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How did The Reach lose?


goomba

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Overall the Reach is supposeldy able to muster around 70,000 soldiers.

Tyrion estimates the Lannister forces are atleast 10,000, so let's assume the Lannister forces are about 15,000, with an additional 5,000 - 8,000 Tarly forces.

The Tyrells should be able to muster up ATLEAST 50,000 soldiers, even if they lost the Tarlys'.

Is the entire Reach weak outside of the Tarlys'? :blink:

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Because the plot demanded it.

I don't see how the lannisters could get any more men. They would require most of their Men at Kingslanding to keep Cersei in power. 

But could it be because Cersei holds some hostages form the Reach houses? before she blew up the sept there were a lot of Tyrell men in kingslanding?

 

 

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This all reeks of the showrunners artificially building up Cersei's forces just to make things challenging.  There are so many things wrong with how strong her position is, that it is just becoming more and more laughable.

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3 hours ago, goomba said:

Overall the Reach is supposeldy able to muster around 70,000 soldiers.

Tyrion estimates the Lannister forces are atleast 10,000, so let's assume the Lannister forces are about 15,000, with an additional 5,000 - 8,000 Tarly forces.

The Tyrells should be able to muster up ATLEAST 50,000 soldiers, even if they lost the Tarlys'.

Is the entire Reach weak outside of the Tarlys'? :blink:

Pretty sure The Reach is downgraded in the show though. In the books they are said to be able to muster a maximum force of 90,000 but in the show they are consistently referred to as being the second strongest house after The Lannisters. 

When Tyrion said he expected 10,000 I thought that was just the number he expected to be at Casterly Rock not that the Lannisters only had that number in total 

Agreed that they should be far more weakened than they've been shown to be though...in the books the Lannisters have pretty much been demolished from all the fighting 

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They did not have any leaders left. Mace and Loras died already.

Tarly was with Lannisters. This makes their army weak as well.

In show sense, they did not have any major character as well, they had to lose. Though I think that Dany will rain fire on the lannisters coming back in the next episode.

 

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Well they had no real leader in terms of battle commanders. Tarly was essentially the general of the reach and pretty much every battle mace tyrell won was either a long siege or he took credit for it but randyl tarly was the one who won it. Also I think it was more then tarly that left olenna because once he agreed to fight for the lannisters all those other reach lords who came to cersei would likely follow. Also olenna probably didn't have every single soldier that was on her side there with her. But them taking it so easy was also because the show needed it.

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3 hours ago, goomba said:

Overall the Reach is supposeldy able to muster around 70,000 soldiers.

In the books, maybe. In the show, the Reach is an established weakass.

3 hours ago, goomba said:

Tyrion estimates the Lannister forces are atleast 10,000, so let's assume the Lannister forces are about 15,000, with an additional 5,000 - 8,000 Tarly forces.

The Tyrells should be able to muster up ATLEAST 50,000 soldiers, even if they lost the Tarlys'.

Is the entire Reach weak outside of the Tarlys'? :blink:

Yes.

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Given that all of the Reach lords had listened to Cersei's speech, and that Tarly had defected, I think we can assume that almost all of the Reach houses stayed out of the battle. And Jaime's entire army against just the House Tyrell forces without the rest of the Reach, yeah, that should have been an easy slaughter, as it was.

The question is how, and why, all those lords were in KL to listen to Cersei in the first place, but that's a problem for the previous episode.

The other question is why Jaime attacked at all. Tarly could have probably pulled off a bloodless coup if he just announced the coup and demonstrated how many lords were on his side. Even if Olenna decided to fight, a small battle between local forces is a lot cheaper, and a lot better hearts-and-minds-wise, than invading with the Western army.

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14 minutes ago, falcotron said:

Given that all of the Reach lords had listened to Cersei's speech, and that Tarly had defected, I think we can assume that almost all of the Reach houses stayed out of the battle. And Jaime's entire army against just the House Tyrell forces without the rest of the Reach, yeah, that should have been an easy slaughter, as it was.

The question is how, and why, all those lords were in KL to listen to Cersei in the first place, but that's a problem for the previous episode.

The other question is why Jaime attacked at all. Tarly could have probably pulled off a bloodless coup if he just announced the coup and demonstrated how many lords were on his side. Even if Olenna decided to fight, a small battle between local forces is a lot cheaper, and a lot better hearts-and-minds-wise, than invading with the Western army.

Well given that most major lords would've died if they were written in the show at the sept, nevermind the blood relation to their liege lords. Its lazy writing, I'm surprised Olenna didn't get up and started sword fighting. How did she even get back and why is even there? Name dropped Tarly for 2 episodes and had a scene last year and everybody is pooping in their pants. 

Should've just moved the capital or whatever its called in the show to Horn Hill. And saved the budget for a better writing staff. 

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1 hour ago, Ralphis Baratheon said:

They are still better off in the show then Dorne. Dorne only has one House and one Castle. Now that all Oberyn's children are dead Dorne only has smallfolk.

Haha. Yeah, I cracked up at that. Tyrion pushes the Sunspear chess piece over on the map as Dorne is finished just from the sand snakes being captured. I suppose the entire Dayne house died off when dual-sword wielding Arthur was killed by cocky Ned and backstabbing Howland.

To the OP's question, it was because the plot demanded it. The Ds wanted to make Cersei more formidable despite logic saying otherwise. They even made a comment in their "Inside the Episode" after the show about how the balance of power is much more even now. They wanted it to happen this way even if it did not pass the smell test to the audience.

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According to the show, a lot of bannermen would follow Tarly if he went over (which he apparently did for some reason), so it would make sense that the Lannister-Tarly army would be bigger than the Tyrell+whatever-bannermen-would-still-follow-them army. Still, it should have proven to be no sinecure at all to take a castle like Highgarden, and there should have been thousands, if not thens of thousans of Lannister-Tarly dead in taking it. Instead the show made it seem like a stroll in the park.

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8 hours ago, StraightFromAsshai said:

Well given that most major lords would've died if they were written in the show at the sept, nevermind the blood relation to their liege lords.

Yeah, that's the point. We don't know how many Reach Lords were in KL vs. how many were back home, but we do know that whichever ones were in KL, most of them were killed by Cersei when she blew up the Sept. So that whole crowd of Reach Lords Cersei spoke to last week, they must be people that she summoned later.

So, why would a Reach Lord come to Cersei's summons after Cersei blew up the Sept, and after Olenna had openly declared for Dany? And, even if they were that stupid, how would they get there safely? And why wouldn't Olenna immediately declare them traitors for doing so?

Having just Tarly there could make sense. At least story-conventions-sense, if not real-life-sense; he's the kind of character who says things like "The rest of you stay home, I'll risk my life on behalf of all of us by answering her summons" and gets away with it in stories like this. And they still could have done this week's story: Tarly is Olenna's general, so just him switching sides is enough to at least keep most of the Reach army out of the fight. Or, even better, Tarly goes off and talks to the other Reach Lords before Jaime marches, instead of riding down with Jaime's army. Either way, this week's Reach story makes just as much sense, and it doesn't depend on last week making no sense.

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57 minutes ago, BrightStar Of The Day said:

Still, it should have proven to be no sinecure at all to take a castle like Highgarden, and there should have been thousands, if not thens of thousans of Lannister-Tarly dead in taking it. Instead the show made it seem like a stroll in the park.

Well, there was an easy way to avoid losing thousands of men. Just set up a siege and present terms. (Or, maybe even better, have Tarly attempt a bloodless coup.) Sure, it's always possible Olenna would say screw you, we're fighting to the bitter end, but it's certainly at least worth trying. This idea the show seems to have that every siege must be resolved by an immediate assault on the castle is just silly.

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