Rangers of the North pt.1

At one point last year, I picked up a few blisters with some of the Dúnedain of the North metal minis from GW. The minis themselves are decent enough, with a variety of bow-and-sword poses, and a spear-wielding ranger there too. GW seems to be removing these from sale now, along with the Grey Company rangers, the Dúnedain, and the leaders models (Arathorn & Halbarad), with the entire army falling into the ‘last chance to buy’ section of the site; plus they are instantly out of stock, to boot.

I don’t know if Games Workshop are planning a revival of this line, bringing out new Dúnedain minis perhaps, or are axing them completely like they did to Arnor… It got me thinking that I need to make use of the rangers just sitting in my spares box, unopened, and so I got to work.

Pictured is one of the metal Dúnedain minis, along with a few spares of the plastic rangers of Middle-Earth that I had leftover from my Minas Tirith project. I’ve kept them tied to the green cloak/brown underlayer scheme, with the odd grey mixed in for good measure; obviously these guys will be less uniform than the likes of the Galadhrim or the foot soldiers of Minas Tirith, but I’m going to paint them in groups of three with a rotating palette.

I also have a plastic Aragorn mini from the Fellowship kit, and have been bulking out these rangers with more of my plastic guys from Minas Tirith. I reckon that GW will be using the plastic rangers as the de facto models for this faction for the foreseeable future; hopefully there are more Dúnedain on the way. I’d like to see a few mounted options as well, if there are.

Until next time though, thanks for reading. Additionally, if there are any players who dabble in the Rangers faction, I’d be interested to hear how they perform. In terms of gameplay, they seem like quite a different army to play than the others.