Warhammer co-creator Bryan Ansell has died

The Video games Workshop chief handed away on the eve of the reboot of his largest recreation

• By
  
  Charlie Corridor
  
• on January 3, 2024 11:19 am

Bryan Ansell, co-creator of Warhammer Fantasy Battle and the chief of Video games Workshop by the late Nineteen Eighties, handed away at house on the morning of Dec. 30. He was 68. The announcement was made on the Instagram account he shared along with his spouse, Diane.

Ansell, an skilled sculptor, partnered with Video games Workshop in 1978 to create Citadel Miniatures, a model below which the corporate nonetheless produces its British-made merchandise to at the present time. Later, he would turn out to be the managing director of Video games Workshop itself. Throughout his tenure, the corporate totally transitioned from being an importer and distributor of tabletop video games corresponding to Dungeons & Dragons to a producer, ultimately exporting its personal science fiction and fantasy merchandise all world wide.

Apart from shepherding the corporate itself by its early rising pains, Ansell’s largest contribution to Video games Workshop was in bringing the Warhammer Fantasy Battle tabletop wargame to life. The sport, which he co-created with Rick Priestley and Richard Halliwell, would go on to turn out to be one of many firm’s marquee merchandise alongside Warhammer 40,000.

Sarcastically, information of Ansell’s passing comes throughout a interval of renewed curiosity in The Previous World, the unique setting for his Warhammer Fantasy Battle recreation. The Previous World was sundown in 2015 following an in-fiction apocalypse, languishing for the higher a part of a decade with solely Inventive Meeting’s wonderful Whole Struggle: Warhammer sequence left to hold on. Then, late final yr, Video games Workshop lastly revealed the launch line-up for the sport’s lengthy anticipated reboot. Now titled Warhammer: The Previous World, the lavish miniatures wargame — now solid in plastic as a substitute of white steel — is anticipated to reach on retailer cabinets later this month.

Video games Workshop has not made a public assertion about Ansell’s loss of life. Polygon has reached out for remark.

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