Ral Partha
 This article is a stub. You can help 1d4chan by expanding it |
| Ral Partha | ||
|---|---|---|
| Year Established | 1975 | |
| Notable Employees | Sculptors:
Presidents:
|
|
| Notable Games | Dungeons & Dragons Shadowrun |
|
The original tabletop gaming miniature manufacturer. Your Beckneard-fu is weak unless you can count at least one Ral Partha mini in your collection.
As a result of their age, its to be expected many of their miniatures are capable of making even a Games Workshop female model look amazing and lifelike.
History
Humble Origins
Ral Partha was formed when 16 year old Tom Meier got in touch with Glenn E. Kidd and Rich Smethurst, who wanted to help this young man realize his dream of making decent miniature sculpts. Meier did this by using Epoxy Putty that had normally been in use for mechanic repairs and quickly became an industry standard to the point that all initial model sculpts are called "Greens", and the epoxy was indeed the basis for Greenstuff. Initially done in Meier's garage, Ral Partha became known not just for their decent historical wargame models, but for their fantasy models, which included female character models as well as male models, selling out of their first entire run of models at Gen Con in 1976 after only a few minutes of being open. Inspired, they began to pick up deals to make limited edition runs of certain models for TSR, including for this little game called Dungeons and Dragons.
Emboldened by their runaway success, Meier decided to go pro.
Ral Partha joins Wolf's Dragoons
By the dawn of the 80's, Meier had gone from snot-nosed kid pouring molten lead into homemade molds in his basement into a legitimate business man with Kidd and Smethurst, and decided to hire a couple of other modelers like Julie Guthrie and Dennis Mize to help him keep the flow going, and he more or less created line after line after line of fantasy critters and races, many of whom saw play in at least a couple of the burgeoning industries' many wargames and RPGs, some of whom his business partners contributed to, or wrote. But always, the focus was on the models, because that was the meal ticket. In '84, Mize and Guthrie got some work for the company in the gift market with unicorn sculptures in pewter, and that successful line ultimately got them out of lead for good. Just in time for Ral Partha to get in touch with the guys over at FASA to help create a line for their upcoming game Battledroids, which they ended up making bank with
The Ill-fated Chaos Wars
They tried making their own wargame once Warhammer got popular. It didn't work because they were making too much money everywhere else.
Running (into trouble) in the 90's
shit gets fucked. Wizards does them dirty.
Products
- The first Dungeons & Dragons miniatures. Suck it, WizKids.
- The only licensed Shadowrun miniatures (prior to the release of Shadowrun Returns: Hong Kong) were produced by Ral Partha.
- Battletech miniatures line which also contains some of the few plastic miniatures to come out of Ral Partha, specifically:
- BattleTech, Third Edition box set
- CityTech, Second Edition box set