Bryan Ansell

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Bryan Ansell is a British roleplaying and wargame designer.

Originally founder of Asgard Miniatures he went on to found Citadel Miniatures (in the late 1970s) and at a later date bought out Games Workshop and rose to become Managing Director of Games Workshop.

Along with Rick Priestley, Alan and Michael Perry, and others including Richard Halliwell, John Blanche, Jervis Johnson, Alan Merrett, Ansell was responsible for the massive Warhammer (later Warhammer Fantasy Battle) boom of the mid to late 1980s, which many long term wargamers now refer to as 'the Golden Era'. In many ways it was the Warhammer game developed by Ansell (and Priestley) that made Games Workshop so successful and which has enabled the continued growth of the company since.weasel-inline

After another Games Workshop buy out, and a change of emphasis by the company towards a younger market, he left Games Workshop to concentrate on Wargames Foundry. Another figure manufacturing company set up in the mid-1980s by Ansell, Wargames Foundry was established to market historical miniature ranges originally sculpted by the talented Perry Twins for Citadel Miniatures, but no longer sold as part of the Games Workshop fantasy ranges. Ansell took with him a number of other moulds for figures which had been variously used for both historical and fantasy figures under Citadel Miniatures and Games Workshop and these have since become part of the ever growing Wargames Foundry range.

Wargames Foundry is still (as of 2007) going strong and after a brief stint in Guernsey in the early 1990s is once again based in Nottingham. They continue to sell a massive range of metal figures for historical, sci-fi and fantasy wargaming.

Contributions

*"Rules With No Name"
*Laserburn (1980) Sci-fi tabletop rules
*Imperial Commander (1981) background material to Laserburn, an influence on Warhammer 40,000
*"Warhammer Fantasy Battle" (1983) Author
*"Forces of Fantasy" for Warhammer Fantasy Battle (1983)
*"Statue of the Sorcerer", The (Call of Cthulhu) (1986) Chaosium
*"Vanishing Conjurer", The (Call of Cthulhu) (1986)
*Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay (1986) Games Workshop Additional Material
*"Green and Pleasant Land" supplement to Call of Cthulhu for adventuring in the British Isles (1987) published by Games Workshop Managing Director
*Titan Legions (1994)
*"Street Violence" (2003)

External links

* [http://www.boardgamegeek.com/designer/1683 Entry at Board Game Geek]