[Chiefspants]

Originally Posted by Fish

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...

I would answer, but Duncan's already done a much better job.

Originally Posted by duncan_idaho

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.