User blog comment:Kazanshin/Barbarians made Kings: Aterui vs Fritigern/@comment-35680048-20190617015503

Tybaltcapulet's "I'm hesitant to call Aterui a barbarian" Edges:

Heavy Infantry:I'm gonna say this now, man do the Emishi Warriors look stupid. Their armor literally looks like a dress to me. But honestly, I think they can take on the Gothic warriors. This comes down to the fact that the Goths are very much exposed, even with their shield. Their feet, arms, hands, and anything not covered by the Lorica hamata and shield is open season for the Emishi. And only some of the Goths were able to scavenge it, so this must mean not all of them will have the mail available to them.At least with the Emishi they're guaranteed to have some form of armor in the lamellar, and some even have freaking cuirass and kabuto helmets. They also have superior weapons and metallurgy in general, and will be able to cut through the Goths' limbs and provide some nice ranged damage with their throwing spears. (The axes the Goths have to me, are ultimately useless against the Emishi). Sure they have superior numbers but when they're outclassed like this, I really don't care.Edge: Aterui

Light Infantry: I really wanna give this to Fritigern for also having archers and having the clear advantage in numbers, but the Skirmishers are gonna get punished, and they'll be punished hard.They lack any sort of substantial armor, and a shield won't do shit against the superior power of the bow and crossbowmen. And then there's the fact that javelins and axes, aren't doing much of anything against cuirass, leather or iron, unless they're pretty damn close, and even then the bowmen will have cut them down by that point. The Gothic Archers themselves will also be cut down quite easily by the crossbow/bow combo, since they too lack armor.Sure the archers are armed with other weapons, but so are the Emishi archers.I would also say the Crossbowmen are very useful for taking down enemies that have more protection to work with, even with their slower fire rate.Edge: Aterui

Cavalry: And yet again Fritigern loses out here, but by a much less substantial margin. Aterui lacks any pure melee cavalry, so the Alans and other Germanic horseman will be of great use to Fritigern. They can directly engage smaller pockets of troops, like the Crossbowmen, and overall are better for direct combat. But unfortunately, that's not how Aterui rolls baby. His horse archers are the crux of his strategy, laying down a metric shit ton of fire upon just about everyone in Fritigern's army. If this was an even amount of troops i'd easily give it to the Goths here for their higher level of diversity, but being outnumbered so severely really hampers the capabilities of the Goth cavalry here.Edge:Aterui

Tactics/Overall: I don't really feel the need to go much further to tell you that Fritigern will get crushed by Aterui like the filthy barbarian he is. I'll quickly go over tactics because it's super simple. Fritigern's "achievement" was mainly due to the Romans already being pissed off and some of them wishing to exact vengeance upon the Goths for their bullshit. I can guarantee you if that battle played out like a more formal battle like this one will, the Romans would have been much better off. Aterui on the other hand faced a much larger force that was actually unified in their attack, and then utilized ambushes to screw them over. This seems like a luck vs skill type of arrangement to me. Aterui used skill to ambush his larger opponent into submission. Fritigern just so happened to have the fortune of an overconfident enemy, and his cavalry just happened to come back from foraging to support the infantry. Now after that there's the armies themselves. Fritigern's army heavily suffers from a lack of effective armor or weapons. Hell his entire light infantry force barely has any armor to speak of, and the Skirmishers are just about useless against the majority of Aterui's army. This ultimately is because Aterui has the clear advantage in metallurgy, his army having access to some of the most high quality metals of the time while the Goths are quite inconsistent in their army, mostly lacking metal armor, and the Emishi having literal cuirass and high carbon steel. Really both leaders are quite experienced and their men love them. Training isn't something i'm terribly worried about, as both sides aren't super great in that department. Aterui sweeps every soldier category, with a combination of superior weaponry/armor both in functionality and metallurgy, and his tactical prowess seems to be much more refined than Fritigern's. (Emperor Laquearius, I hope I have appeased you, for I have ripped this filthy Goth to shreds with this vote)

Aterui:4000

Fritigern:1000