[1] Ral Partha is best known for its historical figures, Fantasy Collector's series, and miniatures produced for TSR, Inc.'s Advanced Dungeons & Dragons and FASA's BattleTech games.
Until 2020 he worked on commission and operated Thunderbolt Mountain Miniatures, a boutique company for pet projects involving dioramas, 54 mm figurines, and a new series of elves and goblins.
During its 40-year history Ral Partha has employed more than two dozen sculptors, of whom some of the most prolific were Dennis Mize, Julie Guthrie, Sandra Garrity, Robert N. Charrette, and Dave Summers.
Ral Partha Legacy also acquired the license to Tom Meier's Thunderbolt Mountain Miniature lines which unites more than four decades of the artist's work.
Only a product code marked Ral Partha's early packaging and customers required a contemporary catalog in order to identify the miniature.
Advertisements by Ral Partha and its British and Canadian partners appear in most editions of TSR, Inc.'s Dragon and Games Workshop's White Dwarf magazines.
By November 1980 Ral Partha moved to a larger industrial space at 5938 Carthage Court, where it, and the Iron Wind Metals production facilities remained until 2014.
Ral Partha's formative years were the late 1970s, when the company was a part-time basement enterprise producing the art of a teenage sculptor for a nascent gaming market.
In 1979, the company became a full-time endeavor with industrial space and two professional sculptors designing products for multiple themes made popular by the rapidly expanding gaming market.
Since 2001 the focus of Iron Wind Metals has been on existing product lines, Battletech licensed figures, and manufacturing for partner companies who carryout their own designs, marketing and distribution.
[30] Ral Partha's figures were popular with historical wargamers, but fans of fantasy themed role-playing games like TSR, Inc.'s Dungeons & Dragons accounted for the majority of their sales.
Their release was in tandem with Gamescience's Strike Team Alpha, a set designed by Michael Scott Kurtick for Meier's Galactic Grenadiers.
In 1986 Ral Partha sculptors crafted 01-3xx 3-Stage Characters which consisted of three aspects with increasing amounts of arms and armor to represent a single adventurer's game career.
[14] At the same time that integrated campaign worlds like Games Workshop's Warhammer Fantasy Battle were showing early success, Ral Partha introduced the "Chaos Wars" theme into their 1986 and 1987 product lines.
A fantasy version by Bob Charrette, Rich Smethhurst, Marc Rubin, and Chuck Crain was released in 1987 as part of a boxed set Rules According to Ral: Chaos Wars.
[2] Company president Chuck Crain hired Sandra L. Garrity, Dave Summers, and Richard Kerr as full-time sculptors[14][54][55] to produce an official line of monsters and personalities for AD&D figures.
[15] The breadth and earning potential of the Dungeons & Dragons franchise drove new releases and Ral Partha scrambled to acquire the sculpting talents of British and American sculptors, including Nick Bibby, Jeff Wilhelm, Bob Olley, Chris Atkin, Walter Vail, John M. Garrity, and Jim Johnson in 1992, and Chis Fitzpatrick and Geoff Valley by 1995.
Other new lines included Richard Kerr's 1992 futuristic tanks for Steve Jackson Games' Ogre[30] and the introduction of the "69-xxx" series for White Wolf, Inc.'s Werewolf: The Apocalypse and Vampire: The Masquerade in late 1993.
[60] Despite the additional cost, numerous manufacturers anticipated parental concerns, similar legislation in other states, workplace safety, and began using white metal alloys.
By the late 1990s the move to larger figures by market leaders like Games Workshop of Great Britain had made it such that Ral Partha's sculpts of the 1970s and early 1980s appeared significantly smaller than others.
In response to the shift in the market, Ral Partha began adding to Tom Meier's collector's series (CS/02-xxx) with a 30 mm scale Fantasy Armies line in a "British style" which tended to have oversized weapons, punk and Gothic fashions, and separate square bases.
Sandra Garrity designed the Knights of the Legion of Justice[15] A set of rules of the Fantasy Armies were developed by an outside work group called Ral Partha Publishing.
At this time Ral Partha had an in-house design studio and a host of staff and free-lance sculptors which included Kev Adams, Jeff Grace, Behrle W. Hubboch III, Randy Kerr, Robert Kyde, Phil Lewis, Dennis Mize, Bob Olley, Tim Prow, Steve Saunders, C. Staples, Dave Summers, Jeff Wilhelm, John Winter.
[83] Iron Wind Metals retained the same location and much of the same production staff, molds, equipment, working relationships with artists, and licensing agreements.
This model was successful, but artists sometimes didn't have the capital necessary to retain copyrights, and the mercurial nature of the market meant that their game designs could be sold to others, or languish as assets of dead companies.
[85] Citing falling profits associated with the Great Recession, Tornante put the Wizkids product lines on hold in November 2008, but continued to lease the intellectual properties of Battletech and Shadowrun game worlds.
[86] In September 14, 2009, The Tornante Company sold the majority of the Wizkids assets to the National Entertainment Collectibles Association (NECA), but retained the rights to Battletech, Shadowrun, and the Ral Partha trademark and website.
Establishing Ral Partha as a division of Iron Wind Metals, president Mike Noe and co-owner Mark Rubin launched a Kickstarter campaign to crowdfund the production costs of its 1980s lines under the Chaos Wars game world.
Ral Partha Legacy also acquired the license to Tom Meier's Thunderbolt Mountain Miniature lines which unites more than four decades of the artist's work.
[99] Reportedly the last part of the band's name was the surname of a childhood bully of one of the members,[100] and forms a statement of the nerd pride movement.