Iron & Rust - My 3rd Cent. Roman Project ( Goth Reinforcements 06.01.18)

[Richard in Sachsen]

They look fantastic, Phil! Really do! I really like your painting style and you're getting quite a force there. Do you have enough of this project done to post an enmasse tabletop photo? I'd really like to see all these units together.

I have a question for you that I've been mulling around for a couple of days now. If you wanted to represent Ostragoths and Visigoths, how would you differentiate them for the table top? I'm pretty sure they looked the same in reality but then there is the problem of confusing armies on the table top. I'm just curious how you would go about that.

I've been thinking how to divide up my own Goths and trying to come up with a solution. Differentiating them from Franks and Saxons is not that difficult: my Saxons all get bucklers and my Franks have the hair with franciscas and angons mixed in. Goths get large round shields and the distinctive Gothic embroidery on the trousers.

But differentiating them internally between the east and west Goths is giving me a bit of a problem.

Then there is my wish to use them from around 360 AD to Belisarius' Gothic war and everything in between - maybe even as proxies for Vandals. But then this nice Osprey book on Belisarius has a plate in there of Totilla and all his Goths are in nice pristine white tunics and trousers, nice and neat hair cuts and all the shields are the same: white fields with red crosses. So it seems that the look changed (after acquiring Roman fabricae in Gaul?) I might be out of luck for such a late period.

In any case, since you put a lot of thought, time and effort into your own Goths, I'm just curious how you would handle that.

[Phil Robinson]

I gave up trying find out any notable differences to be honest and just go with what I fancy, I face them off against my 3rd century Romans as you know but I will be just as happy using them against early Byzantines should I get the urge to raise a force when Aventine start to release them. I imagine there was quite a cross pollination in armour and clothing anyway.

There are some battle reports on my blog with the army in action, I will try and do an army shot for you.

[moiterei_1984]

Nicely done Phil! These Goths look ace.

[Richard in Sachsen]

Thanks Phil. That may be the way to do it, or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Goths!

[Axebreaker]

Very nicely done Phil!

Christopher