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A Brief History of Citadel Miniatures

Citadel Miniatures was founded in 1978 by Bryan Ansell with funding from Games Workshop. Games Workshop at that time had only the store at Dalling Road, Hammersmith.

White Dwarf 11 from early 1979 carried this brief announcement in the news section:

"Games Workshop and Bryan Ansell have got together to form Citadel Miniatures, a new miniatures company that will be manufacturing several ranges of figures. Ral Partha are already in production, but Citadel will also be producing own ranges, including the Fiend Factory figures, Fantasy Adventurers and Fantasy Specials. Citadel will not be limiting production to SF/F figures, but also new ranges of historical wargaming figures"

The first Citadel ad appeared in the GW house magazine, White Dwarf, issue no 12. The first FA, FF and FS releases were announced together with the Ral Partha licensed lines. Some of the first releases as shown in the Molten Magic section are here

Games Workshop was then located in West London, and Citadel Miniatures in Newark. The then owners of Games Workshop, Ian Livingston and Steve Jackson, eventually sold their interest in the company. Bryan Ansell then decided to consolidate all operations, Games Design and Marketing, White Dwarf Production, Miniature Design and Production, and Sales into the Nottingham / Newark area.

The company was run by Bryan Ansell for many years, expanding into many countries, before being taken public under Tom Kirby in 1994.

Today Games Workshop is a successful publicly owned company, headquartered in Lenton, Nottingham.

For a more detailed history, see this Wikipedia article.

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Last modified: May 14, 2011 by Orclord