Foundry ex-Citadel and more: Bryan Ansell shares some thoughts

Bryan Ansell kindly left a comment on one of my recent posts regarding the content of the "Foundry archive"; given that some people may have missed it had they already read the post, I thought I would post it again:

I fear that there is very little fantasy stuff, as my father (Clifford Ansell: for who Foundry was originally set up as a retirement job) was never interested in having anything at all to do with fantasy.

The sad truth is that......

In the late(r) 80's my father did quite a lot of mould making, master casting and such for GW. I believe that odds and ends of residue from that period may survive.

Of course, Alan and Michael Perry went from their old C26 Citadel medievals to ranges of compatible models for Foundry: the Foundry models are just a touch bigger and more carefully sculpted.

The C26 range of men at arms was Citadels best selling Fantasy range for three years. (I just threw that in here for a bit of Oldhammer colour).

There will be a scattering of Perry models that never made it into a pack.

There will be loads of Human Manikins: with and without heads, faces, arms, genitals etc. Many of them will never have been used: you can't stop a sculptor making yet another manikin. Plenty of naked horses, other naked animals. Scabbards, swords, muskets, hats and weaponry of every kind. Shields: variants of every possible shape of shield. Strange things that sculptors or members of staff made for their own amusement. Nick, the caster who came with us from Guernsey made some interesting things. Tony Yates made a number of very fine items.

The seven sculptors that worked at Foundry for me a decade or so ago all worked from home, this generally results in the larger-than-usual-number-of-models-that-are-left-over-because-we-cannot-make-up-a-full-pack syndrome manifesting itself: so there will be a fair number of those.

There are a small number really old moulds from the period we were casting Asgard and Citadel (and Ral Partha) simultaneously. Unfortunately, I don't think there is anything terribly rivetting on them. Simple conversions for playtesting Laserburn and suchlike. We have shown the laser-armed Fishmen to the world already. I suspect that these were converted by either me or Rick, and that I must have made the mould, but I have no memory at all of the event.

Now, all of this is fascinating of course, but there's a couple of points I'd like to highlight. The first is Bryan's comment about:

The C26 range of men at arms was Citadels best selling Fantasy range for three years.

Notice the word "fantasy" in there - not the best-selling historical range for three years, but fantasy. Given that Citadel were churning out orcs, dwarfs etc at that time this seems quite remarkable. But if you've ever seen those fabulous old massed-battle pics from back in the day, it's invariably a human force versus a force of "bad guys." So I guess it's hardly surprising that the C26s were in such demand as a proxy human fantasy force.

For my second point I'm going to have to disagree with Bryan's opinion when he says:

There are a small number really old moulds from the period we were casting Asgard and Citadel (and Ral Partha) simultaneously. Unfortunately, I don't think there is anything terribly rivetting on them. Simple conversions for playtesting Laserburn and suchlike.

Nothing rivetting! Laserburn playtest pieces - wow, now that would be fantastic! What do you think about this prospect?

Actually I had been musing about doing a post on these Laserburn playtest pieces - Bryan has lots in his collection. It looks like I'm going to have to write that post sooner rather than later.