1st Corps is owned by Brothers Simon and Michael Curtis. We have been wargaming and collecting for over 20 years and are fascinated by all periods.

Our aim is to offer products of the highest quality, detail and authenticity that are also great value and backed up by fast and friendly customer service.

Every figure comes complete with all the weapons, shields etc it needs.

Variation We try to put as much of it in our packs as possible our figure packs contain upto 8 different figures.

Command packs and standard packs all contain an even number of figures, no more annoying missing or left over figures.

We cast all our products here in Yorkshire in lead free pewter.

We live in Snaith, a small rural market town located 20 miles south of York in the north of England.

Simon- is the full time member of the team. He does the mold making, casting, dispatch and is responsible for some of the figures you can see on this site. . When not busy with that lot he likes going to the cinema, having a pint and game of darts down at the local hostelry. He also enjoys being taken for a walk by his golden retrievers, Rebel and Cadet

Michael- is also responsible for many of the painted figures on the site as well as product planning and dispatching orders. Mick swears he has no time for anything else! But we know he likes to travel and have a beer down the local hostelry playing darts, and has even been seen down the local gym the next day trying to make amends!

Foundry Miniatures Ltd manufacture the world's largest range of 28mm metal miniatures for gamers, collectors, modellers and painters.

Clifford Ansell was looking for an interesting retirement job that would keep him busy. Cliff had spent much of his life working in the mining industry (apart from a few years away with the Royal Navy in the 1940s) he ended up a mining engineer and an expert on mine safety, ventilation and dust suppression. In the 60s Cliff moved on to a second career as a maths teacher: he taught maths at Bishop Dunn Comprehensive in Nottingham.

Cliff's son was, and is, my father: Bryan Ansell who had made toy soldiers with Skytrex, Tabletop, Asgard and Citadel/Games Workshop. He ended up owning GW and was responsible for games like Warhammer Fantasy Battle, 40K, Space Hulk etc.

When Cliff announced that he was going to take early retirement, Bryan suggested that Cliff might like to have a go at manufacturing toy soldiers himself.

Cliff was already experienced in dealing with both stubborn Lancashire miners and wilful, disorganised children: so it was clear that the strange mindset of the confused denizens of the toy soldier industry would be absolutely no problem for Cliff to handle.

As it happened: this was the time when Citadel was starting to change from metal based models to their new "slotta bases", and also ceasing to make historical models. Bryan was able to set Foundry up with a number of discontinued ranges - Barons Wars and Wars of the Roses Medievals, Samurai and the Vikings, Normans and Saxons, Woodland Indians, Huns and Elizabethans initially (these had all previously served as Human forces in Warhammer Fantasy Battle for some years). Further hundreds of other Citadel models followed. We still make those models at Foundry today, though we cannot manage to have them all in stock at the same time.

Michael and Alan Perry sculpted almost all these models and were keen to continue sculpting historical models for their own painting and wargaming purposes, so they continued to sculpt new Foundry ranges for Cliff for quite some years. Alistair Morrison and Dave Andrews both contributed ranges too.

So, Foundry was up and running very quickly indeed. Cliff first had premises in Sherwood, then moved to a larger unit in New Basford. The upstairs in New Basford was taken by Alistair and Trish Morrison: who sculpted the Marauder range for Games Workshop up there.

For a long period, Foundry was making many master moulds and production moulds for Games Workshop whenever they found themselves with more moulds than they could handle. Over the years many ex Games Workshop staff worked for Foundry; most notably John "Bones" Ellard, "Ep" Epworth, Andy Pattinson, Kevin Adams, Colin Dixon and Shane Hoyle.

In 1991 my father left Games Workshop and went off to Guernsey for a decade or so. In Guernsey he had three children, restored four old houses (he does that wherever he goes: not the children, just the houses) started Guernsey Foundry and made Seven Years War, Old West, Pirates and Darkest Africa models these were mostly sculpted by Mark Copplestone. When he came back to England in 2000 he brought his ranges and a couple of the Guernsey staff with him, started restoring a house near Newark and took over running Foundry from Cliff. He produced more Seven Years War, Darkest Africa and loads more Old West, then Street Violence, Vikings, Gladiators, various Romans, 16th century Swashbucklers, huge ranges of Greeks and Macedonians, Fantasy and various odds and ends.

In 2005 my father left Foundry and went back to gardening and restoring houses.

We only re-entered the world of toy soldiers because my cousin Neil Littlewood went to work at Foundry for a while, and it became apparent that there were serious problems that needed sorting out. In the end we stepped in, and the Ansell family are running the factory again.

We have moved Foundry into the huge old Carriage Court alongside our house in East Stoke.

Cheers

Marcus

Victrix Limited is owned by Julian Blakeney-Edwards. I (Julian) have been fascinated by toy soldiers since the age of 7. I have fond and vivid memories of playing with Airfix plastic soldiers throughout my childhood. This passion extended into the real world and at the age of 22 I entered Sandhurst. Subsequently commissioned into 3 Royal Anglian (Bedfordshire, Hertfordshire and Essex) Regiment. A fascinating 6 year career with my regiment took me to Germany, Canada and Northern Ireland.

I spent many years working in The City before setting up various businesses working in the hobby markets. And also the overseas holiday property business. For nearly 9 years now I have been running Victrix Limited with my business partner Stephen Hales. Steve has recently resigned as a director of the business but continues to work for Victrix on a consultancy basis

Steve and I had been discussing for some time the feasibility of a 28mm hard plastic range. Our first discussions centred around Greeks and Persians. But then we both quickly realised that our true joint interest was in the Napoleonic period. Before you could say "at ready" we had decided to pour our heart and soul (not to mention a very large amount of money) into the launch of a new range of hard plastic 28mm Napoleonics, and so Victrix Limited was born.

We have put great emphasis on producing figures with real character, truly reflecting the look and feel of the Napoleonic period. A great deal of attention has been placed on the sculpting of faces. The look of the uniform and the pose of each figure. As the Duke of Wellington said on the eve of Waterloo;

"I don't know what effect these men will have upon the enemy, but, by God, they frighten me".

We want our figures to look like soldiers and to scare the living daylights out of their metal opponents. We want to appeal to military modellers who will appreciate the detail of our figures. And want to use them as performers in their dioramas and vignettes. More than anything we want to recreate the pleasure and excitement of collecting miniature figures and perhaps convince the younger generation there is more to this pastime than Elves and Dwarves.

In recent years Victrix has moved away from traditional engineering methods and now all our plastic products are developed using digital technology. This involves digitally sculpting figures using various software platforms. Once the digital files are complete they go through a number of processes. Before getting uploaded to a CNC milling that then cuts the tool.

The adoption of digital technology has helped reduce development costs which has allowed us to invest more money in new product development. What the future holds is anyone's guess but developing STL files for people to purchase from us to then use on a domestic 3D printer is certainly one future avenue we are exploring.