Mirkwood Rangers

Mirkwood Rangers scouting for Orcs.

Returning once again to Tolkien’s fascinating world of Middle-Earth, we now leave the tree-elves of Lorien and go east to the vast forest of Mirkwood. Here we find the wood-elves, or other Silvan elves under King Thranduil.

The mighty King Thranduil of the Woodland Realm.

Mirkwood features heavily in the new Hobbit movies, and I couldn’t help but be inspired, not least by Peter Jackson’s vision of Mirkwood, but also of the incredible lift in quality GW has managed for the Mirkwood Rangers kit.

Using a ø40mm resin base from Micro Art Studio,
a nice forest ambiance is set.

The Minis are incredibly crisp and clear sculpts, plus it seems GW has developed a new way of injection moulding, offering even finer and more three dimensional details. For my Mirkwood Rangers unit of 12, I’ve bought the box kit containing 10 minis, and I’ll be adding Legolas as the hero, plus a metal cast elven banner carrier from the LotR range

A Mirkwood Ranger attacking from an ambush position.

Adopting Michael’s 3-2-1 basing system, I’ve bought a series of Micro Art Studio “forest” bases cast in resin. This means 3 minis on ø40mm, 2 minis on ø30mm and 1 mini on a ø25mm round base. I’ll build two such sets, giving me my desired unit strength of 12 minis.

The new GW moulding technique has really produced some

fantastic crisp details, just look at the textile waving in the wind.

In the tales of Tolkien, the Silvan Elves of Mirkwood had a long relation with men and dwarves, the latter relation naturally was tainted by a fair amount of distrust. Their domain of Mirkwood was originally known as Greenwood the Great, until the Dark Lord Sauron cast his evil shadow over the lush forest, changing it to a darker and more mysterious place, with danger hiding in the shadows. 

Mirkwood - a mysterious place, with danger luring in the shadows.

In the Hobbit, the elves of Mirkwood are one of the key factions of the alliance that came together to defeat the Orcs at the Battle of Five Armies, fought near The Lonely Mountain. 

The 10 minis boxed set of GW's Mirkwood Rangers offers real variety,
containing10(!) different poses.

Their ability to combine the characteristics of hard hitting but nimble light infantry made them essential to the Elven army I’m building, and even though I initially thought I’d only paint up old stuff in the lead pile, I just had to add these new minis from the Hobbit range. Hope you like them

Thank you very much for reading!