Rediscovering Arnor: A Return to Middle-earth
Original Entry: 7th of September 2026
I have to admit, I never gave the Lord of the Rings tabletop game much attention over the years.
Despite being there over 3,000 years ago and watching the films in the cinema in my middle teens, when the game came out it always seemed like the poor man's version of Warhammer Fantasy Battle. Which, ultimately, was very unfair of me.
Then a couple of years later, at the time of working for Games Workshop Watford, I became tired of running countless introductory games of The Mines of Moria. Coupled with the fact that the figures seemed to me to have been made specifically to prevent conversions—not that it stopped me—my interest was never truly piqued in the same way it was with 40K and Warhammer Fantasy Battle.
You see, the Lord of the Rings miniatures were, and still are to be fair, in a slightly smaller scale than the rest of the Warhammer ranges. I always assumed this was deliberate, particularly given how protective Tolkien's estate and New Line Cinema were of the IP. Worried, I assumed they were of seeing a Minas Tirith helmet glued to a Space Marine...
Of course, given The Rings of Power, it seems that the Tolkien Estate's particular maternal instinct has diminished somewhat over the years.
The figures were very much mono-pose. Even the plastic models didn't have the same possibilities for customisation that the Warhammer Fantasy miniatures had during the same era.
You didn't unbox a sprue containing a collection of torsos, legs, arms and weapons and then build your warrior however you wanted. Your Warrior of Gondor was essentially one piece, with a preset pose.
I collected many of the figures nevertheless and tried a few armies. Even before joining Games Workshop, I had subscribed to the Lord of the Rings Battle Games magazines, with each issue providing a single sprue of miniatures or a white metal character. By the time I joined Games Workshop, I had quite the collection. Unfortunately, that collection wouldn't survive my early twenties. I sold almost all of it over the years to help pay basic household bills as an early parent.
Not holding on to some of those models—and despite my earlier misgivings about it, my copy of The Mines of Moria—is something I now regret.
I'm now approaching my forties, and The Lord of the Rings hits home a little harder.
I don't think I ever truly immersed myself in the story when I was younger. Being a little older, however, you comprehend much more of the underlying messages of heroism, duty and sacrifice. There are things in Tolkien's story that simply mean something different when you've lived a little longer.
Recently, I introduced my daughter to the franchise through the Peter Jackson films, and found myself with a renewed interest too. As I create this blog, I'm re-reading the trilogy and, in the process, dug out the only surviving collection of miniatures from the garage:
My Warriors of Arnor army.
Why Arnor?
I can't quite say what it was that originally drew me to this specific range or why despite selling all my other Lord of the Rings models, these survived.
Perhaps it is simply that I've always enjoyed collecting the harder-to-find armies, or those that are more difficult to represent on the tabletop.
Unlike their Gondorian counterparts in the south, the Arnor range is limited. There isn't the same depth of miniatures to draw from, which gives the collection a certain challenge.
Rather than simply buying everything Games Workshop produced for an army, you have to start thinking about how you can adapt other miniatures to fit.
And that is where the modeller in me starts to get interested.
For example, I've been looking at ways of converting things such as the Gondor Trebuchet so that it fits the aesthetics of Arnor. It's exactly the sort of project I enjoy: taking something that wasn't originally designed for an army and working out how it could plausibly belong there.
The Green of Arnor
One of the things that immediately makes the Warriors of Arnor distinctive is their colour palette.
The greens, the banners and the heraldry give them an identity that separates them from the more familiar silver and white of Gondor.
But there is an important distinction here. This isn't Tolkien. It's Games Workshop.
Tolkien gives us very little information about the colours or military heraldry of Arnor. There is no passage (to my knowledge) describing an Arnorian army wearing green, nor does Tolkien provide the particular shield design that Games Workshop has used.
So the green colour scheme, and the specific heraldic design used on the miniatures, are Games Workshop's interpretation of what the armies of Arnor might have looked like.
And I think they've done a rather good job. Considering that Hobbits of the Shire, who live within the old realm of Arnor, favour Greens and Yellows,* I think incorporating those colours in the Arnor range makes sense. One influenced the other.
The most recognisable part of the shield design is the group of stars. These aren't entirely invented by Games Workshop, however.
The seven stars are an important symbol associated with Elendil and his royal house. They have their origins in the seven palantíri brought from Númenor, and the star became particularly significant to the northern line of kings. The Elendilmir, the Star of Elendil, was the royal jewel of the Kings of Arnor and later the Chieftains of the Dúnedain.
So while the particular knot and diamond at the centre of the stars is a Games Workshop invention, the stars themselves have a genuine connection to the history of Arnor.
In other words, GW has taken a genuine piece of Tolkien's heraldic language and built a visual identity around it.
And for a miniature range that Tolkien himself gives us very little visual description for, I think that's a pretty good compromise.
* The Fellowship of the Ring, Prologue, Concerning Hobbits: "They dressed in bright colours, being notably fond of yellow and green..."
So, What Was Arnor?
To understand why these miniatures appeal to me, it helps to understand what Arnor actually was.
Arnor was the northern kingdom of the Dúnedain, founded by Elendil after the destruction of Númenor.
When Númenor fell, Elendil escaped with his sons, Isildur and Anárion, and established two kingdoms in Middle-earth.
In the south was Gondor, ruled jointly by Isildur and Anárion.
In the north was Arnor, ruled by Elendil.
The two kingdoms were therefore born from the same Númenórean civilisation, and both ultimately descended from the survivors of Númenor.
Arnor occupied a huge part of what we know as Eriador. Its territory included the lands that would eventually contain places such as the Shire and Bree, as well as the Weather Hills and the lands surrounding Lake Evendim.
Its first capital was Annúminas, beside Lake Evendim.
Later, the capital became Fornost.
For a time, Arnor was a powerful kingdom. But after the death of King Eärendur in T.A. 861, a dispute between his sons caused the kingdom to divide into three smaller realms:
Arthedain, Cardolan and Rhudaur.
That division would ultimately prove disastrous.
The Witch-king and the Fall of Arnor
Around T.A. 1300, a new power appeared in the north:
Angmar.
Its ruler was the Witch-king, the greatest of the Nazgûl.
Angmar's purpose was essentially the destruction of the northern Dúnedain.
The three successor kingdoms of Arnor were already weakened by their division, and one by one they were devastated. Cardolan fell. Rhudaur came under the control of a hostile ruler allied with Angmar. Arthedain survived longest, but was eventually pushed back towards Fornost.
By the middle of the twentieth century of the Third Age, Arnor was a shadow of its former self.
The final king was Arvedui.
In T.A. 1974, Angmar captured Fornost and the kingdom of Arthedain was destroyed.
Arvedui fled north and eventually died while attempting to escape.
That was effectively the end of Arnor.
Or at least, the end of Arnor as a kingdom.
The Rangers of the North
This is where Arnor becomes particularly important to The Lord of the Rings.
Arvedui's son, Aranarth, survived.
There was no longer a kingdom for him to rule, so instead he became the first Chieftain of the Dúnedain of the North.
His descendants continued this line for generations.
These were the people who eventually became known as the Rangers of the North.
And one of those Rangers was a man called Strider.
Or, to give him his proper name:
Aragorn son of Arathorn.
So Aragorn isn't simply some mysterious wanderer who happens to be exceptionally good with a sword.
He is the descendant of Elendil and Isildur, heir to the lost kingdom of Arnor and, through his ancestry, connected to the royal house of Gondor as well.
For centuries, the Rangers of the North protected the remnants of the old kingdom without recognition. They guarded the roads, fought Orcs and other creatures, and protected communities such as Bree and the Shire.
The kingdom was gone. The army was gone. The cities had become ruins. But the bloodline survived.
And then Aragorn returned.
The Return of Arnor
This is perhaps the part of the story that makes collecting these miniatures interesting to me now.
At the end of The Lord of the Rings, Aragorn becomes King of the Reunited Kingdom.
The old kingdoms of Arnor and Gondor are brought together once more.
And suddenly, after a thousand years of decline, the North has a king again.
That leaves an intriguing possibility for a collection like this.
Tolkien never tells us that the people of the North took up the old green colours of Arnor after Sauron's defeat. He never tells us that ancient Arnorian shields were brought out of storage, or that the Men of Bree marched beneath the old heraldry.
But he doesn't tell us that they didn't, either.
And that is the story I find myself wanting to tell with these miniatures.
Perhaps the Rangers of the North, who had spent generations fighting in the shadows, no longer needed to hide.
Perhaps the men of Bree, living among the ruins of the old kingdom, answered the call of the returning King.
Perhaps old armour was brought down from family stores. Perhaps ancient shields were repaired. Perhaps new equipment was made in the style of the old.
And perhaps, for the first time in a thousand years, the stars of Arnor were carried into battle once again.
Not because the old army had somehow survived.
It hadn't.
But because the people had survived.
And now that their King had returned, they could finally remember what they had been.
The Models
As for the miniatures themselves, almost all of them date back to my time working for GW, with the exception of the newer Arnor cavalry models that I’ve ordered recently. Despite owning these models for nigh on 20 years, very few ever made it beyond a black undercoat and the occasional Boltgun Metal drybrush. So, for the purposes of this blog, all of the miniatures featured will be sporting much more modern paint jobs.
The conversions are a slightly different story. Some of them are nearly 20 years old and, looking back, certainly aren’t among my best work! Where possible, I’ve remade or resculpted parts to bring them up to scratch without completely re-doing what was already finished. I’ll point out what has been reworked or added recently alongside the photographs of each completed unit.
With that out of the way, it’s time to actually get some paint on these things.
Finally Applying Paint
So, after 20 long years, the first of my Arnor miniatures finally have some paint on them.
In fairness, they’re a pretty straightforward unit to paint, and these first ten were finished over just a couple of evenings. While I have many more of the original metal line infantry waiting in the wings, I decided to start with a unit of ten, including a Captain/Sergeant and a banner bearer.
What little conversion work there is here actually dates back to my time working at GW Watford. Aside from filling in a few gaps between the arms with Green Stuff, I haven’t done anything to update the original conversion work.
Speaking of the banner bearer...
I do have the official Arnor banner bearer sitting in the paint queue, but, if you ask me, that model is very fancy. His banner looks more like an army battle standard than something you’d expect to see carried by a single unit. So, for this unit, I decided to resurrect an old conversion instead.
The model started life as a simple Man of Gondor, with the tree motifs filed away, a Gondorian cavalry arm and lance added, and a head swap to finish things off.
That head swap is actually going to become something of a recurring theme throughout this blog. One of the more distinctive differences between the Gondorian and Arnorian ranges, despite their broadly similar shields, is the helmet and its torse — the twisted fabric decoration worn around the top. The old Empire kits from Warhammer Fantasy pre-date a lot of the scale creep that happened across the ranges, and as a result, their proportions don’t look too out of place alongside Lord of the Rings miniatures. They proved to be a great source of heads for these conversions, giving the models something that felt a little more distinctly Arnorian than the familiar Gondorian helmets.
As for the painting, green is a colour I don’t get to paint particularly often, and I wanted to lean into that clean, minty/emerald green alongside bright silver armour.
Many of the men of Arnor are covered in the dark green cloaks of the Rangers, so I wanted to create a deliberate contrast. Beneath all that Ranger gear was once a proud civilisation, and I wanted the armour and brighter cloth to hint at that heritage. The clean green and silver of the warriors should sit nicely against the more muted, almost camouflage-like cloaks of the Rangers. Hopefully, that idea will come across a little more clearly as I get a couple of Ranger units finished.
I’m pretty happy with my first attempt at the green cloth. It started with a basecoat of Warpstone Glow, followed by large highlights of Sybarite Green, then an edge highlight of Gauss Blaster Green, before finishing with a wash of Biel-Tan Green.
Even as I’ve moved on to the next unit, I’ve already tweaked the recipe slightly. I’ve added an intermediate mix between the Sybarite Green and Gauss Blaster Green to create a smoother transition between the highlights. It’s a small change, but hopefully one that will make the later units look a little more refined.
So there we have it. Twenty years after I first started collecting them, the army is finally underway.
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