Hi guys,

I've been away from the hobby for a long while, having just seen the new Plastic Ranger models it's inspired me to make another new army.

Can you use a purely Ranger a ray and would it have balance?

Cheers guys

Yes, you can do a Grey Company army. For every 4 Rangers (warriors) you must take a Dunedain/Ranger of the North (Hero). But Warbands must be led by Named Heroes e.g. Halbard, Aragorn, Arathorn.

Grey Company armies are generally considered to not be very fun to play against, because every model has a bow the player can just sit back and shoot for the entire game. The only time I've faced Grey Company, my opponent kept his entire force of 30 or so rangers on his table edge, and just shot for every turn. That should be less of a problem now with the new Rulebooks and scenarios. Whether its overpowered or not I don't know.

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I wanted to do a Ithilen Ranger themed army, is this difficult to do? If it is my second plan was making a small force of rangers including some WoMT. The story behind the army would be something like the rangers rushing to the aid of a ambushed warrior group.

Cheers for you help dude

No, you can do Ithilien Rangers but you can't do a pure Ranger force then, only Grey Company can do that. I've not got the new Rulebooks myself but I do know that there are two new warrior types.

Ithilien Rangers - an upgrade to Rangers of Gondor; they can move through areas of difficult terrain without penalty (if its forest themed e.g. Woods, brush, undergrowth).
Ithilen Guard - an upgrade to Warriors of Minas Tirith; same as above.

You would have to take normal Infantry i.e. Warriors of MT / Ithilien Guard to balance out the number of archers as you can't have more than 33% bows in your army.

Themed Heroes for an Ithilien army would be Faramir, Damrod, Madril, Cirion, Captains of Minas Tirith and possibly Boromir of the White Tower.

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You can technically do a pure rangers of ithilien list. You can do the same as pure Riders of Rohan armies does. (only those who are holding the bow has it, but you have to pay for all). alternatively you could use this house rule: You are not allowed to spend more points on warriors than on heroes. This is basicly the same ruleas the GC, but I think they use 1,3 points for every 1 point of hero. So if you have Faramis, Madril, Damrod and Cirion that's 205 points already.

The new deployment rules really help with just being able to sit back and shoot the entire game. Your opponent can now deploy right at the halfway point on the line and you might only get to deploy 12" away from him.