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Is there any military unit in Game of thrones that can withstand an undead charge ?


MilesJames

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Pretty sure only the dragons are capable of defeating them, I feel like it's the major reason they're in the plot to begin with.

Also wildfire might be an option, but I feel like it's too much of a risk. Many people will probably die as result, plus the undead army has millions of soldiers. I think they won't be able to make enough wildfire on time to kill them all.

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Well after that creepy crawling display last season, they technically should be able to outflank any military formation, even above or below it. Couple that with the Night's King, or maybe any of the walkers, raising the dead during the battle, and it become painfully clear whatever the solution is, conventional battle isn't going to be it.

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Well, we know for a fact that the Wights can be burnt, so if you have enough fire, you should be able to stop the Wights, but not the White Walkers themselves (as seen in Hold the Door, season 6), since they can put out the fire (probably by lowering the temperature of the area, causing the fires to go out).

We do not know how White Walkers and wildfire react on each other, that could be interesting, but I have to agree with @Lord Lannister, that without Dragons, facing the Walkers and Wights is a lost cause.

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Well last season we have seen the Boltons use shield wall tactics, coupled with spears  and that's a good start. We know from Robert's rebellion that siege weapons like scorpions and trebuchet exists.

The human side could use a very basic roman tactic to defeat huge piles of undead: flaming war pigs. Use trebuchet to throw oil at them, use the pigs to set them on fire.

The advantage of the pig vs a boulder on fire is that the pigs move/make sounds and can cause chaos inside the undead ranks. The WW would have to at least try and focus on them, and not risk their armies set ablaze.

A disciplined 100k human army, could very well obliterate the wights with relative ease if they anticipate were the Others are going to strike. Problem is they are probably going to be taken by surprise, and they won't organise very well against them.

Then there's the fact that the Others can do magic, especially storm like magic...if they can conjure up tornados...Westerosi are pretty much fucked bar dragons.

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I don't think so.  A human army will usually break and flee after suffering a certain level of casualties, but the undead will literally fight to the last man every time.  You'd need a Unsullied type of army to stand their ground to the last man against the undead.  Westerosi peasants ain't gonna do that.  

Just thinking about the sort of tactical advantages a wight army has....They don't eat.  No supply lines.  They probably don't sleep or rest, so they could march 2-3 times as much ground in a day as a human army.  Depending on how many of your own people die, the wight army might be larger at the end of a battle than it was at the beginning, once they turn your own dead against you.  Fire hurts them, but the weather gets pretty bad when they come around, so keeping it going ain't easy.  

Basically, I don't know how the hell you beat an army with those sort of tactical advantages without the use of dragons and/or other magical weapons.   

Edit: Thinking about it some more...what's to stop the Walkers from raising your dead against you pretty much instantly?  I mean, imagine you're in a shield wall, the man next to you dies....then quickly gets back up and starts killing from within your ranks?  It would be impossible to maintain a disciplined line under those circumstances.  

So yeah, without magical help, I'd say humans are completely fucked.  

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Westeros would just need to unify. All the families would need to come together as one and muster all of the men they have. The masses of foot soldiers would serve almost as a distraction, then the Lords (and some Ladies) would take the Valyrian blades of their families and duke it out with Night King and all his grunts that control the wights.

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8 hours ago, A Ghost of Someone said:

Given the rumored recent breakthrough the Lannisters have in cloning their armed forces, I bet Qyburn ("Q") has something up his sleeve.

That actually makes me wonder how UnGregor and the Night King would react to one another in terms of vulnerabilities.

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19 hours ago, Ser Wun Wun said:

I don't think so.  A human army will usually break and flee after suffering a certain level of casualties, but the undead will literally fight to the last man every time.  You'd need a Unsullied type of army to stand their ground to the last man against the undead.  Westerosi peasants ain't gonna do that.  

Just thinking about the sort of tactical advantages a wight army has....They don't eat.  No supply lines.  They probably don't sleep or rest, so they could march 2-3 times as much ground in a day as a human army.  Depending on how many of your own people die, the wight army might be larger at the end of a battle than it was at the beginning, once they turn your own dead against you.  Fire hurts them, but the weather gets pretty bad when they come around, so keeping it going ain't easy.  

Basically, I don't know how the hell you beat an army with those sort of tactical advantages without the use of dragons and/or other magical weapons.   

Edit: Thinking about it some more...what's to stop the Walkers from raising your dead against you pretty much instantly?  I mean, imagine you're in a shield wall, the man next to you dies....then quickly gets back up and starts killing from within your ranks?  It would be impossible to maintain a disciplined line under those circumstances.  

So yeah, without magical help, I'd say humans are completely fucked.  

Because even the KN runs out of mana.

See my post above.

Petrol would keep it burning even in shitty conditions.

A trained army, not a peasant army.

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  • 4 weeks later...

I think with an organized strategy and tactics, while accounting for all the factors (the wights' superior mobility; storms obscuring the vision; the WWs possibly sporting full body plate, and maybe putting some armour on some of the wights; having to burn their dead within their own ranks so they can't turn on them etc.), humans MIGHT stand a chance - they've had thousands of years to develop new technology and tactics and it's not clear whether the WWs did as much progress during that time; maybe humans could make up for the lack of CotF and their spells with their advanced know-how.

I also think it would make much more sense narratively than "humans are hopeless and need a magical solution", given the set-ups so far: why the increased focus on tactics, use of environment etc. compared to LOTR type fantasy, if it's not gonna be heavily used in the WW conflict?
And why establish both wights and WWs as easily vulnerable to fire and dragonglass (rather than "mysteriously indestructible"), thus diminishing the scare factor significantly, if not to set them up as vulnerable to human efforts?


A twist the books/show could put on what would've otherwise been a more predictable, standard "epic fantasy scenario", is to give human armies a chance to beat them, but then, let's say, have some other group of humans decide that the WWs are more useful as a weapon/tool to achieve their own ends (perhaps even noble ones), and use a spell that would make the W&Ws truly invulnerable, and hopefully susceptible to their control.

Then 2 scenarios might happen:
1) It predictably backfires, and NOW they need some magic to save themselves. Or:

2) It kinda starts working out in that 2nd group's interest, and now the main conflict is between the 1st group (around Jon etc. that tried to destroy them, and this 2nd group that controls the magical tools that empower the W&Ws.

Again... why all this "realistic interhuman conflict" for 6 seasons if it won't amount to something along these lines?

But I guess we'll see.

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  • 3 months later...
On 4/3/2017 at 1:30 PM, Pink Fat Rast said:

I think with an organized strategy and tactics, while accounting for all the factors (the wights' superior mobility; storms obscuring the vision; the WWs possibly sporting full body plate, and maybe putting some armour on some of the wights; having to burn their dead within their own ranks so they can't turn on them etc.), humans MIGHT stand a chance - they've had thousands of years to develop new technology and tactics and it's not clear whether the WWs did as much progress during that time; maybe humans could make up for the lack of CotF and their spells with their advanced know-how.

I also think it would make much more sense narratively than "humans are hopeless and need a magical solution", given the set-ups so far: why the increased focus on tactics, use of environment etc. compared to LOTR type fantasy, if it's not gonna be heavily used in the WW conflict?
And why establish both wights and WWs as easily vulnerable to fire and dragonglass (rather than "mysteriously indestructible"), thus diminishing the scare factor significantly, if not to set them up as vulnerable to human efforts?


A twist the books/show could put on what would've otherwise been a more predictable, standard "epic fantasy scenario", is to give human armies a chance to beat them, but then, let's say, have some other group of humans decide that the WWs are more useful as a weapon/tool to achieve their own ends (perhaps even noble ones), and use a spell that would make the W&Ws truly invulnerable, and hopefully susceptible to their control.

Then 2 scenarios might happen:
1) It predictably backfires, and NOW they need some magic to save themselves. Or:

2) It kinda starts working out in that 2nd group's interest, and now the main conflict is between the 1st group (around Jon etc. that tried to destroy them, and this 2nd group that controls the magical tools that empower the W&Ws.

Again... why all this "realistic interhuman conflict" for 6 seasons if it won't amount to something along these lines?

But I guess we'll see.

Even if by some miracle evreyone in westroes organized, they would need to defeat undead giants and tons of undead animals, which includes birds. I think the others would even completly outclass world war 1 calvarly with their current tech. Medevial technology is a joke in conparison. Even if by some miracle a last alliagance of men could fight the others to a stalemate all the others would have to do is keep the stalemate and evreyone would freeze to death is the harsh winter conditions.

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