Citadel Miniatures

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The Citadel Miniatures Logo

Citadel Miniatures Limited is a producer of metal and plastic miniatures for tabletop wargames, such as Warhammer Fantasy Battle. While it was a separate company in partnership with Games Workshop in the past, today it is a brand for Games Workshop miniatures. Although primarily used for wargames and roleplaying games, the painting of Citadel's creations - and miniatures in general - is a hobby in its own right. Expert modellers also make conversions, whereby miniatures are chopped up, modified and swapped around to create either new creatures or old ones but with new weapons.

1 Early history
2 Materials and Construction
3 Model ranges
4 See also
5 External links
6 References

[edit] Early history

Citadel Miniatures was formed in 1979 as part of the British game company Games Workshop^[1] Its formation was announced in White Dwarf issue 11 in early 1979, with the announcement reading:

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 following issue contained the first Citadel advertisement for its forth coming figures, a feature that has continued ever since.

[edit] Materials and Construction

Traditionally miniatures were produced using a white metal alloy including lead, although in 1987 Citadel began to produce plastic miniatures as well. These were an innovation being made of a harder plastic than other plastic miniatures at time so they allowed greater detail and avoided the tendency to flake paint as they did not flex.^{[citation needed]} Even as plastic technology has improved to allow plastic to reach or even in some cases surpass metal detail,^{[citation needed]} Citadel miniatures continued to produce white metal miniatures as the economics of plastic make it only suitable for large runs.^{[citation needed]} For this reason many core troops are plastic but specialist and rare troops are still made from white metal.^{[citation needed]} Some models are a combination of both materials, with the arm-less bodies and heads metal and the arms, weapons and other accessories plastic.

In 1997 Citadel switched to a lead free white metal because of concerns about lead poisoning particularly in children.^[2]

Most of the models created by Citadel require some form of construction after purchase. With smaller models (such as Space Marines) this usually involves attaching arms, weapons, backpacks and the base. Larger models - such as daemons, dragons and tanks, come in many pieces and require careful construction using various techniques such as pinning and filling and in some cases actual modelling to ensure that the kit is assembled as intended.

[edit] Model ranges

From 1979 to 1984 Citadel had a reciprocal distribution and manufacturing deal with Ral Partha to bring each others products to Britain and North America respectively.^[3]

Citadel has also produced and distributed miniatures under other names:

Chronicle Miniatures was a competitor bought out by Citadel and they continued to operate under that name for a time.
Iron Claw Miniatures were a range of miniatures designed, manufactured and distributed by Citadel in 1987 and 1988. Many of the designs were later incorporated into the main Citadel range.
Marauder Miniatures was a separate company set up by Games Workshop in 1988 and promoted alongside Citadel Miniatures in White Dwarf. The miniatures were cast and distributed by Citadel, and the company was reabsorbed back into Citadel in 1993.

Over the years, as well as producing their own original miniatures, they have produced licenced ranges based on characters from games, movies, TV and books. These included figures based on RuneQuest, Fighting Fantasy , Judge Dredd, Doctor Who, Paranoia, Eternal Champion, Dungeons and Dragons, Advanced Dungeons and Dragons, Traveller, Star Trek, Lone Wolf and recently, figures based on The Lord of the Rings. Initially, Games Workshop were awarded the licence to make The Lord of the Rings Strategy Battle Game miniatures for the trilogy of films directed by Peter Jackson and released by New Line Cinema. Since then, they have also made miniatures based on the actual writings of J. R. R. Tolkien.

Citadel Miniatures sometimes release limited edition models of specific or unusual characters, such as Thrud the Barbarian, drunken Space Marines dressed in Christmas outfits [1] and one representing a white-bearded dwarf, the logo of White Dwarf magazine.

Along with the standard range of miniature soldiers, Citadel's lines include fantasy based war-machines, like catapults and chariots, and when Warhammer 40,000 came out, Citadel Miniatures also branched out into vehicles, such as the Land Raider and Rhino transports for Space Marines.

[edit] See also

[edit] External links

Citadel Miniatures Hall - A Museum of Citadel Miniatures.
Citadel's page on the hobby site The Stuff Of Legends - features many scanned advertisements of Citadel Miniature's products from old White Dwarfs.
A Site covering the fanatisim of miniatures and hobby games
Collecting Citadel Miniatures - Yahoo! discussion group dedicated mainly to the collecting of Citadel Miniatures, especially from the 1970s and early/mid 1980s Citadel Miniatures.
CCM wiki - A site maintained by members of the Yahoo! group for research of poorly and undocumented Citadel miniatures.