Thursday, March 2, 2023

Fantasy Comes Alive

In my post about issue #67 of White Dwarf, I noted that editor Ian Livingstone boasts about the gains the UK hobby industry had made by the mid-1980s. I also noted that there's quite a bit of truth in what he says. In evidence, there's this advertisement, which appears on the back cover of the issue.

The history of licensed Dungeons & Dragons miniatures is a vast topic in and of itself and one someone with more knowledge than myself really ought to write. Nevertheless, I think the brief eighteen-month period, starting in 1985, when Games Workshop's subsidiary, Citadel Miniatures, held the official D&D miniatures license is an episode well worth examining. 

Citadel acquired the licensed immediately after the disastrous two-year period during which TSR made a go at making its own minis. I owned a couple of the TSR boxed sets – one for AD&D and another for Star Frontiers – and can attest to their poor quality. Perhaps they were better received elsewhere, but, among my circle of friends, I think I was the only one who ever bought them and, after a few desultory attempts to paint some of them, they went back in my closet, never to be looked at, let alone used. 

It's a testament to the rising power of Games Workshop – and Warhammer Fantasy Battle – that TSR would turn to Citadel to manufacture its miniatures in the aftermath of their own failure in the minis market. From what I gather, these figures were quite good and were notable for, among other things, introducing three-stage player character sculpts, one each for the low, mid, and high levels. Unfortunately, I don't think I ever saw them outside of advertisements; the brief lifespan of the line probably didn't help.

If you owned or made use of the Citadel D&D miniatures, I'd love to read about your memories and impressions of them,

12 comments:

  1. TSR's own figs were generally poor and the metal quality is notoriously bad, but there were a few acceptable figs. Many of the alien wildlife and Volturnus natives from the Star Frontiers range are actually quite nice (the Edestekoi in particular are very well done for the era), the starship range was about on par with what else was on the market, and a few of the Gamma World figs were decent.

    Their deal with Citadel didn't even last two years before TSR and Ral Partha reached an agreement on a licensed AD&D range, and quite frankly it was for the best. Citadel's AD&D stuff had a few gems but were very erratic in terms of quality. The range has a lot of mystique around it because it was short-lived and poorly distributed and thus much sought-after by collectors, but from what I saw of it the minis really weren't anything special.

    RP's AD&D range was much more consistent, albeit a bit stiffly posed at times. They certainly produced a lot of very good figs under the license, mostly very faithful to the artwork they were based off of. Citadel did originate the 3-stage player character minis, but starting in 1986 Ral Partha began producing a larger and arguably better looking range of them, all done by the legendary Tom Meier. Those figs weren't under license, so they're still available today as singles through Iron Wind Metals. I'd contend it includes three of the finest druids ever sculpted.

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  2. Here in the UK Citadel miniatures were the only miniatures around back in the 80s as far as I can remember...even more so with the arrival of Warhammer. http://www.miniatures-workshop.com/lostminiswiki/index.php?title=Citadel_Miniatures

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  3. While Citadel was initially a subsidiary of GW it was Citadel that ended up swallowing up GW not the other way round. By 1985 Bryan Ansell had already bought out GW turning GW into a miniatures company that only made rules so you had a way to use the miniatures while TSR remained a rules company that dipped its toe in the miniatures market. Always interesting to see how the buyout of GW changed the path of GW compared to TSR.

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    1. Thank you for that clarification re: GW/Citadel.

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    2. We'll see some of the fallout from the takeover in a few issues. The staff of White Dwarf were not happy about the move from London to Nottingham, and made it known on the contents page of #77.

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  4. Great collection of painted examples here http://solegends.com/rsadd/index.htm deeply collectable!!

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  5. I'm not a miniatures guy. I always wanted to be but I couldn't paint to save my life. There are a handful of custom miniatures crafting sites out there that use 3D printing to create on demand figures. I'm running a virtual campaign (now hitting the six year mark!) so what do I need minis for? What I've found to be a huge fun time sink is to go to one of those sites to create an image of my characters or NPCs and use them as visual guides in the game. It's great fun and free (until I succumb to the temptation to have one of the minis 3D printed and mailed to me). The site I like is HeroForge because you can incorporate color. I'm not pitching for them - there are lot of features I want them to incorporate, but if you're looking for a rabbit hole, consider this one. Mike!

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    1. The same as Mike: I'm not a miniature guy. We played D&D down in the woods, where dice and miniatures would be easily lost. Painting? No. Certainly not. A big brother would hold a lighter on that figure and turn it "Napalm". Years later I met people with incredible - I mean thousands - armies of articulated figures. What a fantastic endeavor and all due credit to anyone who pursues such craft.

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  6. Best Githyanki ever made, bar none:

    https://sparkjoy.org/interloper-miniatures/files/2023/03/citadel-githyanki01.jpg

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  7. The other great thing about the Citadel range was that some of the PC figures were presented in double picks with one version of tthe figure standing and the other riding.

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    1. Yeah, those are fun; I especially like the Bard duo.
      I also really like the low-, mid- and high-level character class three-packs.

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  8. For the history of ranges of licensed D&D miniatures by company, see Ernst Wilhelm's DnDLead site at https://www.dndlead.com/.

    Allan.

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