Ye Olde Inn

I don't mind, as this makes for more visual variety and more cool pieces to own, but is there an official reason for the change?

The original HeroQuest was a collaboration between Milton Bradley (Hasbro) and Games Workshop. The rerelease is solely a Hasbro release. There was certainly a discussion between Hasbro and Games Workshop, and Hasbro had to remove all of Games Workshop’s copyrighted material and other intellectual property. Fimirs are a Games Workshop creation. This is the same reason all references to Chaos (“Chaos Warriors”) were changed to Dread.

I dont care the change but man, the miniature is stupidly big for those stats. It should have been quite smaller.

I can agree with that. I guess it's a result of designing on computer (not so practical on a gameboard) and a desire to insure a "cooler" figure that the appeared merited by virtue of size. I feel the same about the ridiculously sized Hero weapons, but such is the new asthetic. But yes, the Heroquest convention of size correlating to Body Points is a bit over-stretched. It's almost like they're blown-up puffer fish.

I don’t like the Abominations because they are so spiky, but they are also hard to place on the board without knocking stuff over. While I like they thematically fit in certain situations, if they ever came out with an alternate figure pack or add extra monsters to an expansion, they could create a different monster with the exact same stats you could use to swap out the abominations if you wish. A lizard man would be a good choice. It could even have similar pose as the original Fimir.

While I like the figures in general, I thought the Mummy was a disappointment. The original version looked very buff and something you didn’t want to mess with, but the new mummy is scrawny and weak looking for its stats. Its sort of the opposite of the Abomination’s problem.

Nlinindoll is correct as to why the Fimir had to go, but personally I would have replaced it with a Troll to avoid GW IP but keep it inline with the original theme. Shame they didn’t ask my advise on the remake!

I like that at least they retained the features of the original... described as mysterious, association with water/swamps, big and green, large long handled weapon, with identical stats. For the first several games I played using the AH set, I called it a "Fimir" on instinct.

Later I played with some people and when I was substituting in Fimir minis they were like "what enemy is that?"

The character looks awesome, and I love it, even though I miss the classic Fimir design. As with others, my own issue with it is how cramped it can make things on the board, especially in those smaller rooms (and no, creating a board with bigger squares is not a great fix, as those squares will need to be MASSIVE, and my table isn't that big!). The Mythic (and now thankfully available in retail via SQT and PoT boxes) alternate sculpt actually works a little better because it kind of wraps around the mini next to it instead of spreading out in two directions.

As Sir Rick said, some kind of lizard man with a big axe should have worked better.

That's a fine substitution choice that is readily available as a proxy figure--easy fix. Then again, we may see that very monster in an expansion one day.

Thank you for the answers! They make sense.
I like to use both pieces, but yeah, the Abomination is pretty large for the board.