Fimir ranges and size comparison

Finally got around to photographing some fimir that I finally got around to painting last month. Two of the classic citadel fimir sculpted by Nick Bibby, along with the more recent sculpt from Diego Serrate, now available from Krakon Games.

As I was pondering the size disparity, I thought I'd try and do something relatively useful, and photograph the different styles of 40mm based fimir I possessed together so you can see how they line up along one another.

From left to right: Demonomaniac from Krakon Games sculpted by Ross Whitehorn; Citadel 'ogre sized' fimir sculpted by Nick Bibby; Fomorian King from sculpted by Diego Serrate; another Citadel fimir from Nick Bibby; and finally a Forgeworld fimir, sculpted by Steve Whitehead.

What conclusions can we draw from this? Well, not much really; other than that the Nick Bibby fimir are somewhat squatter than many of their more recent counterparts (though Krakon games does have a variety of shapes and sizes of fimir; see below) - and that Steve Whitehead's forgeworld fimir, while atmospheric, has armour that isn't particularly in keeping with the classic feel. All of which is a bit banal. So I thought I'd take it a step further and go for a complete cataloguing of all the different kinds of fimir I have.

Because, famously, the fimir aren't all of a size to be stuck onto 40mm bases. The well known tale (technically apocryphal, though endorsed by some in the studio at the time) runs as follows (Graeme Davis, quoted on the Terminally Incoherent blog:)

"The popularisation of Fimir wasn’t helped by a communications foul-up when Nick Bibby took over making the miniatures from Jes – Nick made them all Ogre-sized, compared to Jes’ and my idea that they should be Orc sized. So we had big, expensive miniatures with low game stats, and nobody bought them."

This issue is reflected in the 3rd edition rules. The rulebook specifies rank and file fimir are on 25 x 25mm; only character models are on 40 x 40mm bases. But by the the time the Fimir list was written for Warhammer Armies, all fimir are on 40 x 40mm bases.

This creates a kind of strange redundancy around the smaller models citadel made - including the most ubiquitous and famous of all fimir.

So on the left we have the Citadel LE fimir sculpted by Jes Goodwin; and on the right the HeroQuest fimir (with a scibor shield). You can see here the size disparty with the Nick Bibby models - and in my view these models would look all at sea mounted on 40mm bases, rules lawyers be damned!

So what other fimir are there that can be mounted on 25mm bases?

Blood Moon Miniatures

These 'bog raiders', sculpted by Nicolas Genovese, only seem to be on sale very intermittently from Blood Moon Miniatures' website, but they come with a variety of weapons and are very clearly inspired by the HeroQuest fimir, while having a certain reptilian quality of their own. I do like them, but they are very... taut, I think would be the word. In fact, they look as though they've been doing a cross-fit programme; whereas I kind of imagine most fimir to have a bit of a paunch. Also, if you look at this picture of one alongside the HQ fimir and a Nick Bibby fimir, you'll see that they're quite tall - taller than the 'ogre sized' fimir!

But still (to my eye) with more of a 25mm footprint. All in all, these are models that are very hard to 'mix in' to a unit, and need to be treated very much in a stand-alone way.


Oakbound Studio
Oakbound produce Myeri for their game The Woods - and indeed it was Geoff Solomon-Sims' desire to produce one-eyed swamp monsters that launched the miniatures range which gave rise to the game. I bought the first set that he cast (now oop), and they're still among my favourites:

Geoff takes very clear inspiration from The Dark Crystal here. Hunched over and wide-eyed, their faces have more pathos than most fimir - less easy to pin down simply as comic-book villains - and they look great as a unit. As you'd expect from the first models commercially released, the casting raised a few logistical issues. He's since sculpted and released another range of Myeri, inspired by - and with permission to use - Alan Lee's painting of the fomorion which was indeed the initial creative impetus for the Citadel studio.

As a result, given this common conceptual origin you can see how the recent range converges with the Jes Goodwin fimir sculpt.

The month of Marsh has been and gone - a Fimir Demonomaniac

We have just passed through the month of Marsh - the time to celebrate those proud one-eyed warriors of the fens, the Fimir. Now, every year I start painting some fimir during Marsh, only for things to remain unfinished on my dask at the end of the month. This year was no exception - but I can now present the horror that has arisen among Clan Slea. This Demonomaniac comes from Krakon Games and is sculpted by Ross Whitehorn. It comes with a choice of heads, and I chose the double-headed variant just to enhance its mutated feel.

Demonomaniacs are introduced in the 1995 Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay adventure Dying of the Light, set around Marienburg. The result of the ritual experiments of a Meargh who seeks to bind demons into her warriors, demonomanics are an unstable horrors: the body of a fimir struggling - and generally failing - to control the demon that has possessed it. In Chapter 5, the party first find the mangled and mutated corpse of a Fimir who has failed in this struggle and been ripped apart by an "an extreme series of mutations". Then, deeper in the swamp they find another thing that "looks like it was once a fimir", towering and in a state of apparent confusion. (My favourite detail is in its profile, the alignment is given as "Too confused for that at the moment"). "Claw marks cover its whole body and worms now ooze from these fetid gashes." It emits gutteral noises of agony. It flails its axe and mutated scythe-claw arm in a state of wild attack.

Here is Pete Knifton's atmospheric, terrifying, and frankly disgusting image of a Demonomaniac. As you'll see, I haven't included worms with mine. I do regret not giving mine a tail that can shoot spikes. Anyway, I imagine the one I've painted to be in a slightly more stable state of possession - though only just.

This is not the only fimir I managed to get belatedly done for the month of Marsh, but I'll save the others for the next post.

From the marshes, into the woods - a Myeri/Fimir warband

On the edges, where land becomes water and water becomes land, keeping vigil. Listening to the birds and to the reeds for shifts and changes. On guard for incursions to an ever-diminishing domain.

Most of you will know of my fascination for the fens. And in particular, my fascination for those one-eyed denizens of the fens, the fimir. I've recently returned to that early enthusiasm, painting up a small warband that I can field as Myeri in Oakbound Games' The Woods. Way back when, the first range Oakbound produced were some fine not-fimir, and The Woods has really grown a life of its own around that: Geoff Solomon-Sims has expanded the range with more and more creatures, a growing folkloric world. So when Geoff announced that he was holding the first Oakbound Games Day, "The Woods in the Woods" - in an atmospheric and COVID-guideline-appropriate Gloucestershire woodland venue - I decided that this was something I needed to be part of.

The first minis I painted specifically for the warband were two wonderful Oakbound miniatures from their current myeri range.

Of course, fimir affecianados may well recognise that these sculpts pay direct tribute to the very artwork that provided the inspiration for the fimir - Alan Lee's Fomorian:

I then turned to Krakon Games' Fomorian range for the next recruits - Ross Whitehorn, sculptor and proprietor of Krakon Games describes these sculpts as "the sentry" and "the wayfarer".

Alongside those, I used different bits from Krakon Games (who supply an excellent range of fimir myeri fomorian heads!) to convert a magic user (a Draoi in the world of The Woods; or a Dirach to use fimir terminology). This was a last minute panic conversion using an industrial amount of superglue, and to be honest I'm amazed it worked.

First, I cut the legs, hands, and head off of a spare cultist-type I had from Pulp Figures. Then, I gave him the staff/scythe from a current-day Games Workshop Sylvaneth Branchwych, and stuck on a head, legs, and a tail from Krakon Games. I was having trouble working out what to do when painting the robes, so ended up blending purples and greens, giving him a kind of hippy tie-dye effect like he's a member of the Polyphonic Spree or something. He's accompanied by a Raven familiar from Reaper.

As always, time was running out before the big day, but there was one more model I just had to paint: Jes Goodwin's fimir prototype. One of my all time favourite miniatures.

The warband was rounded out with a couple of models I'd painted a while ago: First off, the Fimir Mutant I converted last year (to be fielded as a counts-as-Kelpie).

I then I dug out and rebased an Uilleann Piper as a Scealai for my warband - one of the original range of Myeri that Geoff launced Oakbound Games with, now OOP - and also a Barguest (aka one of Games Workshop's Fenrisian Wolves for their 40K Space Wolf army). Clan Slea were ready to enter the woods...

Many thanks to Geoff for the wonderful photo of the assembled warband - the terrain and painted background is all his work. And thanks to him for a wonderful day of gaming in the woods, which will be the subject of my next post...

Mutant Fimir - a month of Marsh special

Why are you wandering far from home, child? Have you not heard of the fen ague? Cover your face and hurry back. But keep to the paths, child, keep to the solid ground. Don't be tempted to cut across through the reeds and the moss, for there are things in the marsh, diseased and unholy things. These are strange times.

This is the month of Marsh - the month of all things Fimir. When last in Liverpool, I found a project I'd started (but never finished) for the month of Marsh about 3 years ago - a conversion based on this image from the first Citadel Compendium. Having found a copy of the Compendium not long after joining the oldhammer movement, and being obsessed with Fimir at the time, it just screamed out at me "mutant fimir!"

... a prefiguration from 1983 of things to come? Almost certainly not, and yet I couldn't shake the uncanny resemblance to our one eyed swampy friends. So I set out to assemble a mutant fimir in its honour.

Having done the initial conversion, I'd left the model unfinished - these are a couple of photos from before I'd even undercoated it. The main body of the model is an Otherworld miniatures troll, with the head from a Forgeworld Fimir and hair from the Daemonettes of Slaanesh sprue. Can't remember where I got the tentacles from.



Seemed a shame to abandon something I'd put a lot of effort into assembling, and the timing seemed appropriate, so I spent the past few days trying to get it looking suitably swampy and diseased. What do you think?




Alongside the original inspiration, it doesn't look too far off...

Battle Report: Assault on Fort Labger

Fimir? In Mongolia? Naturally.

As many of you will know, I was gutted to miss BOYL this year. Even though I was excited to head out to Mongolia for a couple of months, it still hurt to know what I was missing back home. But I was determined not to let the summer pass without any gaming, so I decided to take along a handful of figures with me to introduce my young lad James to the joys of rolling dice. He's already been indoctrinated via fighting fantasy, but this was the first time that I've played toy soldiers with him. We took along with us a floor plan of a castle that comes from a cardboard pop-out castle, with the idea that we could have a couple of simple "siege" style games. Ruleset? 3rd edition of course. Although mostly we just rolled lots of dice and moved the toys around.


The fimm of Clan Slea advance on the abandoned fort of Labger, hoping to establish a new stronghold for themselves. They are led by the warlord Gislea, and accompanied by a carrion crawler. A small and desperate band of elves and gnomes heard news of the advance of the vile fimir, and have barracaded themselves inside the fort to stop it falling into the wrong hands. (Why the fort of Labger? Quite simply, that was the name my son James chose for it because we were playing the game inside the "lab ger". A ger being what the Mongolians call yurts; and this was the ger that had been set up as a lab for the archaeologists to process their finds. Except they couldn't while we were playing, because we'd taken up the entire desk with our game. Scholarship be damned. Anyway, here's my son James pondering his strategy.)


While the fimir split up into two parties, one to try and gain entrance by the west gate, and one to gain entrance by the east gate, the Carrion Crawler seems more interested in the picnicking knight he's spied, and takes a closer look.


The one eyed menace (the fimir, not my son; he has two eyes) advances along the paths on either side of the castle, seemingly oblivious to the hail of bolts and arrows raining down on them from the ramparts.


The defenders try their best to hold the attackers back at the gates. They've not had a chance to reinforce the defences since their rushed occupation of the fort, and the fimir are using all their brute strength to try and smash through.


At the west gate, the fimir break through. However, with the group already weakened by the effects of elven longbows, they find themselves cut down. The one remaining fimm warrior is pushed back, what remains of the splintered gate slammed in his face and hastily barracaded shut.


To the east, however, the fimir are more successful, rampaging through the gate, through the defenders, and into the fort.


Meanwhile in the moat the carrion crawler, having feasted on knight, decides to spit out the vegetable portion of his picnic.


The battle rages on. The gnomes in particular fare badly, the club tails of the fimir smashing in their skulls. What's worse, the carrion crawler has also spread its path of pestilence to the fort. But then... what's this? The carrion crawler decides to turn on its patrons. (A twist in the tale here from James as he decides that the crawly thing is fed up being bossed around by the fimir!)


The battle turns; the fimm warriors lie betrayed and slain, and the carrion crawler turns its attention to the remaining warrior arriving as a reinforcement (the survivor from the west gate who has made his way all the way around to the east gate).


The warlord Gislea, severely wounded by the elven warriors, flees. The fort of Labger is safe. For now.




All in all, a fun little game in an exotic locale with just a few models and a fold out floor plan. A nice introduction to the rules for James, who got into the spirit of things with a couple of nice storytelling flourishes which really made the game. We decided that the fimir would not give up that easily, and so the siege continues...

From the mud

In the beginning was mud. The mud was without time and without end, and the creatures who dwelled in the mud lived in peace.

The gods came and divided the mud into the wet and the dry. The wet they called "sea" and the dry they called "land". Mud remained only at the forgotten edges of the earth.

The gods created creatures to dwell in the sea and creatures to dwell on the land.
The gods said to the creatures of the sea, "go forth and multiply". The gods said to the creatures of the land, "go forth and multiply".

The creatures of the mud were forgotten. The creatures of the mud cowered together at the edges of the earth. They had not been told to go forth. They had not been told to multiply. They cursed the gods who had forgotten them. They cursed the creatures the gods had favoured.

Again and again they cried at the skies with curse after curse and profanity after profanity. And they waited and listened for the wrath of the gods who they had cursed. They heard nothing. Nothing but the silence of the mud, and the screaming desire to do that which the gods had denied them:

Go forth and multiply.



So near and yet so far! I made a good start on these fimir and hoped to have them ready for the end of the month of Marsh, but frustratingly it looks like I'm not quite going to finish. Above is as far as I got. It's particularly frustrating given that all around me in the oldhammer community, people are successfully completing one hour painting challenges, and I can't get these done within a month... but the thing is, I think without the dangling carrot of a wargame coming up, it's really hard for me to paint to a deadline. Anyway, I'm up to Liverpool tomorrow so the detail work on these will wait until I get back.

In the meantime, here's a couple of team photos of the whole of Clan Slea so far. Turning into quite the horde.

The month of Marsh

Following on from the mild success of Gnomevember, I figure it's time for yet another arbitrary thematic challenge.

Welcome to (drumroll)... the month of Marsh!
And what is 'Marsh' all about? Why, everybody's favourite marsh dwellers the Fimir, of course! Nothing says "oldhammer" like these club-tailed, one eyed, reproductively deviant buggers.


The dying race of the fens needs you! Do you have any fimir (or not-fimir!) that you've yet to paint up? Do you want to develop fimir background? Do you want to engage in philosophical discussion on the ethics of including rape themes in wargaming? Well, now is the time!

To get you started, here are some of the key resources for understanding these misunderstood creatures:

* The most authoritative writeup of the history of the fimir's development in Games Workshop is by Luke Maciak on the blog Terminally Incoherent, including recollections from designers Graeme Davis (who gave birth to the species) and Tony Ackland.

* Zhu Bajie has a cultural history of the design of the fimir in three parts: Part 1: Origin of the Species, Part 2: Dawn of the Scredling, and Part 3: Alan Lee's Formorian. Across the series he explores their rooting in influences ranging from Irish Mythology to the Jim Henson film The Dark Crystal. Indeed, in Part 3, he shows us the back cover for Michael Scott's Irish Folk and Fairy Tales Volume 2, which is the very piece of artwork (by Alan Lee) that inspired the creators of the fimir:


* The authoritative (albeit unofficial, but who cares?) source for Fimir background is Warpstone Issue 25. Which I'm yet to read, because I haven't got a copy. Something to put on my "to do" list for Marsh!

* And in terms of official GW print sources White Dwarf 102 included background for the race, a 3rd ed army list, and a Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay adventure with the fimir in a starring role. Read all about it over at Realm of Chaos 80s, which includes a link to the WD article on scribd.


So what am I planning on doing for Marsh? Well, I'd like to get at least one article on this blog exploring their background, but in essence my plan for painting and gaming is very straightforward and hopefully achievable within this month or soon after: paint up the Diego Serrate and Nick Bibby fimir I've not yet finished (including the Meargh!), build myself a village for my fimm, and issue a challenge to Warlord Paul to come and take back the Elf sorceress Fayana, who Clan Slea have taken captive!

Ask not what the fimir can do for you, but what you can do for the fimir!