[Fish]

Good rundown of the severe flaws in battle strategy. As stated in the conclusion, we can't expect things to be completely realistic in a show like this. But this battle and the way they went about it was just so starkly different from previous battles in terms of realistic outcomes and characters overcoming completely impossible odds. An ounce of common sense would have made this episode so much better...

The whole thing was just a cluster**** of bad strategy and tactics, though:

• Having ALL of the cavalry—light cavalry, at that—blindly charge to their deaths unsupported into a literal fog of war, straight down the center, in no particular formation, without even knowing where the enemy was or having special wight-killing weapons, apparently, until Melisandre showed up. All against an enemy that is incapable of feeling the fear a cavalry charge, Dothraki or otherwise, would normally create.
  
  
• Only one line of trenches, spikes, and other obstacles constructed at all. Oh, and the single trench being no more than a few feet wide and deep, and not getting lit until the middle of the battle, long after the infantry have been swamped, when it should have been flaming from the get-go.
  
  
• Placing what seems to be nearly all of their total infantry in front of said obstacles, with only narrow corridors for retreat (shit, were there even any?).
  
  
• Placing the entirety of the elite shield-and-spear wielding infantry on the front lines, spaced apart instead of in phalanx formation, and sacrificed to guard the retreat of the general foot soldiers.
  
  
• The trebuchets—the superior siege weapon—firing exactly once, positioned outside the castle, in front of BOTH the infantry and obstacles, so that they are the first things overrun.
  
  
• The dragons, two honest-to-R’hllor WMDs, not being used to light up the fields until after the enemy has crushed through their front lines.
  
  
• Having literally no other way to signal the dragon riders besides Davos waving a torch on the wall, in spite of them using war horns at the end of the previous episode.
  
  
• Waiting until AFTER the wights have started crossing the trenches to “man the walls,” instead of having archers already there continually shooting the dead while they were just standing around.
  
  
• Not apparently having dragonglass arrowheads, which would’ve arguably been the most efficient use of the stuff.
  
  
• No boiling oil, pitch, or other incendiaries thrown down onto the wights scaling the walls, nor pole-arms and shields available on the wall to defend the crenelations.
  
  
• No guards posted in the crypts, or even just weapons made available for the people there, despite all the fuss made in season 7 about making sure that the civilians—including women and children—were trained to defend themselves, and showing said women and children practicing with these weapons as recently as the previous episode.
  
  
• Daenerys landing Drogon on the ground and not burning the dead, and then not immediately taking off again after failing to do that.

It’s not like we needed some incredibly complex battle tactics, just some common sense. There were multiple experienced field strategists and combat veterans there: Jon, Tyrion, Varys, Grey Worm, Jorah, Davos, Jaime, Beric, Sandor, Royce, Theon, Tormund, Edd, and presumably a bunch of Northern lords and Dothraki captains. I’m all for suspense, but it’s lazy writing to artificially create it by having the good guys make arbitrarily dumb decisions, when they should very clearly know better.