Quote:
Originally Posted by duncan_idaho
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.
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But they were MOSTLY effective due to speed. That's something people forget about old school 'formation' combat - most of the casualties didn't come during the engagement, but rather during the route. That's when you'd loose your cavalry and they'd mow down fleeing soldiers. The number of soldiers killed after formations would break and run was just staggering. To run those numbers up you need to be able to overtake fleeing soldiers - that's where Cavalry was at its strongest.
And while the WW aren't gonna flee, the major cavalry advantage is still there and that's speed/stamina. You don't lead with your damn cavalry. Especially not when you're pretty sure you have pretty strong flanks and at the very least an entrenched center. The Dothraki should've been held in reserve to encircle; they had the speed advantage and plenty of open space.
And while the NK does seem to have some degree of telepathy, he's not omniscient. You can make him feel like he's winning and still maintain a reserve component somewhere (which they essentially did with the Iron Born around Bran).
I understand that they weren't trying to win the thing outright but rather were attempting to delay and pull out the NK, but they also weren't trying to just kill their own forces off quickly and leave themselves with only a faint hope of Dues Ex Ninja showing up and saving the day. That thing really didn't go according to script and it didn't in large part because the script was fundamentally flawed.
The only thing that seemed to work was dismounting him but obviously that fell to shit once dragonfire didn't hurt him. So was that their only end game? Get the shit kicked out of you long enough to put him on the board, ground him somehow and then burn him up? With Plan B being Jon running after him with longclaw in the hopes of taking him on 1v1?
Just seems like they could've had a better safety net to work with had they not wasted their cavalry and then set up their delaying force in
front of their defensive structures.