Good morning folks!

Returning player here, and avid modeller with Warhammer. I went in store for the first time in years and noticed the Battle for Pelannor Fields set straight away, and was thrilled to see the old line had gotten a bit of love. As a Tolkien fan since I was in primary school, the Grey Company and the Rangers of the North as a whole are a faction I love, I've always wanted an army of them, and I'm planning to put that into action in the near future.

But are they a viable army still?
Thanks in advance everyone.

Wanderer.

You can still play them but they are quite different. Playing them you will have quite a low model count and thus they are quite hard to master. Allying them might be a solution but losing their bonus is still a blow.

Thank you for the speedy response! Glad to see an active forum still around.

If I may ask, how do they play? I imagine quite hero heavy? And how do we stack in the way of Troops? I've been looking about the internet, and it seems we don't get access to 'Rangers of Middle Earth'. I must admit.. This bothers me slightly admittedly, as that kit was going to be the basis for my mounted Rangers. Could you see this becoming an issue?

Thanks again,

Wanderer

You can't ally legendary legions. No ally would be worth losing half your attacks anyway IMO.

Very tricky to play army as said above, but can be very effective I'd say once mastered.

I'm a huge fan of the Northern Dúnedain myself! (Hence the name.) The Rangers list and the Grey Company LL are most definitely still viable, just different from past editions. They're an all hero force now which I think is waaay more fitting than what the original list was. They feel much more like the men that were described in Return of the King. Their killing power is really good, so scenarios based around that are where they excel. Objective holding scenarios however, are much harder as you don't have as much maneuverability or numbers as other armies do.

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Where now are the Dúnedain, Elessar, Elessar?
Why do thy kinsfolk wander afar?

As mentioned above, you have two options to field the Rangers of the North in the game.

The first is via the "Rangers" armylist from the Armies of the LotR book. This has Aragorn, Arathorn, Halbarad, and the basic Rangers/Dúnedain. There are no warriors as such, meaning you will have a very low model count, but each figure has a bow, a might point and the unnamed figures now double their attacks when on foot. With one wound and a fickle fate point, they can be a glass cannon, but one that's deadly all the same. As they lose the doubled attacks when allying most lists, you will want to stick with historical allies (if any): the Dead of Dunharrow could offer a solid front line; the Shire numbers (and more bows).

The second option is the actual "Grey Company" Legendary Legion from the new Gondor at War book. The Rangers of the North (no Dúnedain here) still get the bonus attack, and you now get the option of including Legolas, Gimli and Elladan & Elrohir. Aragorn also gets Andúril for free. At what cost? Allies are no longer an option, and all figures in the list have to fight on foot, which will hamper the effectiveness of your melee heroes.

I have no experience with either in the new edition, but they certainly seem interesting. Of course, you don't have to choose between them anyway: the core is the same, you can just add a few different heroes/allies and mix things up.

They aren't the most competitive list, but they're fun to play with all the might you have available to throw around. They're very dependent on deployment and making the most of your might to outmaneuver your opponent and compensate for the low model count.

Rangers/Dunedain are a bit too expensive, even with 2 attacks; other factions get stronger profiles when excluding the M/W/F for half the cost, and getting another body is usually better than the m/w/f (Berserkers, Iron guard, etc...). And, even though they ignore the bow limit, they lose shoot outs with many armies that bring a decent bow count because of the numbers disadvantage and/or low defense, and the low model count makes almost any fight a struggle if the opponent can bring numbers into play.
Even if the Dunedain/RoTN were ~3/5 points cheaper, they would probably be a solid army, but still wouldn't be too strong.

I think the generic rangers list is probably the better of the two lists, because you can take a bunch of single drop rangers/dunedain to out-deploy your opponent and can give Aragorn a horse. It's worth losing a model or two for that.

If you want a ranger spam list that gets a good body count and would be a bit more competitive, the Rangers of Ithilien legendary legion is probably something to look at.
That said, either way you'll suffer from having some really bad match ups. Ithilien might be fantastic vs Harad and some other lower defense armies, but it will struggle vs some of the higher defense armies.

Again.. Thank you for the responses! Your insight has been most valuable. I think, for better, or for worse, I'm going to go for the Grey Company Legendary Legion as mentioned above. Although.. I was hoping to have Aragorn with some Oathbreaker friends... Alas.. I will have to behave myself...

Thanks again

Yeah I dunno. I really wish they had added more for the Grey company in Gondor at war. The legendary legion is decent, maybe? Aragorn getting anduril for free is cool and the rangers going up to 2 attacks is needed but honestly I have no idea why they can't take horses and why they only get the extra attack when on foot. They're quite a bit more expensive then a son of eorl and those used to get two attacks, plus charge, plus a banner. I dunno, I think that would be an easy fix.
Problem I always run into when I try to build the list is what heroes do you take? Aragorn, obviously(sorta) but if you take him you just don't have the points left to hardly any rangers, horses or no. So then do you just go all hero? Like Aragorn, twins, ect? I guess but in the legendary legion you cant give them horses so that feels not great either.
I am sure they're good enough and you can win some games with them but I have a hard time pulling the trigger and putting them on the table with such a limited build and playstyle :/
Kinda true for their old army list too though so meh. Sucks though cause I love the passing of the grey company in the books and their arrival on the pelennor fields is sorely missed in the movies, we instead get the giant green wave of the army of the dead, but I digress.

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Cheers,

P

So generally in the regular rangers list Aragon w/lightsaber and Halbarad w/Giggachad banner is the agreed upon standard to my understanding. I think that would also be the go with the grey company. If you don't own a Halbarad then I think the twins are solid. But you really want that '3rd dice' when your guys are so expensive and squishy.

For sure. If you take Aragorn, halbarad with banner thats like 350 points so then you only get like 6-8 more rangers depending on your points value on the game. So my thought is youd be better off going actually all hero and maybe fill out some points with a ranger or two. Or just take Aragorn and as many rangers as you can do.

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Cheers,

P

They are still viable but are definitely one of if not the hardest army to play.

I have always been a little underwhelmed by the rangers. Even since they were released they always felt like they were quite capable as an army but still doomed to fail.
They are balanced correctly for their stats and points value but they are in a unique niche where I think that is not the correct choice.
For example, if you compare them with 2 Iron Guard for the same cost they have all the same stats except D6 for dwarves compared to D4/D5 for rangers. Wargear is basically the equivalent so all that's left is the MWF. I think most of us would prefer to have 2 warriors with D6 than 1 warrior with D4/5 and 1 fate point.

As you will be outnumbered easily having the fate point is not going to help you survive too long. The 2A means your fights will almost always be 2A vs 2A with likely better FV but once you lose a few models it will snowball badly. You need to make full use of your 100% bows.

So what can be done with the MWF? Fate is straight forward, and will also is handy for resisting spell casters and charging terror causing models. So both help you to do very well against a variety of evil armies.

The might gives a lot of versatility also. Probably the best use for it is heroic combat and strike. If you can position well you can hopefully get a 2v1 in your favour and then heroic combat the whole way along the line. Hopefully you will be able to cause a large number of wounds to even the odds a bit more.
You can also throw in a heroic strike where you need to charge a monster or hero so you could end up with a few models fighting again vs them but with higher FV. If it all goes wrong, at least you have 1 model with higher FV and 2 attacks.

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My trade thread
http://www.one-ring.co.uk/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=25957&p=325932#p325932

Interesting bit of discussion on the GBHL facebook group about the rangers list, specifically the Rangers of the North list vs the Grey Company legendary legion.

The consensus seems to be the Rangers list is probably. Getting a horse for Aragorn, getting individual deployments per Ranger can also be pretty huge tactical advantage in some scenarios.
It also allows you to ally into some other lists, The Shire maybe most importantly. A lot of people suggested Taking farmer Maggot to use the hounds as objective holders Kinda silly but maybe worth looking at. It also gives you an option to take Gandalf, which could always be a useful option at higher points values if nothing else.

You miss out on Anduril for free of course but you might be able to squeeze it anyway since its cheaper now then it used to be anyways.

600 points

You can take Aragorn, cloak, bow and horse
10 rangers
Halbarad, horse and banner

And Farmer Maggot, Grip, Fang and Wolf

16 might, 11 bows, 16 models

Not sure how competitive it really is but I imagine if you play some games you could do well enough. You at least are better at some scenarios that armies with low model count would normally be bad at like recon and domination since you can deploy so much better and use the dogs to run of. Still struggle to play recon against alot of mounted models but meh, all in all not too bad.

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Cheers,

P