Back to Secret League

Fimir Teams

Player Pics


Player Icons
Shearl

Fimm Warrior

Fianna Fimm

Lesser Daemon


Famous Teams
Darkmoor Degenerates, first mentioned in Death Zone 2 (2017).

Background
The first recorded instance, and certainly the one that got the ball rolling for Fimir playing Blood Bowl was by the Clum Shu Clan.

The Clum Shu Clan were part of the Mergragh stronghold, that from reports was situated somewhere in the South East part of the Wastelands, around 30 leagues from the border with the Empire.

The Mergragh's reportedly lost a fierce battle against Skaven, who were slowly but steadily eradicating the remaining outcrops of Fimir in the northern parts of the Old World. During the battle it's believed that the incumbent Mergragh witch hag was injured during the confrontation. At first the old Meargh's injuries were not thought to be life threatening, however partly due to her age and partly the lack of Fimir health care, her condition worsened and until she eventually breathed her last, over 2 millennia after her first.

With no heir to take her place, Castle Mergragh was forced to disband. After a short but bloody goodbye, the Clum Shu Clan set on their death quest. To find a new Queen or to die trying. Things were looking pretty dire for the group, as they found the few Strongholds they had heard about, were abandoned or overrun with vermin. With each encounter, their numbers dwindled, losing over half their Shearls and more worryingly 2 of their Dirachs.

With the loss of the 2, the remaining Dirachs were put under increasing pressure, to supply the protective mists necessary for the Clan to continue on their quest. The clan was at the end of their strength, when from ahead they heard the sounds of battle. This was time for the Death Quest to conclude, they had failed to find a new Hag, and today they would die.

As usual the nobles gave the Warlord the nod, and he barked out his last orders. Sending Shearls forward to scout, the party waited. When they returned, they made little sense. It was a battle, but not like normal. There were thousands, just watching a select few fighting it out on a small battle field. However it was different! How? Just different!

They got little useful information from the Shearls, so as one, the Clan approached the battlefield, this was the day they would die and Clum Shu would be no more. The noise grew louder and louder, and as the field came into view, they saw that it was indeed 'different'.

As they approached, instead of being crushed by unspeakable hordes, they were met by a fat Halfling in a fancy hat, flanked by the 2 largest Ogres they'd ever seen. 'Oh what have we here.....yes yes.' He cooed and smiled, revealing teeth of gold. 'You're on in 2 matches time.' The Halfling led them through the stands to a corner. 'Watch and learn.' He chuckled to the bewildered and left.

When match time came, the Fimir had a limited understanding of the game. 'You win, you get money' Explained the Halfling, flicking a gold crown up and down. Being the quickest witted of the Fimir, one of the Dirachs, directed the Clan to the field, barking directions. 'Whooo Whooo, sixteen. SIXTEEN.' Explained the Halfling '11 on the field, 5 in the dugout'. 'You in the manager's box' 'Oh and you've got Orcs!'

The Dirach was tired, but as the match started, he concentrated his powers to produce a mist to protect the players. This confused the Orcs, however they quickly reacted to the kicked ball, and started their well drilled play. 2 Shearls that weren't quick enough to react, quickly went down, and didn't get back up again. Next to be hit was a Fimm, however he didn't go down, and got a surprised look of respect from the Orc.

The Fimir Warlord, standing at the centre of the defence barking out orders, started to get an understanding of what was going on, and what the brown piece of leather in the smallest Orcs hands was. He saw where the Orc intended to break through the Fimir line, a weak point in the defence, manned by the last remaining Shearl. The Warlord stomped up the field next to the quivering Shearl, but just as the Orc got to them he gave a grin, and opened his hands. The pigskin was gone! It was in the hands of a heavily armoured Orc to the left, who was flanked by a big Black Orc and another Orc in heavy armour. Quickly they knocked down the Fimm in their way, and ran towards the end of the pitch. The Warlord was going to get to them............but get to them too late. Suddenly a whistled sounded, the crowd cheered and the Dirach indicated for them to stop.

When the Orcs kicked off, a section of the crowd were booing and laughing at the Fimir. 'Go ome' 'Why don't yer try cooking instead?' laughed the crowd. The Warlord didn't understand the words, but he understood the intent. He growled and barked out the orders. The ball was kicked, and caught by one of the two Fianna Fimm. Quickly the Fimir copied what the Orcs did before, however the Orcs doubled up, and prevented the drive. A reversal, a counter, and another reversal which was also countered quickly followed. This was frustrating, nothing was working, but at least one thing had happened the crowd had stopped jeering, in fact they seemed quite surprised.

On they continued, attack and parry, push and counter push. And more weary the already tired Fimir became. Just then a bell rang, 'You're almost out of time, quick quick!' Shouted the Halfling. 'Go!' Indicated the Dirach. Remembering what the Orcs did in the first half, the Warlord directed the 2 Fiannas to follow him. He hit the Black Orc head on, and the pair went down. He craned his neck to see what happened to his 2 elite warriors, but lost site of them, and in fact he was starting to lose consciousness.....

The Warlord awoke, with a bucket of water over his head, it was the halfling again. 'Come on, it's the 2nd half lad, and you're the teams best player!' 'Bloody good score that by your boys, right at half time!' Groggily he got up, and trotted on to the pitch. He looked up at the Dirach, he was looking physically drained, keeping the mist going by himself for so long, was having an obvious effect.

Again the Orcs kicked off, this time the Warlord picked the ball up himself, and directed his warriors. The 2 Fianna Fimm close by, the Fimm up front covering, and the 1 remaining Shearl at the back as a look out for flanking Orcs. Again, the 2 teams parried, manoeuvred and countered each other, like 2 sparring war ships. The half went on and on, and they were still no nearer to breaking through. As before, the bell rang, and he knew they were almost out of time, and no win, no money. To add to their woes, the mist was starting to part, the Dirach up in the box, was almost out on his feet, and members of the team were starting hold their hands up to ward off the sun. They had to end this quickly, so again as before, the Warlord directed his 2 Fianna to go with him. The first Fianna hit the Black Orc square, but went down, only staggering lumbering green skin. The Warlord gritted his teeth and ran at the tiltering Black Orc himself, just before he got to him though, another Orc dived towards him tackling him to the ground!

Before he could get up, the well drilled Orc team had pounced, retrieved the ball, headed down field and scored. Just before the final whistle blew! When would their eternal bad luck end? The team gathered in the away team dugout, thoroughly dejected at losing, mostly due to the fatigue of being weeks on the road battling Skaven. The fat little Halfling was approaching, with his stupid little grin. I gues their luck could get worse...... '2-1, 2-1 hohoho................I still can't really believe what I saw! 3 Death Head old boys and a loaned out Orcland Raiders reserve on that team, and you held them to 2-1...2-1!' 'Here' said the Halfling, throwing them a bag of gold coins 'You deserved this, comeback on Thursday, I've got some Skaven for you'.

'Skaven' Thought the Warlord 'I could get to like this!'

The money gained from that first match saved the Clum Shu Clan from certain death. It also ended their Death Quest. Word soon spread to other Fimir communities, and especially other Fimir clans on Death Quests from Castle Mergragh. Many were keen to take up the mantle, and keener still to even the score against the Clum Shu Clan!

As of today, there aren't many Fimir teams around, none at the higher end of the professional circuit. However those teams that are playing are of good quality and always put on a show for themselves and the fans. Most are from clans that have taken up Bloodbowl do so, instead of taking the Death Quest. The Shearls have all but disapeared from the game, the Fimir believe they are too lowly to deserve a position on their team, and now in their place the Dirach summon lesser daemons to plug gaps in the team. Top among such Fimir teams, is the oldest Firmir team of all; The Clum Shu Demons, who have come a long way since their very first match.

Rationale
Building this roster was pretty tough. The Fimir have two types of warriors, Fimm warriors and the elite Fianna Fimm. The Fimir also have druids but they are the team coaches and wizards, and they are daemon summoners so that needed inclusion. However the tricky part was making this roster balanced, a team of players with Prehensile Tail will be a nightmare for Elf type teams. So trying to balance this was extremely tough.

Fimm Warriors are strong warriors, as strong if not stronger than the average human warrior, though not enough to warrent St4 on all their players. St 3 seemed right but with Av9 to show they are tougher creatures. Prehensile Tail was a must on all their players as this is what Fimir are known for (well... this and their horrible way of procreating). Although the Fimir aren't known for being clumsy or having low agility I felt it was important to start their ag on 2, because they only have one eye, so they will struggle with depth perception.

Fianna Fimm are the elite warriors, they are stronger than normal Fimm Warriors so St4 seemed appropriate, because of their increased bulk starting with Ag1 seemed right too, losing one point for their problems with depth perceptions and a further point because of their size. I also gave them Multiple Block, the reasons for this was two fold - 1 they have a heavily barbed tail which would potentially give them another way of hitting whilst grappling with their arms, a bit like the old skill mace tail used in Midgard rules. 2 - I wanted to bloat the team because after play testing it became apparent very quickly that this team was too powerful, so the skill was added plus a 20k increase for the skill and balance reasons.

Finally - the Lesser Daemons. Lesser Daemons are in the roster because as the fluff shows the Fimir are daemon summoners. However the Daemons are unstable and weak in comparison to Chaos Daemons. So Av7 seemed a good fit to represent their fragility. The daemons were given Ma6 and Dodge to give the team a balance, though Av7 makes them very vulnerable. So protecting them at all costs is vital as they are your only ball handlers in the team, in other versions of this team on the internet Lesser Daemons have ag4, but in a team with so much strength and with the unique ability to trap opponents in a blocking battle this seemed far too good. So ag3 and Dodge was chosen instead, which statistically makes them better at dodging than ag4 no re-roll, but in the long term makes them far weaker. I also felt it was important they start with dodge because they will likely die a lot so they need one of the important starter skills so this isn't so crippling to your team when they do die.

Season 2 Changes
Fimir played 109 games with a win percentage of 55%. This puts them in the tier 1 bracket. Though this is too few games to really draw any conclusion, but anecdotally no one has had any issues with them and in the closed round robin leagues there have been no successful Fimir teams either.

Season 3
135 games player with a win percentage of 53.33%. This still seems a little high to me. I would like to be a tier 1.5 team. They may have a slightly elevated win percentage due to them being such a hard counter for certain races to play again, which is unavoidable. However they are still a team with serious draw backs. They are performing slightly above what I expected.

Season 4 Changes
After testing the roster for long enough I am comfortable that it is too opressive in some match ups. It is too much of a negative play experience so a small redesign was done in keeping with the background of this race.

First of all I changed the linemen to Shearly, I stayed away from this originally because they are such an underclass in the Fimm caste system that I didn't even think them worthy of being on the pitch. However I had to have a linemen weaker than Fimm Warriors to make the team function. While they do have tails I consider them too weak to have the Prehensile Tail skill, in the same way that Skaven do not have this skill as standard. They have Av8 as they are both less tough and less well equiped than a Fimm Warrior.

I then changed Fimm Warriors to 0-4 but gave them S access, a skill access they should always have had access to really but I had to leave off for balance reasons.

I then changed the Fianna Fimm to 0-2, this was because they were too oppressive, St4 and cumulative tail was just impossible for some opponents to deal with. In reducing them to 0-2 I also gave them Distubring Presence. Again this was a skill they should always have had but I previously had to leave it off them for balance reasons. In their lore a thick soupy mist follows them around constantly where ever they go.

Finally because of the nerfs to other parts of the team I gave +Ma to the lesser daemons to make the team a little better at the running game.

Overall it is something of a neutral change in terms of the races over winning ability, however they should now be much more balanced within the game in terms of no longer being a push over for high ST teams and impossible to play against for St3 teams.

Team design and rationale by Garion.
Background by Harvestmouse
Player Pics were drawn by Knut_Rockie and coloured by Garion
Icons by Cowhead and Garion