On December 30 Diane Ansell, wife of Bryan Ansell, announced on her Facebook page that her husband has passed away "peacefully at home this morning surrounded by his family". Bryan Ansell is a titanesque figure in adventure gaming and especially in miniatures and miniatures gaming, particularly in UK and Europe. He started working in the adventure gaming field founding Asgard Miniatures in 1976 along two business partners (we can see ads for the company for example in the British Military Modelling magazine of the '70s) then in 1978 he founded Citadel Miniatures (based in the North of England) with Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone (of original Games Workshop/GW fame) that were looking for somebody to run their miniature casting operations after a Ral Partha license. At the time metal miniatures were mainly sold to fans of RPGs and Dungeons & Dragons in particular (Citadel got a license for producing official D&D and AD&D miniatures from TSR). The first breakthrough came in 1983 with the release of the first edition of Warhammer Fantasy Battle and the second one in 1987 with the release of Warhammer 40.000 - Rogue Trader. These games sold a massive amount of miniatures and so Citadel became vastly profitable, far more than GW (still sited in London) that mainly sold imported games or game published under license: a margin of 70/80% for Citadel products! In 1985 Ansell became the managing director of Games Workshop/Citadel and contrasts started to appear between the London staff and Citadel (now in Newark/Nottingham) with Ansell (and other members of Citadel) taking a dim view of White Dwarf too independent line and occasionally having the audacity of criticizing Citadel products. In 1991 he and Tom Kirby bought out Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone for £ 10 million and decided to focus only on Warhammer and Warhammer 40.000, abandoning all the rest, closing the London offices and making White Dwarf a completely integrated marketing and sales instrument (this change was called by many fans 'the mutation'). Ansell's decisions and opinions were not always popular with GW London staff and White Dwarf writers and editors who famously attacked Ansell in issue 77 with the famous SODOFFBRYANANSELL hidden phrase and in issue 88 where he was defined Capo di tutti i Capi - in true Mafia style - in the masthead. He sold his stock in GW to Kirby and left the company, founding Gurnsey Miniatures and then merging it with another company of him, Wargames Foundry, in 2000 and opening Foundry Miniatures Ltd. All these companies sold (and sell) historical miniatures. He retired from this company in 2005.
There is no doubt that Bryan Ansell was an enterpreneur of great vision and business acumen and the strategic direction he chose for Citadel/GW lead the company to be the juggernaut of today, a British multinational company selling its own goods all over the world (Tom Kirby, who really pushed for international expansion, was another seminal influence). Nonetheless, many old fans of the 'first' GW still do not appreciate the transformation of the company he caused and the 'mutation' of White Dwarf in a advertising tool. Nonetheless, Bryan Ansell was a true giant, a truly transformative figure in adventure gaming.