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So why are the dead such a threat?


snow is the man

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On 21.08.2017 at 6:35 AM, snow is the man said:

In terms of an army vs army battle the dead that we have now seem weak. In the books and season one when that one attacks mormont it is incredibly hard to kill one which is why it makes them so dangerous. You can't just stab them you have to hack them up and do alot of damage or burn them as jon does because it seems impossible to kill that one after all the damage he did.  Now they can be killed by being stabbed with a knife and they fight with no formation and since they have no sense of self preservation they don't even try to dodge the attacks. Put up a proper shield wall with well trained soldiers using spears from behind it and have archers firing from the back and even if they need to be fire arrows the dead army would still be destroyed. Yes you would still have the white walkers but how many are there? This really annoys me because they seem less dangerous then people now and can be beaten by the northern army by itself. Yes they have massive numbers but a proper army could beat them. And since they have twenty thousand men in the north...well the dead are not nearly as big of a threat as we thought. Just annoys me to have it done that way. And yes now they have an ice dragon but that wasn't what we feared for so long. Anyone else disappointed by how they went this route.

 

 

Everything about how they've dealt with the White Walkers since around Season 3-4 has been disappointing to me.

There are apparently only like 5 or 6 White Walkers now, and they're all officers wearing fancy armor. The first season implied that there were hundreds or possibly thousands of White Walkers. We saw like 6 or 7 in the very first scene of the show, and they were all grunts. Just random WW. Old Nan spoke about White Walkers moving through the woods, sweeping through cities, etc...

Now it's all about the Dead. The WW have been relegated to 5 old generals. I want to see hordes of them, they're infinitely more interesting and intimidating than the wights are.

Plus the show has now made wights vulnerable to dragonglass and Valyrian steel, so they are, as you say, significantly less of a threat. Jon just slashes them once with his sword and they fall to the ground and stop moving.

Plus Dany must have burned thousands of them, so how many are even left ? They only had 100'000 to begin with according to the showrunners.

Now they must have lost at least 5 or 10% of that.

The whole thing is incredibly lame.

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On 8/23/2017 at 3:47 PM, NickStark2494 said:

Everything about how they've dealt with the White Walkers since around Season 3-4 has been disappointing to me.

There are apparently only like 5 or 6 White Walkers now, and they're all officers wearing fancy armor. The first season implied that there were hundreds or possibly thousands of White Walkers. We saw like 6 or 7 in the very first scene of the show, and they were all grunts. Just random WW. Old Nan spoke about White Walkers moving through the woods, sweeping through cities, etc...

Now it's all about the Dead. The WW have been relegated to 5 old generals. I want to see hordes of them, they're infinitely more interesting and intimidating than the wights are.

Plus the show has now made wights vulnerable to dragonglass and Valyrian steel, so they are, as you say, significantly less of a threat. Jon just slashes them once with his sword and they fall to the ground and stop moving.

Plus Dany must have burned thousands of them, so how many are even left ? They only had 100'000 to begin with according to the showrunners.

Now they must have lost at least 5 or 10% of that.

The whole thing is incredibly lame.

we don't really know how many WW there are. After all we didn't see the dead giants. But yeah and jons sword wasn't the worst because that can do alot of damage and most of his attacks were slashing and chopping plus his is valyrian steel. Mormont pulled out a knife with his sword and when he stabbed them they died. The one thing I thought was half way decent about gentry's war hammer was it would do massive damage which would come in handy when it comes to killing wights (what the dead are called in the books). The undead bear was what they should have been like. Able to be hacked up and still keep coming.  The flames hurt and kill it but it takes a little bit. I think that the WW could be shown to be more dangerous if we see them fight someone without a valyrian steel sword or dragon glass dagger and see them stab and hack at their armor and it do nothing and maybe have a sword go through a WW neck and it not kill them.

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On 8/21/2017 at 3:22 AM, storm.131 said:

I think it's pretty obvious:  because they have the numbers and all they need to increase their numbers further is for the Night King to reanimate those who have been killed.  They don't need to be skilled warriors, they don't need to rest, they don't need to eat.

A huge problem I have with what D&D have done in the show, is how they have changed the Wights.  In the books the Wights were clumsy, slow moving zombies who could only be stopped with fire, so you could imagine the living standing a chance against them.  With D&D changing them into fast moving killing machines who can even crawl on walls and ceilings, it simply isn't believable when I see the living escaping from them in episodes like Hardhome, The Door or Beyond the Wall.  Add to that the way they have introduced a Night King with amazing powers into the story, any scene featuring the living vs the dead, is pretty ridiculous to me.  And, as if all that wasn't enough, now they have a dragon and (as was suggested when Jon killed the White Walker and the Wights tumbled down), the White Walkers can reanimate the dead too, not just the Night King.

The showrunners have gone way too far with this for my liking.  I only keep watching because I enjoy the characters and most of the stories south of the wall.

Yeah but in the books the dead  may be more clumsy but they were incredibly strong and while they could be killed with swords it took an incredible amount of damage to do it. To me they were far more dangerous in the books. Now they can be killed with a knife. The WW themselves way more deadly in the books as well.  To me it seems a well disciplined army with a shield wall could hold them off and given that the night king will be riding a dragon and dany has two...well he will be easily killed. Since his dragon will be made into a blazing inferno.  But it just annoyed me how this was done.

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On 8/21/2017 at 2:39 AM, pinoyathletics said:

If it is small forces of very well trained heroes that is better than a whole army. The more men you throw at the dead the more you will strengthen them. 

If you think about it, that's a load of video game inspired bunk. If a properly outfitted force were to meet a similar force of undead, they would cut them all down. Sure, the dead would bolster their ranks for every soldier fallen, but they can only do it once. A destroyed body is not coming back.

The point of the white walker threat is the threat of winter. The undead army is not meant to be physically imposing. Winter is supposed to consume the land, killing many of starvation and exposure. When undead begin to rise from village huts where people are barely surviving already, that's when they're the biggest threat.

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45 minutes ago, snow is the man said:

Yeah but in the books the dead  may be more clumsy but they were incredibly strong and while they could be killed with swords it took an incredible amount of damage to do it. To me they were far more dangerous in the books. Now they can be killed with a knife. The WW themselves way more deadly in the books as well.  To me it seems a well disciplined army with a shield wall could hold them off and given that the night king will be riding a dragon and dany has two...well he will be easily killed. Since his dragon will be made into a blazing inferno.  But it just annoyed me how this was done.

The "knives" were dragonglass, not steel. It seems that in show-verse, both dragonglass and dragonsteel disrupt/dispel/break the magics the White Walkers use to reanimate the dead.

If you had a shield wall armed entirely with dragonglass, dragonsteel, and/or fire, sure. Otherwise, not so much.

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It's laughable how weak both the army of the dead and the white walkers are. I'm not sold on the threat at all.

A large wildfire explosion followed by a volley of dragonglass arrows would annihilate them.

The white walkers are the biggest disappointment. You don't need to be a skilled warrior to defeat one. You don't even need a Valyrian steel sword. You can just scratch one with a shard of dragonglass (which there's now a whole cave of) and it'll shatter into a million pieces.

And this is all assuming you want to savour the moment instead of just assassinating the Night King to autokill everything in an instant.

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2 hours ago, snow is the man said:

Yeah but in the books the dead  may be more clumsy but they were incredibly strong and while they could be killed with swords it took an incredible amount of damage to do it. To me they were far more dangerous in the books. Now they can be killed with a knife. The WW themselves way more deadly in the books as well.  To me it seems a well disciplined army with a shield wall could hold them off and given that the night king will be riding a dragon and dany has two...well he will be easily killed. Since his dragon will be made into a blazing inferno.  But it just annoyed me how this was done.

I'm expecting that unViserion will not be as easy to kill.  My guess is that instead of fire, his breath will be so cold it freezes the living.

Yes, in the books the Wights were stronger because they were recently dead and therefore not half decayed skeletons BUT they were highly flammable, which made them very vulnerable.  Seeing the Wights not catch fire easily in Beyond the Wall makes me wonder how Benjen survived for so long with just that fireball on a chain weapon of his.

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It is up to the hero Daenerys to save humanity. That is her role. Every story needs a villain. It is a mystery why they are made in the books, but what we do know is that the army of frozen dead need to be stopped by fire. 

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On 8/21/2017 at 9:48 AM, Mikkel said:

I don't remember that from the show, but maybe. The history book is neither show nor book though.

Fro my understanding WoIaF is canon. I could be mistaken? But you are correct it definitely has nothing to do with the show.

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6 hours ago, TheMachine said:

Fro my understanding WoIaF is canon. I could be mistaken? But you are correct it definitely has nothing to do with the show.

Well it's book-canon - but in the sense of an "in-world" history book. In other words, it's an unreliable source (even if it's probably better than most). It's the same as if Maester Aemon had stated those things, but there are many things Maester Aemon didn't know or understand fully, or even at all.

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53 minutes ago, Mikkel said:

Well it's book-canon - but in the sense of an "in-world" history book. In other words, it's an unreliable source (even if it's probably better than most). It's the same as if Maester Aemon had stated those things, but there are many things Maester Aemon didn't know or understand fully, or even at all.

This is a great way to put it.

Some fans get hung up on GRRM's "there are definitely mistakes in it" to declare it "non-canon" and ignore it, but they're exactly the same kinds of mistakes as in Aemon's dialog, and nobody thinks that's non-canonical, he just canonically doesn't know everything. Apologies if next time this comes up I steal your comparison and can't remember who I stole it from. :)

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what annoys me the most is they have stated

Wights - Only fire can kill them

White Walkers - only Dragonglass & Valyrian Steel can kill them

yet they were killing dozens of WIGHTS with Dragonglass & Valyrian Steel. The only person who should of been killing any wights in that scene should of been Beric.

 

The inconsistencies are starting to mount & they are getting annoying.

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3 hours ago, falcotron said:

Apologies if next time this comes up I steal your comparison and can't remember who I stole it from. :)

Rights to use that with or without attribution as time, space and memory allows is hereby granted in perpetuity :)

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On 8/20/2017 at 11:35 PM, snow is the man said:

In terms of an army vs army battle the dead that we have now seem weak. In the books and season one when that one attacks mormont it is incredibly hard to kill one which is why it makes them so dangerous. You can't just stab them you have to hack them up and do alot of damage or burn them as jon does because it seems impossible to kill that one after all the damage he did.  Now they can be killed by being stabbed with a knife and they fight with no formation and since they have no sense of self preservation they don't even try to dodge the attacks. Put up a proper shield wall with well trained soldiers using spears from behind it and have archers firing from the back and even if they need to be fire arrows the dead army would still be destroyed. Yes you would still have the white walkers but how many are there? This really annoys me because they seem less dangerous then people now and can be beaten by the northern army by itself. Yes they have massive numbers but a proper army could beat them. And since they have twenty thousand men in the north...well the dead are not nearly as big of a threat as we thought. Just annoys me to have it done that way. And yes now they have an ice dragon but that wasn't what we feared for so long. Anyone else disappointed by how they went this route.

 

 

The WW felt like a huge threat to me until the last episode when I saw what would naturally happen when they faced Dany's dragons.

They are no threat to an army of men supported by dragons.

Unless.....they have an undead dragon of their own.

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9 hours ago, Adam_Up_Bxtch said:

what annoys me the most is they have stated

Wights - Only fire can kill them

White Walkers - only Dragonglass & Valyrian Steel can kill them

yet they were killing dozens of WIGHTS with Dragonglass & Valyrian Steel. The only person who should of been killing any wights in that scene should of been Beric.

 

The inconsistencies are starting to mount & they are getting annoying.

The show has fire and dragon glass and valyrian steel as weapons against Wights ad White Walkers.  Well, we don't know if fire can kill WW's in show or not......they seem to be fire resistant at least.

Whatever kills them in the books doesn't matter to the show.  The show sets the show rules for what kills what.

The books can have the same or different rules, doesn't really matter in the end as long as the book is consistent with the book and the show is consistent in the show.

Just so you know for the future episodes.....in the show it has been established that fire, dragon glass and valyrian steel can kill wights while dragon glass and valyrian steel can kill WW's.......and maybe dragon fire???  We don't know about dragon fire yet vs. WW.

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22 hours ago, Kytheros said:

The "knives" were dragonglass, not steel. It seems that in show-verse, both dragonglass and dragonsteel disrupt/dispel/break the magics the White Walkers use to reanimate the dead.

If you had a shield wall armed entirely with dragonglass, dragonsteel, and/or fire, sure. Otherwise, not so much.

mormonts knives were not dragon glass. 

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21 hours ago, storm.131 said:

I'm expecting that unViserion will not be as easy to kill.  My guess is that instead of fire, his breath will be so cold it freezes the living.

Yes, in the books the Wights were stronger because they were recently dead and therefore not half decayed skeletons BUT they were highly flammable, which made them very vulnerable.  Seeing the Wights not catch fire easily in Beyond the Wall makes me wonder how Benjen survived for so long with just that fireball on a chain weapon of his.

uh we see at the fist of the first in the books that one takes a spear in the chest and moves up the spear to kill the man who had thrust the spear. We see these things happen alot in the books and not all of them were recently dead. I don't think benjen went into the army of the dead just hit those that he found outside of the horse that were in small groups. Also they did catch fire pretty easily but took a little bit to die.

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7 hours ago, Lord Okra said:

The WW felt like a huge threat to me until the last episode when I saw what would naturally happen when they faced Dany's dragons.

They are no threat to an army of men supported by dragons.

Unless.....they have an undead dragon of their own.

the WW might still be a massive threat but the dead don't seem to be

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