Vampire Counts - Rules Morsels

Thanks to Fields of Blood for the following new rules from the vampires book via the January White Dwarf.

Lore of the Vampires
Signature Spell is definitely Invocation of Nehek - on the most fundamental level it can restore "D6 + caster's Wizard level" of Wounds to friendly Undead unit within 6". Boosted version has 12" range, as well as 18" ones.

Other spells includes Raise Dead, Vanhel's Danse Macabre, Curse of Years, Gaze of Nagash, and Wind of Death.

Lore attribute: When the spell from the Lore of the Vampires is succefully casted, the wizard or any undead models within 12" restores 1 wound.


Rules tidbits:

All Vampire has rule called "Hunger" - You get to roll a D6 when the vampire kills one or more models in combat, on a 6 you recover one wound. (Vlad with Blood Drinker pass the roll on 4+.)

Also Vampire, including vampiric creatures "such as" Varghulf and Vargheist, can march. So Vargheist will be able to move 20" per turn almost all the time. (Not sure if Varghulf can also fly.)

Vampiric Powers: (not all of them, just those mentioned in WD)
Flying Horror - give the vampire ability to fly (unsure)
Dread Knight - ability to boost WS (don't know how - but a Vampire Llord with Dread Knight has WS of 9)
Quickblood - gains ASF.
Master of the Black Arts - get to re-roll one D6 for the Winds of Magic.
Dark Acolyte - add D3 to the total number of models raised by Nehek.
Red Fury - should be about the same. (unsure)


New units:

Coven Throne
- Basically a chariot mount for your Lord.
- Is a Large target with S5 T5 5W and 5+ save.
- has Spectral Steed rules (can move 8"), Undead, Vampiric, ASF (only for Handmaiden who has 2 S5 Attacks).
- has Random Attacks (2D6) at S3 from the spirit horde.
- Has Ward Save of 4+.
- Battle of Wills (before the first enemy rolls to hit against the character or the Throne, both player roll a D6 and add their LD value. Has effects based on the difference of the score).
* no effect (0 or less).
* suffer -1WS/BS.
* the enemy must re-roll successful To Hits.
* each model in the enemy unit strike each other (only 1 attack per model).
- Has Bound Spell (lvl3) allowing the Throne (and all of its crew) to re-roll either To Hit or To Wound rolls.

Mortis Engine
- Is a Rare Choice.
- Same stats as for the Throne (S5 T5 W5 Sv5+).
- has 2D6 attacks at S3 from the spirit horde.
- Undead, Terror, Spectral Steed, and Regeneration.
- can make Ghostly Howl attack.
- can take upgrade, allowing any wizards casting spell from the Lore of the Vampires to get +2 to their casting attempt. (ANY) miscast wizards rolls twice on the table and have the opponent choose the result).
- The Reliquary (at the start of your turn, roll 2D6 and add the current turn number - until the start of its next turn, all friendly Undead units within this number of range gains +1 bonus to their regeneration, 6+ if they don't have any, to a maximum of 4+. Also, all enemy units within this range suffers D6 hits at the strength equal to the turn number.

It also has some penalties if removed from play - by damaging every units within a random range at the strength equal to the current turn number.

Master Necromancer
- New Lord choice (ie. better Necromancer).

- Banshees and Cairn Wraith are now Hero.

Hexwraiths (special)
- Fast Cavalry with Ethereal (yes!) that can inflict automatic S5 hits on unit that it moved through.

Vargheist (special)
- Flying Monstrous Infantry that has Fly, Frenzy, and 3A.

Crypt Horrors (special)
- Monstrous Infantry unit with M6 S4 T5 I2 W3 A3, has Poisoned Attacks, Regeneration 5+, and Undead.

Vampuary is Go - New Vampire Counts Deluge

Wellity wellity wellity. It looks like the new vampire counts pics have hit a little before I was expecting. Here's what we got. But first, a word on the cover.

What the hell?

As Paul from Hobby Horse put so well,  GW have never really hit the nail on the head with their vampire characters. This appears to have transferred onto the cover of the new book. While I am super happy to be getting a new book, the emo-haired nutter on the front cover does not do it for me, with a cloak red riding hood would kill for. But enough of that, for where the cover sucks a bag of balls, the miniatures, for the most part, do not.

The Mortis Engine/Coven Throne.This looks a bit an the fantastic side. Like, Willy Wonka fantastic. (Which is a good thing) I am loving the whole ethereal section, with the whirling spirits and ghosts and such. I was worried about the large model release, but no longer. Fantastic. The bits in this kit will be very handy, quite apart from the model itself. This will be one I'll be looking forward to getting my hands on. Not tooo sure about the female vamp couch thing, but we'll see. It does also look a bit top-heavy, but I'll have to get my hands on the sprues to see. 

The new black knights/hex wraiths. All I can say about the black knights is about damn time. After at least fifteen years of waiting, they don't disappoint. Excellent. Nice mounts, (at last!) very characterful, love the armour and the slenderness of the models. The hex wraiths, well, they look pretty sweet, too, whatever the hell they are. Again, looks like a lot of tasty tasty bits in this kit. One please, barman!

Have you noticed the army of the barrow comment on the black knight page? What's this now?

Now, the oddest new addition, the vargheist/crypt horror kits. Jury is out on these lads. I think I like the vargheist, and they are a conversion away from a decent vargulf. I can see a unit of these boys (I'm assuming monstrous infantry) would look cool.

The crypt horrors though. Mmm. I was hoping for some kind of stitched together zombie golems. I guess GW thought they might have some competition from the myriad of companies who have released large undead models of this kind. They aren't blowing me away at first glance. I may yet assemble a unit of large undead from models I already have to represent these lads. As ghoul unit fillers though, maybe

And onto the characters. The new plastic wight king, just awesome of the sauce variety. Definitely on my list. As for the finecast releases, Krell looks good. There's something weird going on with his helmet, but I can't make it out from the angle of the photo. AS for Isabella, well, meh. She's a nice model, but not my cup of blood-flavoured tea. Added to this finecast scares me. It scares me deep down in my soul, with it's melty, bubbly, where's that guy's face gone failnosity. Krell might be my first, but if he's a finecast mutant, count me out of any more finecastery folks.

Overall, I a very happy fellow. I'm aching to see the rules for all this new shiny stuff, and the rules for the old faithful. Roll on January 14th.

Warhammer Forge - 3 New Fimir Revealed

So, there are three new fimir models! That's the second rank of my fianna fimm unit sorted. I love the shouting guy in the middle, but they are all excellent. I wonder are they 40x40 or 50x50? I would imagine monstrous infantry, which is 40x40.

It's hard to articulate just how happy I am about this.

Warhammer Forge - It's a Fimir!

Behold his magnificence. The new Warhammer Forge fimir. Joy. Looks like I know what my first post-Christmas purchase will be...

Christmas Mumblings - 2011 Recap

I feel the urge for a meandering end of year mumble, and seeing as I can ramble on as much as I like on this little corner of the interwebs, I shall indugle myself. It is Christmas after all.

It's been a pretty amazing year for Warhammer Fantasy Battle. The new army books are  in my opinion, a real step up for the game, having taken a more balanced approach to the armies and taking us away from the intolerable power-creep of 7th edition books. More of that. The fact that the next army book out, by all account is for my own army, the vampire counts, has me more excited than a puppy in a room full of brightly coloured bouncy balls. Keeping with books, I really liked storm of magic.

Wait, hear me out. 

It's great fun. It's not a tournament friendly supplement, unless you want to instigate mass bloodshed. It's a great variant on the game that takes itself not at all seriously. I mean, a spinner? That said, you can field a shedload of different monsters, blow up buildings and generally have a laugh, which is kind of what this whole hobby thing is about. Plus, it's got a fimir in it.

On the flipside, Tamurkhan. What a book. Now that's a serious warhammer book. Beautiful is the only way to describe it, in it's production, content and the fact it has a chaos dwarf list. More of this, Warhammer Forge. More now.

On the model front, we've had some good times, and some bad times. On the plus side, GW has upped the ante once again, giving is some just wonderful plastic models. This was the year of the gribbly, with the arachnarok, warsphinx, thundertusk and so on. Some really great kits got released. The tomb guard, ironblaster, Nurgle champion, wraith, all excellent. However, stories of malformed finecast figures continue to terrify me. I am quite reticent about buying anything finecast from GW. I mean, why should it take three days to clean up one figure?! Jack from Fields of Blood shocked me with the amount of work he had to put in on his Haemonculus. Especially when I have bought many resin figures from other companies and never seen more than the teeniest of air bubbles, if anything. Why can't GW get this right?

There have been other good releases, the liquid greenstuff is legend. Finecast brush, not so much. Dreadfleet was a wonderful looking game, and actually very enjoyable. Seeing as I play vampire counts, chaos dwarves and fimir, this has been a good year, and next year promises more. A new VC army book and model releases in January (joy), the new monstrous arcana book from Warhammer Forge (more fimir) and rumours of a new version of either Bloodbowl or Necromunda,(or something else entirely). I'm pretty a pretty happy fellow.

On my own projects, I started this year planning to continue my vampire counts and start chaos dwarves and fimir (using the warriors of chaos list). Rumours of a new chaos dwarf list halted the dwarves, and as I got engrossed in the fimir I decided to concentrate on them until I had 2,400 points done. I have about two thirds of the fimir built now, with the first unit of fimm well under the paintbrush. I've been experimenting with getting decent water effects, and a goodly fimir update is not far away. For 2012, I imagine I'll stick with the fimir. It takes me a while to get an army done (vampire counts ten years and counting) but I'm planning on taking the fimir to those tournaments that will permit them, so I have to stay focused. Added to that I'm really enjoying the project.

Oh, and on another happy development, there's this.

With that, I wander off into the Christmas season. Have a good one folks, that's all from the mumblings for now!

Forge World Jigsaw - Part 2

The second part of the Forge World jigsaw is up. I'm even more sure it's a Fimir now, given the detailing on the leg armour. No sign of a tail though...

All the same, I think we're still on for a new fimir model (I wonder if there is more than one sculpt) in the new year. I've put the two pieces together for a more complete view.

Dip - The Army Painter Guide

In recently had a package from Maelstrom drop through my letterbox. It contained a few bits and bobs, mostly tools, putties and general hobby stuff. I have to say, liquid greenstuff is a wondrous product. As soon as you use it it becomes something you just have to have in your toolkit. Anyhow, in the box I saw a guide from army painter. I imagined it was just an ad sheet, but after a quick flick it turned out to be a very handy little guide.

The guide goes through all the basics of dipping, from clean-up to basing. While I don't really need this, they do list all their primers, paints, examples of results of the various dip tones, tips in varnishing, basing and some nice examples of finished armies. There are also two excellent little tips on getting the best out of the army painter dip.

1. Keep it warm. In cold weather, pop the tin on a radiator or in a container of warm water to help it flow better, but not too warm or it won't shade properly.

2. Thinning. The dip thickens over time, so adding a tiny amount of mineral turpentine can thin it to a decent consistency again. One teaspoon at a time until you're happy with the thickness.

Not at all bad for a free promo booklet, worth picking up if you use or are planning to use the dip!

Fimir - Fimm Musician WIP

After the weekend painting sessions withe RedCraig I had three fimm pretty much base-coated. I went on and dipped the musician after adding some freehand tattoos. There's still a good way to go with him yet though. I like to add more highlights and detail over the dip. Dip is great, but I still feel a mini needs more work afterwards. Still, he's coming together nicely, I was wondering how his bronze necklace would work out, and so far so good.

Painting with RedCraig

Basecoating Fimm...

This weekend my long-time wargaming compadre RedCraig of Blog of Grudges fame called on me for a weekend of painting, drinking and more painting. In fact, I sit here in the wee hours of the morning with the RedCraig cursing quietly under his breath at the desk behind me as his desire to paint battles with his need for sleep. We've had a good innings today, Craig has gotten some hammers done, replete with flaming orange beards. Nice. Some dwarf war golems are rapidly taking shape, destined to become pretty excellent unit fillers. As for myself, three more fimm warriors are approaching done, but I'm way too tired to try freehand tattoos now...

Hammer time.

Perhaps tomorrow.

I'm also waiting on some water effects to arrive so I can finish the fimm movement tray after discovering during some tests that Vallejo still water is a little on the garbage side. I have high hopes for this Enviro Tex Lite stuff. Fingers crossed.

Forge World - Fimir Warrior?

The Forge World newsletter popped into my inbox earlier, with a tantalising shot of an upcoming release for 2012. I was about to move on when I noticed it had three fingers. It had three toes. Am I looking at one of the new Forge World fimir warriors??

Siege Rules - Blood in the Badlands

In  the continuing series of  'out of nowhere' releases from GW, we're getting the first reports of a new hardback campaign book for warhammer called Blood in the Badlands on warseer, the first of several, according to rumour. The blurb goes thus:

'Blood in the Badlands is a 96 page hardback campaign book for Warhammer. Inside you'll find new background, a complete set of campaign rules, four massive multi-player scenarios, a Warhammer Siege expansion as well as additional rules for playing Warhammer in vast caverns below ground. All this is framed within an exciting studio campaign, as eight players, including the White Dwarf team, seek to carve out the largest empire so the ensorcelled castle, Fozzrik's Flying Fastness, will land in their realm and its amazing treasures within can be claimed.'

At £20, this seems a pretty decent price for what sounds like all sorts of fun. I'm a major siege fan, so I'm hoping there might be a plastic kit or two to go along with this release. I'm hoping naval rules are coming along in this series too, and I must say I'm loving the direction GW are taking with 8th ed. I can barely keep up with all the warhammer goodness flowing out of Nottingham these days. Long may it continue.

The Mumblings - 1 Year Old!

I just realized that Mr Saturday's Mumblings turned a year old back on the 2nd of November! Happy birthday to me. That went fast.

Keep dropping by in year two for the continuing fimir army project (update coming), yet more undead, the kick off (hopefully) of my chaos dwarf force and general warhammer and gaming ramblings, rumours and general grooviness.

Vampuary - Confirmed

 The latest rumours from Warseer seem to be confirm the vampire counts as the next warhammer army book release, in January. It seems vampire counts players are in for quite the treat in the new year. I am agog with anticipation.

New info on vamps, all appears to be 100% accurate:

• They are coming January (100% now)
• Mortis engine/coven throne (unsure if this is final name) - plastic kit. apparently HUGE. We may be talking arachnarok base for this thing...(edit: thinking a bit more about it, it will probably be a chariot base like the sphinxes; but I think these things will be bigger than your average chariot from what I've heard)
• Wraith riders/black knights - confirmed dual plastic cavalry kit
• Monstrous infantry unit (unsure of name) - plastic kit. Has option for wings. Adding the wings is probably a unit option and may not be a completely separate unit.
• New finecast krell model
• Black coach is indeed getting finecasted (damn Harry being right again)

New Beastmen Beasties

GW appears to have fired us another curveball this month, in the form of new plastic and finecast models for the beasts of chaos. It's great to see the Cygor, Ghorgon and Jabberslythe finally get models from GW. The plastic kit, I'm guessing Cygor/Ghorgon looks good, at first glance the Ghorgon option looks a lot better than the Cygor, which looks slightly awkward to me, but I'll hold final judgement until I see it in the flesh. There looks to be loads of bits on this kit, perpare for an avalanche of converted chaos giants. That is, if anyone used them, though I can plenty of parts for a siege giant for my chaos dwarves in this kit.

The Jabberslythe looks great, but I wish it was plastic. It's really anyone's guess with GW these days, isn't it?

Thanks to Fields of Blood for the image.

Campaignhammer - Running a Long-Term Campaign

For some years now, myself and my gaming compadres have been trying to put together a system for running a decent warhammer campaign. We've had some successes, with mini campaigns run over a long weekends and some attempts at designing our own system. But the holy grail of campaign gaming eluded us, the long-term narrative campaign. Recently, it seems as if we have cracked this particularly hard gaming nut. The problems ranged against you doing this are manifold. Coordinating player's games and orders, people living in various parts of the country and thus the problem meeting for games, life in general and campaign fade out syndrome, to name a few.

Using a modified version of the original mighty empires rules plus various extra rules from old White Dwarf articles, we've set up a campaign running among nine players with a dedicated non-player gm. We've set up a blog for all map updates, fluff and general campaign news, as well as a dedicated email group. I think the key to it all is the gm. someone willing to run the campaign long-term. It's a lot of work, and we're lucky enough to have such a person. That in place, I have taken on the mantle of map-maker and updater (see the pretty picture above) which also helps. When we meet up for a campaign weekend, I have a large-scale version of the map printed out so we can set the game up easily.

We've so far been lucky with players too, everyone knows it's a commitment, but not overly so. Tabletop games can be resolved without playing the actual game due to an alternate system, but those the want to and have the time to play can. We've had only one player fall at the first hurdle and just not participate, and as we have nine, that's not too bad as we can compensate.

As a big fan of narrative games I'm loving it. There will be scenario driven games depending on the hex and various conditions, and it's way more fun to have the host of  the vampire lord Stephane Dreux send his rotting fleet to brave the magical storms and land on the island of Asur's Rest to assault the remote dwarven coastal settlement there than x vampire counts army battles y dwarven army.

We're still only in year 2, but it looks like it will run it's course. We still need to settle on specific victory conditions, as I think all good campaigns need to have a definite finish point, or they just fizzle. We're having a blast so far though!

The Vampire General - Corpse Cart

In our continuing series of investigations into the vampire counts army, we come to the corpse cart. A relatively new addition to the vampire counts army, (or a really old one reinvigorated, depending on how long you've been playing) the corpse cart is an interesting choice, if relatively fragile. Behold the stats:

M WS  BS  S  T  W  I    A    LD
4   2    0   2  4   2   1  2D6   7

Special rules are: undead, miasma of deathly vigour and regeneration. It can carry either an Unholy lodestone or Balefire. More on these options later.

It's a support unit which doesn't count toward your core allowance. It's a mount option for your necromancer, but honestly it doesn't offer him enough protection and takes up valuable character points. While it does get thunderstomp, it isn't a combat unit. It's most valuable use is buffing your units and as a dispel dice soak.

Miasma of deathly vigour is a bound spell (3) giving Always Strikes First until the start of the next magic phase. This can work nicely with a vampire with the nightshroud. However, with most undead infantry units it is of little consequence whether they strike first or not, but it is useful to hamstring units that normally do have ASF, like high elves. It might also be useful for blunting those ogre charges.

Balefire can be very useful, (-1 to enemy casting rolls for casters within 24") but I think to really get the most out of this you need two corpse carts. -2 to all casting rolls can be really annoying. To an army that relies on the magic phase and includes units who are impervious to mundane attacks, this is a good choice. Getting both carts within 24" of the enemy caster can be a little tricky, however.

The unholy lodestone grants an additional wound to targets of Invocation of Nehek within 6" of the cart. It's quite meh, unless you have ethereal units (it won't heal vampire units) within it's 6" range. It's irrelevant how many lodestones you have in range too, you still get only 1 additional wound. Now, if it healed vampiric units...

Overall, the corpse cart seems really useful until you look under the hood. It's almost worth taking, and I'm sure there's a build out there it might work well in, but for me, the points are still best spent elsewhere. Shame, as I love the model. Perhaps if the new army book improves the core choices it might be a more viable option.

Artist - Kris Kuksi

While not really a gaming post, I had to pop up a link to this guy's site. A friend sent it onto me today and I was pretty blown away. An astounding selection of work, with the sculpture being of particular interest, especially when some of the pieces are entitled 'Church Tank'. In context to modelling and conversion, it may actually offer some folks a healthy dose of inspiration.

Worth a click folks. Kris Kuksi's site.

Fimir - Vanished into the Mists

Things have been busy lately. I don't mean on the hobby side either. Work has been overwhelming, so I have lifted not a brush to my fimir in the last month, which may explain the lack of any updates to the bog daemons.

I don't know if it's just me, (which it probably is) but when I haven't done anything hobby-related for more than a couple of weeks I start getting very twitchy. The lead pile seems that bit bigger. Added to this my copy of Dreadfleet arrived the other day, so I decided to not even open it until Christmas, as I am desperately trying not to get distracted from the fimir when I do have time to start up again. Now Tamurkhan comes out with it's new and spangly chaos dwarf list. Oh my.

Anyhow, back to the point. Ish. I can see light at the end of the tunnel, so some newly painted examples of fimm-hood should be appearing in a couple of weeks. Or so. The project is still very much alive. If I can resist starting a new Tamurkhan chaos dwarf army, I can resist anything.

Tamurkhan - Out at Last!

Tamurkhan, the throne of chaos is out at last. Priced at a hefty £45 sterling, it's a tad expensive, but a seriously beautiful book, and I suspect one that most warhammer players will find irresistible. Certainly I'll be having one, as it features a new list for my beloved chaos dwarves. You can see it here.

I'm also avidly awaiting the upcoming monstrous arcana book, not least for the reason it has rules for fimir warriors in there.

Vampire Counts Rumours - Vampuary?

So, there have been strong rumours going around the interwebs that the vampire counts are the next army books out for Warhammer. When I first heard this I was pretty sceptical, but since then there have been more persistent rumours surfacing, most notably from the mysterious Harry on Warseer. You can read the thread here.There's another rumour round-up going on at Carpe Noctem here.

I had assumed that the Empire was next out of the traps, and there is still some scepticism about the VC being next up. There are certainly armies that need a more urgent update, wood elves, Bretonnians etc, but the vc DO need a new book for sure. With the boretastic mono build dominating the scene (with the interesting recent black knight bus causing some ripples, thankfully) the army has quickly grown stale in 8th ed. I'm a lifelong die-hard undead player, and even I have grown weary of the vc as they currently stand. Sure, you can make any list you want, but if you want to be commanding anything apart from bone-meal after turn three, you gotta use some variety of 'the list'.

There was some discussion on episode 34 of Garagehammer, with both Dan Heelan and Wayne Kemp making guest appearances. The consensus there towards an imminent vc book was one of cautious scepticism.

However, assuming the vc book IS next, what kind of goodies are we looking at? There have been some more common suggestions.

1. Flesh golems. Not the first time this has come up, and the current rumour is they are unlike any other monstrous infantry in the game. Ooo.

2. New plastic dual kit. Black coach and mysterious new unit. Presumably some other type of carriage/chariot. We already have a corpse cart, so this would need to be pretty different than another dead guy in a cart.

3. New plastic black knights. This is well overdue, so I hope this pans out. There are rumours of a new mounted unit, possibly mounted skeletons.

4. A return to the bloodlines. This would be great, as the current vc book is very Von Carstein orientated. I think this one is more a wishlist than a strong rumour, however.

5. Not new zombies. This hasn't popped up anywhere. Why the hell not? The clown-hand zombies will always have a place in my heart, but it's time for a new kit.

There are no real rule-change rumours as yet, just mild muttering about a major nerf to both vanhels and invocation, as well as a possible adjustment to skeleton warriors. I wont comment as of yet, as these are still low level rumours.

With the recent Terrorgheist, wraith and banshee additions, it seems odd that a new book is so close, but hey, I'll take it. More rumours as the come in, here on the mumblings.

Don't Listen to the Voices - Staying Focused on a Project

Of late I've had very little time for hobby. Work has pretty much sucked up all the time available, and then some. It doesn't help that my office is also my hobby cave, so I occasionally look over my shoulder and sigh forlornly at the batch of unpainted models waiting my attention. Poor little mites. It doesn't help that this is only one of a number of projects I have on the go, even I DID have time for it right now. I'm going to take a breather to write this though, so I feel I've had some hobby input this month.

I have noticed also, as the momentum on my fimir project has been mired down until it is now barely idling, that the voices have started.

Don't pretend you don't hear them too.

The little whispers that make you wonder if you should start that new project, surely you'll be able to fit it in? Just one new model, as a break? That gang/character/vehicle/unit/team won't take long. And look at all that new stuff, looks nice eh? Of course, the occasional rummage through the tower of lead/plastic/resin (you know what I mean there too) reveals a model or two you've really been meaning to paint for years now. It's all very distracting.

Personally I have three warhammer armies on the go, a pile of mighty empires campaign markers to do, some terrain to finish and a blood bowl team to assemble. Years of painting right there. I know this is a common phenomenon, as perfectly illustrated by a post in the excellent Iron Mitten. Check it out here. So, there's a whole plethora of reasons we do this, which is not my focus today. Rather, how does one combat these distracting little whispers? I have managed to dismiss all the notions of parking the fimir to work on other projects (when I have time again) and here's how I'm doing it:


1. Pick a project you're passionate about. The more you love it, the more likely it will get finished.

2. Keep up a decent rate of work. Give yourself short - term goals. "I'll paint ten rank and file this week." Small steps done regularly are better than nothing.

3. Don't take on too much at once. Concentrate on achievable chunks. Don't tackle all fifty goblins at once. Do them in batches of ten, or even five, and intersperse them with more exciting parts of the army.

4. Keep and eye on the reward. Keeping reminding yourself how great it will all look when done. How you will bask in glory and the wonder of your peers.

5.  Use the forums. The internet is FULL is forums running painting threads, army plogs etc. These are mostly full of people who will cheers you on. It also helps when you get pinged for updates. It's harder to give up if you've got folks egging you on. I've made huge use of this, and it's an ENORMOUS encouragement.

For those of you lucky enough to have local clubs or gaming stores, tell people how you're getting on, bring in what you have so far, ask for advice. It's all a big help.

6. Take a break.  

"What, but you said?!"

Forget what I said. That was then. I don't mean dustcover the whole project for weeks, but don't hammer away at it every night either. Take a night off, watch a movie, go for a bracing stroll (or a bracing troll, whatever tickles your fancy), take your partner out for dinner, all that good stuff. Hmm. This sounds a bit patronising. Still! it's no less true for all that. It'll revitalise you when you return to the painting table.

7. Talk to your minis. No, I'm kidding. Or am I? I am. Am I?


Hopefully there will be something here to help keep you from having six half painted armies while waiting for number seven to arrive in the post. Now, where's that fimm I was working on...

Monstrous Arcana - Forge World Do Fimir

I mentioned a little while ago that GW seem to be releasing new products bases entirely on what have in my personal wish-list. I like: vampire counts, chaos dwarves and fimir. Can you see why I'm happy? The latest in this series of 'keep Mr Saturday happy' is the news that fimir warriors will be included in the new Monstrous Arcana book. Hot damn. I guess they will be monstrous infantry. But hell, the timing! I started my fimir army earlier this year when most warhammer players would have looked at a fimir and went "That's a what now?" and now not only does the dirach get new rules in SoM, but the fimm are due for a NEW MODEL RELEASE. Joygasm.

 Just to further spread the happy times, here's the first inkling of how the new fimir might look, and he looks good. I like the tapered snout, it looks meaner without losing the fimir head-shape, and the armour on his back is a great idea. I would guess by his gear and tail this lad is a fianna fimm. The Celtic influence looks strong too, with the swirls on the armour. One thing of note, his feet look a little more zoat - like than before. Something in that, I wonder?

The fancy of a madman, I'll warrant.

The Re-Introduction of the Chaos Dwarves into Polite Society

I've been thumbing through the new Ogre Kingodom book and I was pleased to see more mention of my little pals the Dawi Zharr. It turns out there's a healthy amount of trade between the ogres and Zharr Naggrund, and once again an army owes it's weapons/armour to the industry of the chaos dwarves, as the leadbelchers can now attest. It's very gratifying to see the dwarves o' evil folded back into the GW mythos after so long shunned and despised...

It's been a good year for the evil stunties, with Forgeworld producing a new line of the evil little fellows and the upcoming (it's been upcoming a while now) Tamurkhan - Throne of Chaos promising a new list for the long-neglected chaos dwarves. Other companies have been producing a nice line of dwarves too, with the Dwerg from Bederken miniatures being my firm favourite. I prefer the 3rd edition chaos stunties, all mutations, spiky armour and even spikier beards. No big hats here please.

I've put my dwarves on hold pending the new list, as I had been using the Indy GT list, and before I build any more of the army I want to see what options there are in the Tamurkhan list. I'm quite eager to paint up the little fellows, and I'm very happy with the test model, but I'll have to wait for now. My fimir are keeping me quite engaged in the meantime, and I'm having a blast putting that army together.

Fimir - Fimm Champion Finished

After a couple of months of assembly, I recently pulled out the brushes to start painting up what I have built so far. First up was the fimm unit champion, the fian. I was very curious to see how my wee converted fimir would turn out, it's the culmination of a fair bit of rumination into how to make a human-scale fimir that I could make an army's worth of. I used the same scheme as the test model, for the most part, with a couple of alterations. I'm pretty happy with him, and it gives me an insight into how the whole unit will look when it's done.

Time to start the fimir batch painting machine I guess.

B*stardCon6 - Campaign Time

Once again, the con that isn't really meets up. This time, we initiate our warhammer campaign, so a weekend of campaign playtesting and grudge games await. We've been slowly gathering momentum behind our Sundered Isles campaign, which we're documenting on CampaignHammer. Hopefully this will be a mighty record of the war to come and an aid to anyone else hoping to run a warhammer campaign. If we can pull it off ourselves, that is.

Blood Bowl - Field of Dreams

Listening to Zlurpcast recently, I came across an interview with the man behind FF Fields, a new company who do a range of bloodbowl fields, or pitches, depending on your location. All I can say is goddam. They look fantastic. They do standard designs, or custom fields with your logo, end zone text and so on, in either roll-up or six part hard plastic. This is a great new product for Bloodbowl, and now that I've seen it, the need to have is rising steadily.

Space Hulk - Still Good

This is an actual game shot. Poor guy.

Recently a good friend of mine travelled down to visit, and both of us being gamers it wasn't long before we were staring at the games cupboard wondering what to try. We picked 1st edition Spacehulk. (I do have the 3rd edition set, but to my shame I haven't even punched it yet.) We skimmed over the rules to remind ourselves how to play, and settled down to an evening of beer and bolters. Storm bolters, that is.

The last time I played this game was well over a decade ago. I'm happy to say my enjoyment of it has diminished not a jot in the intervening years. It really is an all-time classic, the sheer tension of the game draws you in to the point that when you next glance at the clock the comment is; "Holy crap, it's that late?!"

I think I'll be punching my 3rd ed set soon.

Fimir - New Weapons, New Unit

A bit of a red letter day here on Mr Saturday's Mumblings. After a serious amount of sawing, shaving, cutting, glueing, sculpting, casting, cursing, filing, pinning and eye-straining, the first unit of fimm are assembled. Oh yes. I will put aside for a moment the fact that that they still have to be actually painted, and that I have another unit of twenty to do after that. Such thoughts could drive a man from his wits. Let us instead concentrate on the fact that twenty fimm warriors now stand ready to defend their lands from all comers....aaaaand possibly do a bit of raiding too.

In other news, after seeing the fine weapons borne by the fimir of clan Myeri on Fimm McCool's Games Orkshop, I resolved to supply my own fimm with such fine arms as soon as possible. Thanks to Old Fogey on TWF, I soon had a cache of dwarf axes in my sweaty grasp. I wanted to have the axes look vaguely Celtic, and a lot less finely crafted than dwarf weapons, as the shearl artisans of a fimir clan have limited resources at best. Here's my first effort at such a weapon.

Before I delve in to painting the fimm, I have some work to do on the movement trays. Base X of War have been very accommodating with my awkward orders, and I just need to administer a little nip and tuck before they are ready for priming, and then it's full belt into the paintravaganza.

Bloodbowl Team Manager - Counting Down...

I'm a bit of a Bloodbowl fan. It's arguably one of the best games ever published in my oh so humble opinion. Despite it's strange relationship with Games Workshop (it baffles me why they don't support it more fully) it has a special place in a lot of gamer's hearts. So the upcoming release of Bloodbowl Team Manager from Fantasy Flight Games is getting a place on my shelf, I can tell you. After the glowing review from Garagehammer I find myself eagerly awaiting the release of the game.

Tick tock...

Nurgle Lord - New Photo

I spotted this on Hobby Horse, a photo of the new Nurgle lord out next month. Very nice, I have a soft spot for Nurgle (it's probably infected) and this guy is great. I'm a fan of the new plastic characters, I must say. I'd like more options on the sprues, but it's going in a great direction. GW seems to be playing a blinder lately. Keep it up...

Fimir - The Fimm Keep Coming

It's been a while since I posted any assembly work as I've been mostly working on fimm warriors. This fellow is the second last guy for my first unit of twenty fimm warriors, a hooded fimm pelting along at full tilt. Only one more to go, but I do have a second unit of twenty to do.

I think I'll intersperse fimm warrior making for unit two with putting the war-dogs and human horsemen together. After that it's just the battle standard bearer and I have two thousand points assembled. I do have plans for another five hundred points after that, but one step at a time...

Fimir - Other Clans, Other Fans, Part 2

Since the first part of this article was posted, more fimir goodness has come to my notice. It seems the fimir are still hanging in there by the tips of their fingernails, the recent press they got in Storm of Magic having done the race no harm at all in raising their profile.

I've gotten more shots of Steve Mack's upcoming fimir warband. The great conversion jobs he has produced make me wonder about carving up a few nobles myself, as blasphemous as that sounds.

The components he's used on the models fit well, the great axe wielding noble really is nicely posed and is very convincing as a converted model, once he's painted he'll be a bit of a show stopper, methinks.  The musician in particular is a favourite, and give a little insight as to what we might have seen if the fimir had had more models produced.

While I was on holiday one of my posts was commented on by a fellow that goes by the moniker of Fimm McCool. Taking a look at his blog I was astounded to find another madman attempting to build a fimir army. Not only that, but his influences for the army were so similar to my own I thought 'This is a type of goat moment' Allow me to explain.

The internet is a wondrous place. No matter what your predilections, likely there is a site, blog or chatroom for you. Such is the wealth of material that were one to type flaming goat wearing tophat eating a bowl of shrimp into the search engine, the answer would be: specify type of goat.

The fimir are a niche army in a fairly unusual hobby, so the chances of finding another current blog concerning the building of an army of them citing influences like the Dark Crystal and Celtic mythology are fairly remote. Cue Fimm McCool's Games Orkshop.

Fimm has taken the Henson influence one step further, actually basing some of his characters on Henson's creations. There's a goodly dose of Cletic myth in there too, his kelpies are a great idea, and look pretty creepy. There are some really nice ideas, such as using dwarf weapons for the fimm. When I saw that my thoughts were 'Dwarf axes, they look pretty Celtic. Damn it, why didn't I think of that?'

As Fimm is a propmaker, one expects big things for this army.  On a side note, his desert terrain boards look bloody fantastic.

It's great for my own fimir project to come across these other takes on the cyclopean bog-lovers. As the fimir are not that well represented, it's easy to get stuck with the look of the existing models as you don't have many other gamers armies to bounce off of and take ideas from. Finding those brave few who are doing cool things with the fimir gives me some fresh ideas to stea...ah, I mean be inspired by. Thanks to all, keep at it folk!

Fimir - Other Clans, Other Fans

Most recently I've been trudging toward the end of assembling my first twenty man unit of fimm warriors. This unit contains mostly converted savage orcs from the new plastic set, a smattering of Bloodmoon minis bog raiders, and a single Heroquest fimir for completeness. There is a four man filler in there too, which has taken on a life of it's own and is now fairly complex in itself. Mostly though, it's comprised of the savage orcs. These fellows have had a tail added, their necks sawed and shaved away and new heads sculpted for them, sometimes I go nuts and add a helm, hood or mask, belly shield, severed head and so on. It's a fair dose of work but watching the unit come together is VERY satisfying. I am now in danger of going completely nuts though.

So!

Looking over what I have assembled, I have:

Twenty fimm with full command (chaos warrios)
Meargh (sorceror lord on disc)
Six Fianna Fimm (chaos ogres)
Crom - The Great Worm (hellcannon)

Most of these are a little further along than in the pictures shown. For the 2000pt target, I need:

Twenty more fimm with full command (chaos warriors)
Five wardogs (warhound)
Five Albion tribes horsemen (marauder horse)
Fimir noble with clan standard (exalted hero bsb)

Not doing so bad so, but this doesn't count actually painted the feckers. I have almost everything I need, bar three horsemen and some movement trays and bases. Thanks Gods for Base-X-of War. I have plans for the next 500pts consisting of ideas for bile worm mounted fimir heroes, hag worms as dragon ogres, fen beasts as trolls, Albion tribesmen as marauders, Balor of the evil eye as a daemon prince and warp-spasmed fianna fimm as spawn.

So a ways to go yet. This does tend to make one go a little insane as one sculpts the teeth onto another fimm. So, for a little perspective I plunged into the internets to see if there were any other lost souls who had attempted to build their own fimir clan. There were a few notables, and this leads me on to part two of this post, the others. If any of you object to me using your images, let me know.

There are a fair amount of fimir out there in folks collections, but very few armies. Two of the best I've seen are from Dreadaxe and Angry Lawyer. Dreadaxe has mostly used the Heroquest fimir. These lads are made from an incredibly hard plastic, so I can only imagine how crazy converting them all must have been. There are some great conversion in there too, and I have to say a completely ass-kicking display board, the idea for which I will rob remorselessly when the time comes to do mine. The sheer effort required in building a fimir army is enough to make the mind boil, but as you can see the finished article is well worth it.

Angry Lawyer's fimir are a little different. While there are a fair amount of the Heroquest fimir in there too, he had had a go at doing shearl and a giant fimir (daemon-maniac?) as well as a good sprinkling of Nick Bibby's ogre sized fimir. Another labour of love, where almost every figure requires a fair bit of attention. The great thing about building an army like this is you can go pretty crazy with the converting once you've settled on an army list that's going to foster your cyclopean fen-dwellers.

There area also some noteable units and single figures that I've seen. Bruenor's large fimir unit is a really splendid job, I like the addition of the shields. The skin tone is very pleasing too. I had a time considering the skin tone for my own fimir, and decided on a medium flesh tone, but these fellows would have been my choice had I seen them before I committed.

Hadriel Caine  of Tom's Boring Mordheim Forum (It's not boring) is building a fimir warband using bog raiders from Bloodmoon miniatures. He's made great use of the multi-part figures to do an array of hand and weapon swaps. Nice!

Most recently I was contacted by Steve Mack, who gave me a look at his heavily converted fimir noble and standard bearer, which are both looking fantastic. They are again, converted from the Nick Bibby sculpts (it's not like there's much choice for fimir) but have a plethora of pieces from various models in there. My favourite bits are the large shield from the dwarf lord, the pistol and the earring as part of the standard! Great work, I hope to see more from Steve.

So, after having a look at what others were up to, I'm ready to take a deep breath and plunge back into the fimir project. I will probably paint the first fimm unit as a way of taking a break from assembly and sculpting for a while. Look for an update soon! Here are some other pics whose authors I can't recall, but are really rather groovy.