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Jon's poor battle record


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It's obvious at this point that Jon is not a good battle field commander.  Let's take a look at his record.

  • Castle Black.  Jon lost that battle.  Mance Rayder was about to win until Stannis Baratheon came along and pulled Jon's bacon out of the fire. 
  • Winterfell.  Jon lost this battle to Ramsay.  Ramsay was proven the better battle commander.  He bested Jon on the  battlefield.  Littlefinger came to his rescue and bailed him out.  It's thanks to Littleinger that Jon still has his skin.
  • Beyond the Wall.  Jon was losing the battle against the wights.  Dany and Her dragons came to the rescue and got them out. 

Jon is not good at anything except swinging a sword.  I don't see a place for Jon after the war with the Night's King is won.  Dany is much better at ruling and at leading than Jon.  She should have the iron throne.  A heroic death while taking down the Night's King would be a fitting way for Jon to die. 

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You didn't mention Hardhome, but it's just as well because he lost there, too. 

I'd say the Battle of the Wall was his high point. He rallied the Night's Watch to defend Castle Black against great odds for at least one night. 

Beyond the Wall wasn't rmuch of a battle, but he deserves all the discredit in the world for going at all and for choosing to wait on a rock--in subzero temperatures with no shelter--he didn't know was there ahead of time for dragons to arrive from thousands of miles away. 

Ramsey proved himself a better commander, but that's not saying much. I know better than to charge an entire army by myself, which means I'm a better commander than Jon. But for the record Ramsey commanded idiotically, too. 

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No, Jon has the most brilliant strategy of all: Fool the enemy into thinking they're about to win, and then have the cavalry show up in the nick of time, when they couldn't possibly have expected it, because usually not even Jon had any reason to expect it.

You may think that actually sounds like a bad strategy, not a brilliant one. And yet, it works 100% of the time, so that shows what you know.

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To be fair, most of those have been against incredibly superior numbers. The only one that was anything approaching a proper test of his skills as a commander was the battle of the bastards (though he did fail that one, no arguments there).

Now I agree that part of being a good commander is not letting yourself get into the impossible situations in the first place, but when you're the Lord Commander of the Night's Watch and a few hundred thousand wildlings show up, there's not much you can do (Mormont tried, and it failed spectacularly).

The two missions beyond the wall were stupid from the get-go though, but they were not so much battles as they were "quests" or "missions" that Jon undertook because he has a bit of a hero complex.

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He is indeed bad in winning a battle against a massive majority of enemies... on the other hand, he is courageous (crazy?) enough to take on those battles and not run away and he is also convincing enough for somebody to come to his rescue. 

Somehow he is always leading the winning team, this is also a capability, which Stannis, greatest battle commander in Westeros, had not.

 

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6 hours ago, Here's Looking At You, Kid said:

It's obvious at this point that Jon is not a good battle field commander.  Let's take a look at his record.

  • Castle Black.  Jon lost that battle.  Mance Rayder was about to win until Stannis Baratheon came along and pulled Jon's bacon out of the fire. 
  • Winterfell.  Jon lost this battle to Ramsay.  Ramsay was proven the better battle commander.  He bested Jon on the  battlefield.  Littlefinger came to his rescue and bailed him out.  It's thanks to Littleinger that Jon still has his skin.
  • Beyond the Wall.  Jon was losing the battle against the wights.  Dany and Her dragons came to the rescue and got them out. 

Jon is not good at anything except swinging a sword.  I don't see a place for Jon after the war with the Night's King is won.  Dany is much better at ruling and at leading than Jon.  She should have the iron throne.  A heroic death while taking down the Night's King would be a fitting way for Jon to die. 

- The battle at Castle Black is a win for Jon Snow. Against impossible odds, he held the wall long enough for Stannis to show up. Sure, he didn't know Stannis would show up, but he held the wall anyway.

- The Battle of the Bastards was a loss, indeed, but he had fewer numbers - and he did not have the luxury of waiting for the Knights of the Vale, his army could have been snowed in at any moment like Stannis' was. Ramsay baited Jon by exploiting his love for his family. So I can't really hold that against him.

- And you're seriously looking at Hardholm and criticizing Jon for losing? He wasn't there to fight, but save lives. The wights attacked, he did his best to defend the defenseless while they boarded the ships, and managed to escape. That was a fucking win because he survived that hell-hole.

And I laugh at the people who automatically assume Jon Snow will die. There seems to be this feeling among people that because he was resurrected, he is marked for another death soon after. Subverting tropes would involve Jon Snow surviving and living till his a hundred years old, lol. Jon may not be the best commander, but he is someone that can inspire people to fight for him.

Daenerys and Jon will marry, obviously. The Targaryen Dynasty must continue. He could die, but not before continuing his bloodline. :)

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6 hours ago, Here's Looking At You, Kid said:

It's obvious at this point that Jon is not a good battle field commander.  Let's take a look at his record.

  • Castle Black.  Jon lost that battle.  Mance Rayder was about to win until Stannis Baratheon came along and pulled Jon's bacon out of the fire. 
  • Winterfell.  Jon lost this battle to Ramsay.  Ramsay was proven the better battle commander.  He bested Jon on the  battlefield.  Littlefinger came to his rescue and bailed him out.  It's thanks to Littleinger that Jon still has his skin.
  • Beyond the Wall.  Jon was losing the battle against the wights.  Dany and Her dragons came to the rescue and got them out. 

Jon is not good at anything except swinging a sword.  I don't see a place for Jon after the war with the Night's King is won.  Dany is much better at ruling and at leading than Jon.  She should have the iron throne.  A heroic death while taking down the Night's King would be a fitting way for Jon to die. 

Danaerys is spectacularly incompetent at leading. Really anything but setting things alight is beyond her. Look at Meereen. It is a shambles, she gets attacked in the arena and flies off. She then gets taken by Dothraki. Sets Vaes Dothrak on fire and suddenly she has a Dothraki army (mainly because a dragon is the ultimate horse, lets be honest). She makes her way to Meereen and its in the middle of an attack. She sets fire to some ships and she has a fleet. She's done no actual ruling that hasn't become a disaster. Instead of staying to rebuild the bay, to secure the other cities and bring permanent change she skips off to Westeros and puts a former sellsword in charge. Danaerys actively needs to be withheld by Tyrion from committing what would today be considered war crimes. 

Jon loses battles, but in all of them he is outnumbered. He's not Alexander the Great who can turn a battle against the numbers involved. He's not that skillful. 

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38 minutes ago, Mikkel said:

To be fair, most of those have been against incredibly superior numbers. The only one that was anything approaching a proper test of his skills as a commander was the battle of the bastards (though he did fail that one, no arguments there).

Now I agree that part of being a good commander is not letting yourself get into the impossible situations in the first place, but when you're the Lord Commander of the Night's Watch and a few hundred thousand wildlings show up, there's not much you can do (Mormont tried, and it failed spectacularly).

The two missions beyond the wall were stupid from the get-go though, but they were not so much battles as they were "quests" or "missions" that Jon undertook because he has a bit of a hero complex.

Exactly this. You can't call #1 and #3 examples of battlefield command.

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Jon takes a lot of flack for the Battle of the Bastards, but maybe if Sandra would have mentioned that the Vale army was around the corner when she said to wait for more men he probably would have listened.  Also, Davos deciding to lead the archers into a trap didn't help Jon's cause.  He could have moved them forward without getting their entire army surrounded.

Defense against the wildlings was a huge win.  Even if Stannis doesn't show up, Jon takes down Mance and the wildlings infighting ruins them.

Hardhome was an excellent rescue operation... he learned that he could kill WW with valyrian steel, gained a giant and saved a ton of wildlings from getting recruited by the world's most persuasive army.

Suicide mission was just awful. Zero defense for this one

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8 minutes ago, plastic throne said:

And rightly so, as we see with the snowicide squad - he pulled it again. His decision making just gave the NK a dragon. I can't stand it.

It was Daenerys decision to rescue them. Tyrion said, she should not go an let daffy heroes die.

On the other side: Why did she take all dragons with her? Against the Lannisters she attacked only with Drogon.

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5 minutes ago, Marlom said:

On the other side: Why did she take all dragons with her? Against the Lannisters she attacked only with Drogon.

I think I will buy it. It was a different mission: one dragon was needed to rescue them and the other to kill the closer enemies during the rescuing operation.
Against the Lannister it was just about killing everybody without precision and one dragon ended up to be enough.

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8 minutes ago, Marlom said:

It was Daenerys decision to rescue them. Tyrion said, she should not go an let daffy heroes die.

On the other side: Why did she take all dragons with her? Against the Lannisters she attacked only with Drogon.

Yes, they do share the guilt with that. However -> he knew the risks, he knew what's it like up there,... And he went and did it... For what? Cersei? Or to show how Danny strong and manly he is? Speaking of 'showing off', like when they were waiting for him on the dragon while he was hacking wights for achievement/showing off to Danny (but before she arrived he was just standing there, watching his friends fight). Made me cringe, hard. For Jon, for writers.

Seriously,the way they wrote him, he's just unfit to be a ruler or God forbid, a commander/general. There are no real arguments to go against this observation; Alright, he was born lucky, to be - always - saved in the nick of time. Shame that doesn't go for those that are following him.

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9 hours ago, Here's Looking At You, Kid said:

It's obvious at this point that Jon is not a good battle field commander.  Let's take a look at his record.

  • Castle Black.  Jon lost that battle.  Mance Rayder was about to win until Stannis Baratheon came along and pulled Jon's bacon out of the fire. 
  • Winterfell.  Jon lost this battle to Ramsay.  Ramsay was proven the better battle commander.  He bested Jon on the  battlefield.  Littlefinger came to his rescue and bailed him out.  It's thanks to Littleinger that Jon still has his skin.
  • Beyond the Wall.  Jon was losing the battle against the wights.  Dany and Her dragons came to the rescue and got them out. 

Jon is not good at anything except swinging a sword. (...)

Jon written by D&D reminds me of Lieutenant Kerensky from book Redshirts (by John Scalzi).

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Lets take this point by point:

Castle Black: He had around 50 men and won the fight against the attackers from the south. After that, he had 10-thousands of Wildlings on the other side of the Wall against his small pile of around 30 Night Watch Brothers, who survived the attack. I think it's fair to say, that nobody could have defend the Wall with these few men against such a mass of attackers. Mance could have easily dispatch 5 groups of climbers, who could have climbed the Wall and who could have attacked the remaining Black Brothers at Castle Black on top of the wall. After occupying the top of the wall, mammoths and giants could have easily destroyed the gate and the battle would have been won by storming the castle. There is nothing you could have done against this. Negotiation was the only chance to get a better result and he took it. I think this was the best outcome one could hope for under the given circumstances.

Hardhome: The situation was similar in Hardhome. He only had a small group of black brothers in Hardhome because he wanted to negotiate with the wildlings and the wildlings wouldn't have allowed more of his men in the village. The negotiation went well and then we have a surprise attack of wights which outnumbered the remaining wildlings. The wildlings fought on there own, Jon and his few men tried as best as possible to rescue as many men, women and children as possible. I think nobody could have get a considerably better result than Jon.

Winterfell: Jon did a poor job here. Maybe because he wanted to rescue his brother, maybe because he had lost his will to live when he was stabbed and resurrected and only found it back in the middle of the fight. But I think the main reason was that the storywritter wanted it that way to get the most action out of it and to get the desired plot.

Beyond the Wall: I think everyone agrees that this mission was complete bullshit and that it was only done because the showrunners demanded it. And of course everything happened the way it was because the showrunner wanted it (only one dead side character, the resurrected dragon, last minute rescue, teleporting ravens/dragons and so on). I think no battle commander could have done better when the showrunner demanded a specific mission with a specific outcome.

 

So to summarize everything: I think the main reason why every battle with Jon went the way it went was because the showrunner wanted action and an exiting battle with a specific outcome. Therefore Jon had to act like a fool in some scenes to get him in desperate situations and so on. I think nobody can win a fight against the storywriter.

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How about not even bringing a horse to eastwatch?

Or, since he got a raven saying Bran was a greenseer that saw the night king's army (the maesters clearly establish that), why hasn't he stopped by winterfell and asked for his help? Even had an opportunity to see both his brother and sister whom he thought were dead.

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5 minutes ago, Haskelltier said:

Lets take this point by point:

Castle Black: He had around 50 men and won the fight against the attackers from the south. After that, he had 10-thousands of Wildlings on the other side of the Wall against his small pile of around 30 Night Watch Brothers, who survived the attack. I think it's fair to say, that nobody could have defend the Wall with these few men against such a mass of attackers. Mance could have easily dispatch 5 groups of climbers, who could have climbed the Wall and who could have attacked the remaining Black Brothers at Castle Black on top of the wall. After occupying the top of the wall, mammoths and giants could have easily destroyed the gate and the battle would have been won by storming the castle. There is nothing you could have done against this. Negotiation was the only chance to get a better result and he took it. I think this was the best outcome one could hope for under the given circumstances.

Hardhome: The situation was similar in Hardhome. He only had a small group of black brothers in Hardhome because he wanted to negotiate with the wildlings and the wildlings wouldn't have allowed more of his men in the village. The negotiation went well and then we have a surprise attack of wights which outnumbered the remaining wildlings. The wildlings fought on there own, Jon and his few men tried as best as possible to rescue as many men, women and children as possible. I think nobody could have get a considerably better result than Jon.

Winterfell: Jon did a poor job here. Maybe because he wanted to rescue his brother, maybe because he had lost his will to live when he was stabbed and resurrected and only found it back in the middle of the fight. But I think the main reason was that the storywritter wanted it that way to get the most action out of it and to get the desired plot.

Beyond the Wall: I think everyone agrees that this mission was complete bullshit and that it was only done because the showrunners demanded it. And of course everything happened the way it was because the showrunner wanted it (only one dead side character, the resurrected dragon, last minute rescue, teleporting ravens/dragons and so on). I think no battle commander could have done better when the showrunner demanded a specific mission with a specific outcome.

The last two points are the most important.

Now, we have to decide if we take the character as currently designed by D&D or as it should be.

I think the main discussion is based on the poor work D&D are making with Jon.

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