Join or Die Germanic Tribes

Germanic Tribes STL Miniatures: 28mm Warriors of the Roman Frontier

Rome called them barbarians, which tells you more about Rome than about them. The peoples along the Rhine and beyond it were a patchwork of tribes and confederations with their own politics, their own alliances and a habit of turning up in Roman service as often as they turned up opposite it. Some of the men who fought Rome had been trained by Rome.

Our Germanic Tribes range covers them in 28mm as digital STL files for home printing.

An army that fights on its own terms

The Germanic advantage was never in matching a legion formation for formation. It was in choosing where the fight happened. Forest, marsh, broken ground and river crossings all worked against an army built for open manoeuvre and disciplined lines, and a warband that knew the terrain could turn Rome’s greatest strength into a liability.

That comes across in the models. Where a Roman unit is uniform by design, a Germanic warband is not. Equipment varies from warrior to warrior, some carry shields and spears while others have little more than what they brought from home, and the whole force reads as men who assembled rather than an army that was issued. On the table it means your unit looks like individuals, which is a different painting proposition and a more forgiving one.

What’s in the range

Warriors forming the body of the warband, with the varied equipment and dress that characterised tribal forces along the frontier. Command models and unit options to give a force some structure without turning it into a uniform block.

The range is built to face our Roman Empire collection, so you can put both sides of the frontier conflict on the same table. That matchup is what makes the period worth playing: two armies with completely different strengths, forced to fight somewhere that suits one of them more than the other.

Painting and printing

Germanic warriors are more forgiving to paint than legionaries, because uniformity isn’t the goal. A unit that looks slightly inconsistent looks correct. Cloth, leather, wood and unpainted iron dominate rather than the bronze and red of a Roman line, and you can vary tunic colours freely without the force looking wrong.

Around 0.03mm layer height on resin covers gaming figures. Tilt 30 to 45 degrees so resin drains. Spear shafts are the usual failure point, and Germanic weapons run long, so check what automatic support generation has done to them before printing a full plate.

Frequently asked questions

How do I get variety in a warband without buying every model?
Paint does most of the work at 28mm. Where a Roman legion needs consistency to look right, a Germanic warband needs the opposite, so varying tunic and cloak colours across identical sculpts produces a unit that reads as individuals rather than duplicates. Shield designs are the other lever, and since tribal shields weren’t standardised you have complete freedom there. If you want physical variety as well, printing the same model at slightly different angles on the base changes the silhouette more than people expect.

What base sizes should I use for these?
That depends on your ruleset rather than on the models, and ancient rules vary more than most. Skirmish systems generally want single figures on individual round or square bases, while battle-scale rules want multiple figures on a shared element with a specified frontage. Some rules treat warband troops differently from formed infantry, giving them looser spacing to reflect how they fought. Check your rulebook before buying bases in bulk, especially if you plan to use the same army across more than one system.

My spear shafts keep breaking during cleanup. What am I doing wrong?
Probably nothing, beyond handling them the way you’d handle a thicker part. Long thin projections are the most fragile thing on any ancient miniature, and Germanic spears run longer than most. Three things help. Orient the model so the shaft isn’t printing unsupported across a long span. Add support at the midpoint of the shaft rather than only at the tip. And let the model finish curing fully before removing supports, because resin is significantly more brittle when it’s still soft from the wash. If a shaft does break, it glues back cleanly and nobody will see the join once it’s painted.

Subscribe and you may receive coupons and discounts