Roma Surrectum Mansio, a place for friendly off topic talk

[Revan The Great]

Those are huge presumptions on what a Celt would do really, not bound in fact. You seem to be looking at a Celtish warrior as a mindless barbarian who would not have the smarts to do anything other than smack against a Legionaries shield. You overestimate the Legionary. All of a Legionarys training was with a group, where he was trained to fight as a group, and how not to get separated from said group. Celts trained on their own, fought duels against one another. The differences in their training is what makes them strong in different areas. The Legionaries training was superior simply because the individual ceased to exist in battle, and was replaced by the whole. A legionaries equipment was not designed for a 1v1 scenario.

I don't want to get in a Celtic vs. Legionnaire B-fight with you, but suffice to say that if a Celt was wielding a two-handed sword that's big and heavy and long there's only so much maneuverability you can have compared to a man with a short-sword and shield that conveniently is the same shape as his body. Using a two-handed sword without a shield presents difficulties and openings exploitable by a Roman Legionnaire whose defensive capabilities were immensely strong

Again, underestimation of the Celts. Even taking chainmail out of the picture the Celts were formidable warriors. There is too much stock placed in what the victor (the Romans) said about them as people, and its evident in your post because you seem to think a Celt would mindlessly charge a legionary and smash his sword of axe against the Legionaries shield, or just deliberately leave himself open. Celts and Barbarians on the whole weren't always mindless savages ruled by their emotions.

I don't think they're mindless savages, but they were very powerful men who were headstrong, proud, used to head-on fighting and quick and brutal combat. When you're in the heat of battle, the adrenaline is pumping, you're angry, you want to kill someone - there isn't much cunning thinking, or examined strategy while sipping on a cup of tea determining how best to defeat your opponent. You see a little man hiding behind a big shield, you think 'Ooo I want to hit that as hard as I can to make it break', underestimating the deadliness of the Gladius despite its short reach. The Celts were great strong men, excellent individual fighters, and all of that. I'm sure their IQ's were comparable to the average Roman. Though, I won't let you sit here and dream of big, muscly men with their dinguses hanging out and tell everyone that even unarmored they'd whoop-ass on a Roman Legionnaire because they wouldn't. If that were the case three times the number of these brave, cunning, amazing fighter Gauls should be able to triumph over a Roman Legion a third their size in numbers. Considering how you seem to think that each Roman legionnaire needs to beat three warriors who are better than him in combat to annihilate the other army. Or does pure organization make up for that much?

Face it, the Celts were unorganized, undisciplined, and suffered from poor strategies and poor leadership. No matter how brainy you think these guys are they would try and storm Roman pallisades in the thousands, hoping to carry the forts away out of pure brute force. The same way an individual Celtic warrior might try to overwhelm a Roman Legionnaire's shield through brute force. It wasn't that they were dumb, they just didn't understand the more refined aspects of making war, conducting battle, and fighting at large because they'd never really had to fight wars or conduct battles like they did when they fought Caesar. That isn't saying they're dumb. It was like asking someone to do calculus before they'd attended a pre-cal class.