Stannis's huge victory at the wall.

[Queen Daenerys Stormborn]

Those numbers come from Kedge, who both admits he didn't count with any accuracy, and that he didn't see the main body end.

You are really saying Mormont's scouts mistook 100,000 for 20,000 because they did not count with precision? That's crazy.

[The Drunkard]

You are really saying Mormont's scouts mistook 100,000 for 20,000 because they did not count with precision? That's crazy.

I'm saying that when your scout says his count wasn't reliable, you shouldn't treat his count as reliable. Especially when said scout makes it clear he didn't see where they ended and that he didn't stay to count them.

[Queen Daenerys Stormborn]

I'm saying that when your scout says his count wasn't reliable, you shouldn't treat his count as reliable. Especially when said scout makes it clear he didn't see where they ended and that he didn't stay to count them.

And no one is saying it was reliable exactly. Just that it wasn't out by a factor of 5 ... Usually if you see a big host coming over the hills it gets overestimated, not under.

[The Drunkard]

And no one is saying it was reliable exactly. Just that it wasn't out by a factor of 5 ... Usually if you see a big host coming over the hills it gets overestimated, not under.

In that case I apologize, I took this:

The numbers of all the wildlings is in the prologue of SoS and the whole migration is 20-30,000.

To mean that you thought the number of all the wildlings was in the prologue of SoS and that the whole migration was between twenty and thirty thousand. I guess I was mistaken.

As to the bolded part, Jon notes that it was impossible to see the wildling host in its entirety during the march (of which he was a part), and that only at the Wall could you see all of it. That happens to be when Satin claims there are a hundred thousand of them, and when Jon doesn't contradict him, even during his pep speech.

[Queen Daenerys Stormborn]

No, you were right the first time. The prologue shows the migration is 20-30,000 strong. Or thereabouts, could be 35,000, could be 18,000. The number could certainly be off. No exact figure was ever given. It was just in a certain region. It just isn't a 100,000 strong as the error is then much too great. The bolded bit of my quote doesn't show I changed my mind. All evidence in the books comes from men or women who could be wrong about something. So there is never 100% certainty. It is simply very implausible 100,000 people got mixed up for 20,000. This is especially the case when they were being observed by men obviously afraid they were going to have to fight them, and told to discover how many there were.

You ought to trust the men the Lord Commander entrusted to tell him about the enemy before you trust Satin, who'd likely never seen 30,000 or 100,000 people. He was just giving his impression that there were a lot. It is actually hard to assess the numbers of an army if you are not trained to do it. People don't automatically know what so many people standing together looks like. The scouts are likely to have had a better guess at the overall numbers than Satin.

[The Drunkard]

No, you were right the first time. The prologue shows the migration is 20-30,000 strong. The bolded bit of my quote doesn't show I changed my mind. All evidence in the books comes from men or women who could be wrong about something. So there is never 100% certainty. It is simply very implausible 100,000 people got mixed up for 20,000. This is especially the case when they were being observed by men obviously afraid they were going to have to fight them, and told to discover how many there were.

You ought to trust the men the Lord Commander entrusted to tell him about the enemy before you trust Satin, who'd likely never seen 30,000 or 100,000 people. He was just giving his impression that there were a lot. It is actually hard to assess the numbers of an army if you are not trained to do it. People don't automatically know what so many people standing together looks like. The scouts are likely to have had a better guess at the overall numbers than Satin.

No, it doesn't. The prologue shows Kedge giving a vague, 'there are a lot' answer, immediately emphasizing the vagueness by stating that the scouts didn't stay to count, and that they never saw the entirety of the main body (and thus don't know if it went on for 5 metres more or 50 miles). We never get a true sense of the scale of Mance's host as it's always too long and masked by the Frostfangs to make out. That is, however, until it arrives at the Wall, and that's when we get Satin and Jon and the others left shocked and speechless at the numbers laid out before them.

And don't mistake my disbelief of Kedge as belief in Satin. Neither are reliable sources, the former because he says he isn't reliable, and the latter because he lacks any experience. I do however trust Jon's judgement when combined with the figures given by Mance and Stannis, as well as the knowledge that the vast majority of wildlings living Beyond the Wall were marching.

[Queen Daenerys Stormborn]

No, it doesn't. The prologue shows Kedge giving a vague, 'there are a lot' answer, immediately emphasizing the vagueness by stating that the scouts didn't stay to count, and that they never saw the entirety of the main body (and thus don't know if it went on for 5 metres more or 50 miles). We never get a true sense of the scale of Mance's host as it's always too long and masked by the Frostfangs to make out. That is, however, until it arrives at the Wall, and that's when we get Satin and Jon and the others left shocked and speechless at the numbers laid out before them.

And don't mistake my disbelief of Kedge as belief in Satin. Neither are reliable sources, the former because he says he isn't reliable, and the latter because he lacks any experience. I do however trust Jon's judgement when combined with the figures given by Mance and Stannis, as well as the knowledge that the vast majority of wildlings living Beyond the Wall were marching.

I sure think it does. The answer was vague because it wasn't very precise. It is give or take 10,000 after all! But they gave a region in which the real number would fall. That makes no sense if they knew there could be twice that beyond the hills.

So nice try from Stannis, with the 'he had twenty times my numbers ...' but I am not buying it.

[Mikkel]

I really don't understand why people try to take away from the greatness of the victory by stating such things as "Stannis was using surprise tactics" or "his men were better equipped", or "he struck the wildlings in the flank". Yes, he did. That's what makes him a good commander, what else could it be?

Being a great commander is all about engineering circumstances to your benefit - such as using the Eastwatch men to pull Mance's numerically superior force out of position. Going up to Mance and saying "let's fight!" would result in one thing only: Stannis getting killed, the Wall falling and the Others having free access to Westeros. Superb idea!

Breaking Mance's hold on the Wildlings, while keeping most of them alive but cowed enough that a somewhat civilized crossing of the Wall could be accomplished is the best thing that could happen to everyone involved, excepting of course those (relatively) few who die in the battle.

He doesn't have a magical aura that makes otherwise equal warriors better one-on-one, but if he did I'm sure people would call that "cheating" too. Yes I realize this point may be a bit of a strawman, so feel free to ignore it, but I'm really not understanding what it is people were expecting to happen here, or what they think makes a great commander except what Stannis accomplished at the wall.

[aceluby]

I really don't understand why people try to take away from the greatness of the victory by stating such things as "Stannis was using surprise tactics" or "his men were better equipped", or "he struck the wildlings in the flank". Yes, he did. That's what makes him a good commander, what else could it be?

Being a great commander is all about engineering circumstances to your benefit - such as using the Eastwatch men to pull Mance's numerically superior force out of position. Going up to Mance and saying "let's fight!" would result in one thing only: Stannis getting killed, the Wall falling and the Others having free access to Westeros. Superb idea!

Breaking Mance's hold on the Wildlings, while keeping most of them alive but cowed enough that a somewhat civilized crossing of the Wall could be accomplished is the best thing that could happen to everyone involved, excepting of course those (relatively) few who die in the battle.

He doesn't have a magical aura that makes otherwise equal warriors better one-on-one, but if he did I'm sure people would call that "cheating" too. Yes I realize this point may be a bit of a strawman, so feel free to ignore it, but I'm really not understanding what it is people were expecting to happen here, or what they think makes a great commander except what Stannis accomplished at the wall.

Because it's a tactic that even a green 15 year old could think of, and already did previously in the story. Yes it's a victory, yes it was smart, no it is not the OMG AWESOME! that people in this thread are making it out to be, it was a standard maneuver. Of all the battles Stannis has been a part of this hardly makes the radar as something mentionable, much less something to hang your hat on as "yep, that move right there, only the best commander could have done it". It was standard.

[Mikkel]

Because it's a tactic that even a green 15 year old could think of, and already did previously in the story. Yes it's a victory, yes it was smart, no it is not the OMG AWESOME! that people in this thread are making it out to be, it was a standard maneuver. Of all the battles Stannis has been a part of this hardly makes the radar as something mentionable, much less something to hang your hat on as "yep, that move right there, only the best commander could have done it". It was standard.

If it was standard, why didn't Mance - an able commander by all accounts, and one who knew a fair bit of Westerosi tactics - make sure it wasn't possible? He held all the cards after all.

Oh wait, Mance had Mammoths and Giants, and if the opposing commander (Stannis) hadn't split his force into just the right number of columns, it's entirely possible that the destruction of one column* might have allowed Mance to win.

Too many columns, and none of them have the power to break a numerically vastly superior foe, but can be surrounded and killed piecemeal. Too few, and the army as a whole wouldn't survive having one column broken*.

*destroyed/broken as a military unit, not as in every man dying or fleeing, but the presence of the mammoths and giants means that the horses won't obey so that column isn't nearly as effective as the others.

[Señor de la Tormenta]

Yeah yeah... Gigants aand mamouths are "standard" in westerosi warfare....

[The Drunkard]

I sure think it does. The answer was vague because it wasn't very precise. It is give or take 10,000 after all! But they gave a region in which the real number would fall. That makes no sense if they knew there could be twice that beyond the hills.

The answer was vague because Kedge was not trying to be precise whatsoever. He wasn't trying to give an accurate number. Because he had no way of knowing how large the army could be. He physically couldn't predict the amount of people hidden within the mountains with any accuracy whatsoever. You're treating the "region" given as if it had any faith in it, when Kedge explicitly says that they didn't stay long enough to count and that they could not produce an accurate count even if they wanted to. They were out there to assess the makeup of the host, which is why Kedge goes on for two paragraphs describing those marching after giving two lines of reasons not to trust the vague numbers he gave.