The Fiend Factory

If you open a copy of White Dwarf number 11, dated Feb/March 1979, and turn to page 4, you’ll find a little piece of gaming history.  A full page advertisement announces the formation of a new company – Citadel Miniatures.  As well as plans for manufacturing and distributing Ral Partha miniatures in the UK, Citadel’s own new ranges were announced.  One of these was to be the Fiend Factory range, based on the regular White Dwarf feature of the same name, a collection of new D&D monsters designed by staff members or submitted by readers.

Many of the early models of the Fiend Factory range were sculpted by artist and animator Humphrey Leadbitter.  Some collectors consider his work to be fairly basic, but his sculpting had a sort of naïve charm which I think suited his subject matter well.

Fig. 1   FF1 - The Fiend, FF2 - Slime Beast with Sword, FF3 - Hook Horror & FF4 – Crabman.

These miniatures were painted many years ago, but have been tidied up a bit and re-based.  They are not great sculpts, and are quite a challenge to paint, but this is the case with many miniatures of this vintage.  I’ll be trying to maintain a consistent style with my new paint-jobs too.