ubermensch

Dear Sir, I think that you're missing something here. Those were 20 good men!

Really loved it!

Blackwater wasn't a siege attempt. It was a direct assault. And true, he underestimated the defenses, but he thought that even with that his numbers were vastly superior. But yes, he's a poor leader of men.

Isn't she the one with almost blind faith in Stannis winning? And along with the visions... What if she saw Jon Snow in the fire visions and decided to head out for the wall? She also may have realized that he is the AA and abandoned Stannis because of that.

He probably had too much clothes on him and it clouded his judgement. He should've taken the shirt off...

Exactly. If the army that was shown in the show was indeed all stationed at Winterfell, he could have waited for the Stannis force to start getting sick, cold and hungry and then break the siege in the best moment for him. It would take quite some time for Stannis to make a full circle of spikes and barricades around Winterfell and it would involve lot of men working in the open and expending energy. And Roose is the one that gets the timing on when to attack so that gives him an advantage. Also, I was very disappointed not to see any of Roose in this episode. I can understand that he decided not to participate in the battle but they could've at least shown him watching the battlefield from some Winterfell tower...

That could all be true, but it still doesn't answer any of my questions. And for him being insane, I'm not fully on that side. You can see his facial expression in the moment he sees the Bolton army riding towards him. He knows he's done. Don't get me wrong, I'm not a huge fan of Stannis, actually I found him increasingly boring through the book and the show but still I don't think of him as a totally incompetent fool. And concerning Blackwater, if Tywin did not interfere, he would have eventually won. So, although he may be foolish too fight a battle with such high casualties on his side he would still win if not for the interference. And for the Mel part, yes, she garnered far too much influence on him.

Has anybody figured out how did Mel know Stannis was defeated? If I'm not mistaken she left the camp before Stannis decided to march on Winterfell. And has anybody figured out how did Boltons muster such a large force? Those were at least twice the numbers of Stannis. Have the Stannis sellswords defected? The show explicitly mentioned Stannis losing horses and then suddenly the Boltons have a huge cavalry-only army. Is that a bit of Chekov? If they did not defect, then how did Stannis even think that he could lay a successful siege to Winterfell? Even with the deserting sellswords he still has inferior numbers to the Boltons.