ferrelhadley

Yet another instance of epic fantasy series being clunky as hell to tie up. Where as a few seasons ago heroes acting dumb like Cat releasing Jaime, Robb nobbing the wrong person and Ned warning Cersei was seen as building a great story now its feels like its just driving the story to its end. It is what it is, I was happy to give it a 7, Cersei pulling a Ramsey Snow to draw someone into a battle on emotions rather than waiting, I thought was very true to the show. But I can see some really did not like it. Nice to see Varys actually back on form too. I wonder if any betting shop is taking odds on Arya doing in Daenereys. I can really seeing that being a GRRM way to end the show.

In a real medieval battle the besiegers would start digging entrenchments (Stannis mentions this before he is wiped out at Winterfell and Jaime tells Bronn to show them how to do it properly at Riverrun). The point of a cavalry charge is the physical mass of the horses, so you dig pits to stop them. Here the entrenchments are already dug but have a one of use as firepits to try to kill some of the undead and thin out their numbers. The plan also used the a cavalry charge for to take out some more. Clearly it did not work but I think the other options were equally futile, to have had the undead rush the walls without first trying to thin out their numbers would likely have resulted in defeat. To have sat in a siege for months would have also ended in complete defeat. The battle was very imperfect, but I thought it was fun and am not sure peoples alternative strategies have much to offer. Meeting them in the open was a one off hit and hope in case it worked. All the other options seemed a lot worse to me.

That was the point of Aegon's journey to Dragonstone in series 7.

Once inside castles have narrow openings, you would not have been given the time to deploy so large a force it would be picked off peace-meal as you tried to deploy. And opening the gates is a bad idea in siege warfare. Dragons need to eat.

Because their other option would have been a siege. They would have starved in months. At any point the Night's King could have pulled his army back and simply waited.

And where would they have gotten that much pitch. What happens about 30 minutes later when its burnt out.

I gave it a 9, perhaps my colour contrast is better than other peoples, I had no problem watching it. Knocked a point off for too much plot armour in places but on the whole it did what it said on the tin. big crazy arsed battle between ice zombies and dragons. People have mentioned Hardhome and the battle of Pelennor Fields but these battles ended with unresolved dramatic tension. These were battles that ratcheded up the tension on the protagonists. The battle at the end of Deathly Hallows and the battle before the Black Gate are the kind of plot resolving battles and those can easily be argued to have ex machina contrivances. I think people had crazy, unrealistic expectations of what could have happened. But hey, everyone is entitled to their opinions. Possibly they could have built tension round Arya seeking up on the Night's King, but then there would be people moaning the ending was telegraphed etc etc.