight using the base and added silver. 

Job done! 

Oh, and I added red to the eye to contrast with the green and suggest evil. The base was completed using my usual method this morning though I found it hard to locate some natural light in the house, as typically for a holiday in England, its rather overcast! hence these shots have been taken in the playroom rather than on my board. 

Right, from big to small. The next model in the project is another race that has disappeared from modern Warhammer. A gnome. 

Orlygg

Acceptable in the '80s: White Dwarf 102

Issue 102 hit newsagents with the sound of a heavily laden renegade class pursuit vehicle colliding with a stainless steel girder. Dark Future, the game of highway warriors, was finally released onto the gaming world. That game, and its associated releases is part of one of my other long term projects, and will, one day, be resurrected. Today, we will be discussing the Warhammer Third Edition releases from this issue, so lets sit back and enjoy a slice of retro Warhammer at its best.

First up, and the major article of the issue, the Fimir. Now, way back when in the early days of this blog I published a link to this excellent article and discussed the nature of the Fimir in the context of Warhammer Third Edition. I see no reason to repeat myself, but the online world has moved on and it is now possible to embed items onto blogs, so I present the article again in this form. 

So what do we get?

Well first off, a little bit of narrative fluff that sets up the premise of the new race well. Mists, horror and hideousness. The article moves on to deliver a Warhammer Armies style armylist and a detailed WFRP adventure. This is a really good article and is well worth a read if you haven't seen it before. The art is also excellent, with some evocative pictures provided by Paul Bonner. 

Fimir Armylist, Background and WHFRP Adv by orlygg

Next up is an 'Eavy Metal article deals with that old chestnut, faces. As well as some interesting old school painting advice, there are a great deal of quality miniatures to gawp at, including the famous Dwarf wizard and many other rare models, including an early glimpse at some, then, forthcoming daemonettes. The eye candy ends with a rather wordy discussion about how to get the best out of a miniature's face. 

Then we have these crossbowmen. At first flick through the magazine its easy to miss these little shooty chaps. What we get is a set of sculpts, based on the same dollies, that provide troops for Imperial and Bretonnian armies. Anyone know if these models are now part of Foundry's ever expanded ex-citadel models?

Orlygg

THE FIMIR: Armylist, background and WFRP adventure

Today its all about the Fimir. 

I was inspired to write about them after listing my Top 10 most wanted miniatures and my delvings into ancient issues into White Dwarf. I have gathered together quite a pile of articles that I feel readers of this blog will find interesting.

The article I have uploaded today comes from WD 102. It contains full background for the race, a 3rd edition army list (with full colour shields and banner page) and an adventure for Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay that introduces the race to PCs. Useful stuff indeed for the retro minded.

If you don't know much about the Fimir and their history have a look at this extract from their wikipedia entry;

The Fimir were created at the behest of Games Workshop's then-owner, Bryan Ansell who wanted a race "to be as distinctive of Warhammer as the Broo are of Runequest" ^[2]. However, the Fimir did not prove popular, and disappeared with the 4th edition of WFB, although this did give them time to make a guest-starring appearance in Milton Bradley'sHeroQuest. Very few (official) sources on Fimir exist and include the WFRP Bestiary, an article in White Dwarf No. 102, the third edition of WFB (Bestiary and Warhammer Armies) and some references in supplements.

There are two Fimir miniatures at the "correct scale" i.e. a size between 1.8m and 2.1m (in-game scale): Fimir (actually Fimm Warriors) from HeroQuest and some limited edition Fimm Warrior miniatures sold separately. One can also find Fimir by Nick Bibby the size of ogres, although these obviously do not integrate well with the "correctly" scaled models. Original concept sketches of the miniatures made by Jes Goodwin represented human-sized creatures and the published characteristics of the Fimir reflected this fact. However, when Nick Bibby started to sculpt the Fimir miniatures, he made them ogre-sized, leading to them being disproportionately weak for the size of their figurine in WFB. It was officially decided that this was the fault of the authors. Ultimately, WFRP was published with Fimir, but the race disappeared from the next edition of WFB.

Another theory as to the disappearance of the Fimir is due to the change in focus of GW's marketing. As 3rd edition drew to a close the focus became less on the older gamer and more towards the mid-to-late teens demographic, and as such it may have been thought that a race which reproduced via rape was not appropriate for the new target markets.

The last official appearance of the Fimir was in the WFRP sourcebook Marienburg: Sold Down the River, published in 1999. Since WFRP 2nd edition, the background has been brought into line with WFB and races such as Zoats, Gnomes and Fimir have been quietly dropped. Games Workshop described such races as being in "interminable hiatus"^[3]. In response, several fan-written creations have been published, including a "Fimir special" issue 25 of the WFRP fanzine Warpstone.

There appears to be another reference to the Fimir in UK White Dwarf 310. Where in the article on the Gnoblar Horde, a new army list, there is a background piece on boglars, a sub-species of gnoblar that live in marshes. It says that "A large tribe in the Marshes of Madness have been rumored to be in alliance with strange, cyclopean creatures." While not being specific, this is almost certainly a reference to the fimir.

The Fimir were mentioned in the time of Legends novel 'Empire', where creatures matching their description were encountered living in the marshes.

Fimir are referenced by name in the "Marshland" entry of the terrain rules section of the 8th Edition Warhammer Fantasy Battles rulebook.

The July 2011 "Storm of Magic" supplement has, at last, reintroduced Fimir into the Warhammer tabletop game, in the form of a Dirach wizard called a Balefiend, which can be used as a bound monster by any Warhammer army. The character is now a full-fledged monstrous infantry (i.e. ogre-sized) model, rather than regular infantry.

In December 2011, Warhammer Forge revealed three new models to be released in Q1 of 2012 as part of the supplement titled Monstrous Arcana.

Here is the article on my Scribd account.

Fimir-Armylist-Background-and-WHFRP-Adv

Additionally, a big thanks to Mr Ballista who noticed that there was a page missing from the Magician's Son short story by Barrington J Bailey. I check my original magazine and lo and behold, there was indeed a page missing. Luckily, I own a second copy and used that to add the missing page. I have deleted the old version of the story from my Scribd account and included the new one below.

Magician's-Son-Complete

Until tomorrow,

Orlygg.