A Year of Mumbling - 2012 Review

Another year of hobby is coming to an end, and it's time for a look back over 2012 before it slips out the window forever.

It's been a very fimir flavoured year, this one. I started the project in 2011, but it only really took off about half way into the year. Most people would have churned out the entire army and started into the next one by now, but allow me to regail you with a variety of excuses as to why this didn't happen.

• I am a slow painter.
• I'm converting about 90% of the army, in many cases sculpting parts from scratch.
• I have two small children. For those gamer dads out there, this bullet point will be more than sufficient excuse to explain my tardiness.
• I have a very small amount of hobby time. I gnash my teeth in jealousy when I read posts about people having all weekend to work on their army. B*stards.

So, look at all my excuses, with bullet points and everything. With this army, however, I am monkinshly ignoring any other projects (bar one massive exception. Well, maybe two.) until I have the army at 2,400 points. So, what did I get done this year?

I finished the first fimm unit. This was the first unit for the army, and was heavily converted. It took an insane amount of time to finish, being started in January 2011, and finished Summer 2012. It didn't really get off the blocks until Summer 2011, but that's still the bones of a year. A YEAR. For one unit. I did assemble two other fimir units to primed level during this time as well as a chaos dwarf destroyer. And I painted some terrain. Still.

After this, I decided to treat myself to one of the fimir characters. I've had the meargh model since the mid nineties, and she finally came to the painting table. She was very fun to work on, especially her base, and I'm extremely happy with the result. I got some great feedback on her from folks both here and on the forums, which directly contributed to the staff conversion. She still needs a floating stone altar to sit her on, but that's for another day.

Delirious with joy after getting a unit done in less than a calender year, I took my fimir to their first tournament, where they performed well considering I had not practised with the list one whit. It was very nice to get them on the table and motivated me to get on with the army.

After this, I had to park the fimir to paint up a massive bloody castle for a friend of mine. Somehow I had agreed to paint the thing for him and so it was out with the big drybrush and some thousands of years later one Hudson & Allen castle and keep were done. A great kit, I must say, lots of detail but still easy enough to paint.

Once this was done, I considered the next fimir unit to work on. The options were the half-dead, the human tribesmen or another character. I also received my fimir heads cast in resin about this time, which made me quite happy as the detail captured was pretty fantastic.

In the end I built both some half-dead test models and the fimir character, a low level wizard this time. He's going to be a lot of fun to paint.

Once I primed up the models, I decided to plough on with the half-dead, as I need to get the blocks done to bulk up the army, which brings us up to date. At the moment I've painted three members of the unit, and am currently assembling the rest. The filler is going to be particularly fun, the fimir slave driver whipping his undead charges into battle is probably my favourite model from the unit.

So, there you go. A small amount for most gamers, but fair to middling for me. It must be noted that the feedback and advice I get from here and the various forums is invaluable to me, both on a critical level and as a source of continuing motivation, because let's face it, doing an all converted fimir army is not the easiest project one could undertake. But I'm devoted to getting the army done, the crucial target being September 2013. It's going to be a busy year on the Mumblings next year.

With that, I bid ye a merry Christmas and a delightful new year! No doubt the mounds of resin, plastic and metal will reach new and dangerous heights over the holidays. Remember, being crushed by a collapsing hill of sprues is not a dignified way to check out, so mind yerselves.