Active since 2018, Wargames Atlantic is a successful American wargame miniature manufacturer, producing sci-fi, fantasy, and historical miniatures for its own lines and other miniature designers – and its CEO has been living a double life. In a company blog post on Monday, the man known publicly as Hudson Adams revealed that he was in fact Tony Reidy. Reidy is associated with two troubled companies and a never-delivered Kickstarter campaign – but he has pledged to find and refund the original backers a total $46,000, or even more in credit with Wargames Atlantic.
Reidy was the head of two miniature wargames companies before he founded Wargames Atlantic: Wargames Factory and Defiance Games. In 2013, Defiance Games launched a Kickstarter campaign for ’28mm Power Armor Hardsuits’ – some rather tasty sci-fi miniature designs – which attracted 686 backers and a total of $46,492 in funds. The campaign never delivered, with its last update coming in February 2014.
Reidy’s post from Monday states “after six years we’ve reached a place where we can finally make good on the Defiance Games Kickstarter and refund those backers”. “After 12 years it’s unlikely that a lot of the card/account/contact details are the same on Kickstarter, so we are going to reach out to people a variety of ways to try to reach all the old backers”.
If you backed, you can email kickstarter@wargamesatlantic with a screenshot of your pledge and current PayPal or bank details for a wire transfer, or request a voucher for 150% the value of your pledge from the Wargames Atlantic website.
Reidy states “I wanted to redeem myself… I wanted someday – once the company was built up – to be able to release the Defiance stuff and make the Kickstarter whole”. But “I had to hide who I was to do it, and I hated doing that and not being upfront with people, but it allowed me to show who I REALLY was through what I’ve built at Atlantic”.
To understand why Reidy’s name was so toxic, we need to look at his two previous companies. Founded around 2007-8, Wargames Factory was one of an early run of firms producing plastic sci-fi and fantasy miniatures other than Games Workshop. It ran into difficulties, and in 2010 Reidy signed a deal with the owner of the Chinese factory that handled production for Wargames Factory, granting him majority ownership in exchange for “doing the tooling at cost”.
Reidy ceded total control of the company to its new owners in 2011. The split was acrimonious, with both parties making accusatory claims and counterclaims on various social media and wargaming forums.
After losing control of Wargames Factory, Reidy launched Defiance Games. This had a rocky start. Reidy states that he was contacted by an unspecified investor who wanted to use his designs to launch the Hard Suit Kickstarter. Reidy says “I signed over the bank accounts, all the websites, Facebook, passwords, etc. and ownership and said I just wanted to keep 10%”.
The campaign funded, but Reidy states that the investor “told me they were out and weren’t going to go through with taking it all over and were giving me all the control back” – along with the Kickstarter obligations. He says he suspects that the investors had been banking on a significantly larger Kickstarter revenue to make the project wash its face.
Reidy states “I had to file for bankruptcy, the court determined which debts to pay off with what was left, and just shut everything down… the only guy who made any money from Wargames Factory and Defiance was the sculptor who got a regular paycheck all that time”.
Whatever the truth of the original fracas, Wargames Atlantic has proven to be a successful miniature manufacturer. The promise of a refund for a twelve year old Kickstarter will be a pleasant surprise for original backers.
Did you back the original Kickstarter? Do you just like Wargames Atlantic miniatures? Come and say hi in the official Wargamer Discord community.
Making miniatures in plastic is a complicated, costly business. Check out Wargamer’s interviews with the British Mantic Games and American start-up Best Hobby to learn more about what goes into making your miniatures.