Originally Posted by otherstar (Post 14241409)

And since the wights are already dead...they were exactly like that kind of foolish ROFL:D

Originally Posted by GloucesterChief (Post 14241346)

I would just like for the writers to understand how castles actually worked and why people went to the expense of building them.

Suffice to say a major stronghold like Winterfell should be able to force the night king out in the open since his army had no siege equipment at all. Just masses of bodies aren't getting through a properly built castle.

Originally Posted by Amnorix (Post 14241406)

It's 2. There isn't much doubt about it at this point, unfortunately.

Originally Posted by GloucesterChief (Post 14241380)

They actually would. First the walls were way too short, should of been at least 30 feet tall and probably taller than that. The walls would of been plastered smooth to prevent climbing. In addition things like boiling oil or lighted pitch would be close to dump on anybody climbing or right at the walls. There are also many other design flaws of winterfell as depicted in the show.

Castles were seriously designed fortifications designed to kill anybody foolish enough to assault them head on.

Originally Posted by Fish (Post 14241434)

How can that episode be so exciting and tense, yet be so underwhelming at the same time? So many awesome scene opportunities, but the writing came off like a Transformer movie. I'm not sure what exactly I was expecting. But the way it went down just felt cheap and lazy after the build up over the past 7 seasons.

Originally Posted by Chiefspants (Post 14241427)

And sadly, his publisher is pretty dead-set that he'll need not 2, but 3 books to finish the story at this point.

Originally Posted by Setsuna (Post 14241403)

Don't bring facts into this. Let them revel as babes at this chicanery.

Originally Posted by Fish (Post 14241450)

I do get what people are saying about how they defended the castle. Why send 1/3 of your best troops away off into the unknown darkness when you're trying to defend your position? You have a giant ass castle that you've now intentionally left the front door open to, because you're trying to get your soldiers back inside the castle where they should have been in the first place. Also, what was Bran's plan other than just sitting there hoping the baddies don't reach him? He warged into a raven to give us a nice view? When that didn't work, he was just going to sit there and let the Night King kill him? 3 eyed Raven seems pretty useless other than learning secrets about royal incest...

Originally Posted by duncan_idaho (Post 14240910)

I felt like they rolled about a 12 on their Tactics roll, too. But after thinking about it more ... the goal of the battle at the castle wasn’t to repel the wights and win. It was all about killing the Night King. That was a delaying tactic.

The Dothraki, the Unsullied, and those who died outside the walls... pawns that had to be sacrificed to get the king to come forward.

Think of it like the survivors of the battle at Gondor rushing the gates of Mordor. It was a distraction.




I read the books in a blink in 2007 (seriously, like one month) and I don’t agree with the criticism of the writing.

The whole point of Martin’s story is that traditional tropes and key points don’t matter.

The heroic son avenging his father with brilliant battle tactics and honor? He dies.

The wise wizard/witch knowing the future and perfectly setting a prophecy into motion? She misunderstands and is wrong about a bunch of things (still fulfills her purpose though).

The clear inheritor(s) of the prophecy not ultimately being the one(s) to slay the big bad.

Etc.




In the history of warfare, horse soldiers were effective for a few reasons:

Shocking formations and forcing cracks and breaks in formation due to human reactions and self-preservation.

Using mobility to pick at flanks and break formations, again due to human reaction and self-preservation.

That stuff doesn’t work against a mass of undead thralls that have no self-preservation sense.

The traditional charge, shock, wheel tactics of horse warriors would simply not work against an uncaring mass of thralls.

Same thing with the Unsullied phalanx. Shield walls were great against human enemies who didn’t want to just throw themselves on the spears. Against an enormous mass of undead, it just would get slowly buried.




If the tactics were to preserve as much of the army as possible, sure. Though who could have known what tactics would work and how many of the dead there were?

If tactics were to convince the NK he was winning and it was safe to sally forth to take Bran... different story.

Originally Posted by DanBecky (Post 14241397)

I could be wrong, but I thought in the books Winterfell had an 80 foot outter wall with a 100 foot wall behind it, with a moat in between. That would’ve been cool to see. 2 different walls to scale. Would’ve made it easier to defend.

Originally Posted by Amnorix (Post 14241435)

I literally asked my wife "where's the boiling pitch"? It's so damn standard.

But maybe the though was that they used all the combustibles in the fiery moat?

The 30 foot walls I can easily get over. Be mindful that the North is nowhere near as well populated as the other regions of Westeros. The Starks could legitimately have felt, for a wide variety of reasons, that a massive fortification was unnecessary -- or they were not wealthy enough to construct one.

Originally Posted by UK_Chief (Post 14241455)

What was/is the point in Bran? He went into sleep mode and was a crow for a bit. For what purpose? Or did I miss something? I could understand them fighting to keep him alive if he was trying to actually accomplish something but it seemed like he was just napping. Shit character and crap acting IMO