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Great battle plan! Dubious tactics discussion.


Wagshell

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1 hour ago, Wagshell said:

Seemed like they really planned that well, right? I mean sending all the riders off on their own into the dark to fight a massive and unseen enemy?

Any other slightly surprising battle tactics you liked?

yea Sun Tzu will be proud.

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1 hour ago, Wagshell said:

Seemed like they really planned that well, right? I mean sending all the riders off on their own into the dark to fight a massive and unseen enemy?

Any other slightly surprising battle tactics you liked?

A massed cavalry charge against a foe with no shield wall and no "shiltron" or pikes is a bad idea why?
At 450kg plus per horse plus 70kg rider moving at about 40km/h would give you a kinetic energy of around 400 kilo joules, a mass of thousands of them barrelling in tight formation to entities that are composed of brittle bone would in all likelihood induce a great deal of "rapid disassembly" among them. It should not kill them but it would have been likely they would have smashed them to pieces. Seems a reasonable tactic, given that I am not sure they had too many other options. 
Perhaps it did not work like that because the directors did not think like that, perhaps they did smash many thousands of them but were pulled of their horses and traded their lives for a significant winnowing down of the wights. 

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Seems like they should have found a better way than men hacking tens of thousands of zombies to double-death. Even if they weren't fighting back that'd get tiring. 

More fire. More obstacles. More projectile weapons. Dragons actually doing something. 

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2 hours ago, Wagshell said:

Seemed like they really planned that well, right? I mean sending all the riders off on their own into the dark to fight a massive and unseen enemy?

Any other slightly surprising battle tactics you liked?

Was awful.  I can kind of understand the unleashing the Dothraki because they'd be crap defending a siege.  But you wouldn't unleash them until you'd pummeled the undead line with flaming arrows surely?!!!

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42 minutes ago, ferrelhadley said:

A massed cavalry charge against a foe with no shield wall and no "shiltron" or pikes is a bad idea why?
At 450kg plus per horse plus 70kg rider moving at about 40km/h would give you a kinetic energy of around 400 kilo joules, a mass of thousands of them barrelling in tight formation to entities that are composed of brittle bone would in all likelihood induce a great deal of "rapid disassembly" among them. It should not kill them but it would have been likely they would have smashed them to pieces. Seems a reasonable tactic, given that I am not sure they had too many other options. 
Perhaps it did not work like that because the directors did not think like that, perhaps they did smash many thousands of them but were pulled of their horses and traded their lives for a significant winnowing down of the wights. 

 

Youre right. But it’s the same reason they can just dogpile a phalanx and hurl armoured men around like paper. A decaying corpse should barely be able to move past a certain point, let alone have super speed and strength. World War Z zombies is inappropriate for this fantasy setting. These aren’t ten foot Stormcast Eternals hurling fireballs and chain lightning. One faction is playing by the rule book and the other isn’t. We weren’t watching a battle; we were really watching a horror show.

 

The World War Z zombie only works when the opposition has machine guns.

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I can understand why they didn't use the dragons from the beggining, you had the threat of Viserion.
But hwy not have a circle of fire already around everyone? And whoever passed could be dealt from the Dothraki. And non stop catapults with fire.
And pour fire from the walls when they start climbing it. Especially this last one, it was a standard medieval tactic.

I was very dissapointed with the lack of tactics, from both sides. At least the NK didn't have one because he was overpowered.

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15 minutes ago, the hound of sansa said:

I was very dissapointed with the lack of tactics, from both sides. At least the NK didn't have one because he was overpowered.

I think his plan was inspired by the field marshall Douglas Haig approach to storming a fortified position. 

His tactic of using the bodies of wights to become siege towers was pretty cool. But the use of wights as ramps across the fire was something to be criticised, they should have just gone up like flames. Its already well shown in the show that a white walker can kill fire, they do this many times. Missed oppurtunity to show a bit of a two and fro battle with a few white walkers biting the dust until they clear space for the wights.

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25 minutes ago, Tyrion1991 said:

Two words. Horse archers.

Yep, Danny scouting from about 1000m up, thus out of range of the white walker ack ack, and directing screamers to winnow the wights numbers on the way to Winterfell, another missed opportunity to ratchet some tension and show an early win for the Targaryens, find of false hope for when the full mass turns up. 

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1 hour ago, ferrelhadley said:

A massed cavalry charge against a foe with no shield wall and no "shiltron" or pikes is a bad idea why?

Because they didn't see the enemy. So they could not see their formation, or whether they actually had pikes. And their commanders couldn't learn from what happened, or call the retreat if needed.

Moreover, the little light they had came from their flaming arakhs. That had been a last minute gift from Melisandre that hadn't been planned. So the initial plan was even dumber than what they actually did.

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1 minute ago, The hairy bear said:

Because they didn't see the enemy. So they could not see their formation, or whether they actually had pikes. And their commanders couldn't learn from what happened, or call the retreat if needed.

You know when cavalry is effective, when its moving.
You know when its not effective, when it is stood still with zero momentum.  
I would have said the Dothraki stood a far better chance of finding out if their charge would work by actually charging rather than standing around waiting to be unarmoured stationary cavalry when the melee arrived. But clearly there are many differing opinions here. 

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What really is off to me is that there seemed to be no communication between anyone.  We saw them all sitting in on the strategy session and nobody thought to say hey this is stupid or this wont work or this would be much better.  

It should have been raining fire that entire battle, a literal field of fire lighting up the night sky and any and everything in it path people get tired but as long as there is oxygen fire will still burn.  Seriously who was in charge of the castle defense?  Every cask and keg of ale and wine they could find should have been brought in hell anything and everything flammable should have been.  Did Jon not inform them that they pile on one another to climb walls, as soon as they start to pile light them up.  Oh and our flamming trench is holding them at bay lets all stand here and watch them do nothing they are standing still you are not going to get better shots.  Oh and the trench is what 20 ft from the castle wall and there is only one there should have been multiple trenches dug that could have been lit make the AOTD approach as difficult as possible but nope lets give them free run all the way up . They knew the battle was happening at night yet they placed nothing out in the field so they could see the approaching enemy until they were right on top of them.  

 

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3 minutes ago, ferrelhadley said:

You know when cavalry is effective, when its moving.
You know when its not effective, when it is stood still with zero momentum.  
I would have said the Dothraki stood a far better chance of finding out if their charge would work by actually charging rather than standing around waiting to be unarmoured stationary cavalry when the melee arrived. But clearly there are many differing opinions here. 

You know when it's more effective? When they wait for the enemy infantry to be committed to an assault on a fortified position and then come sweeping in for flank attacks.

Like The hairy bear pointed out. That straight up charge into the dark was stupid.

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@ferrelhadley

I do not question that cavalry is most effective when charging. But there were many other smarter ways to have that than lead them into the dark.

Since cavalry is the most valuable asset, prudent generals tend to use them in the reserve. Using them in the beginning could work fine if there was a chance that you could break your opponents or send them fleeing. Not the case here, against an army of dead. Even still, I guess using them at the beginning could not necessarily be a bad idea. However, any reasonable commander would have them on a flank and have them charge once the enemy was engaged in the trenches. Or at the very least, install some torches on the fields so they could see what was there.

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1 minute ago, A True Kaniggit said:

You know when it's more effective? When they wait for the enemy infantry to be committed to an assault on a fortified position and then come sweeping in for flank attacks.

So everyone is complaining they attacked when they could not see but now you suggest having them pre-positioned to attack "a flank" that know one could see. 
Tell me about this flank you seen. 

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Just now, ferrelhadley said:

So everyone is complaining they attacked when they could not see but now you suggest having them pre-positioned to attack "a flank" that know one could see. 
Tell me about this flank you seen. 

Easily. They're defending a castle with a flaming trench in front of it.

When they see the dead people attempting to breach the flaming trench they charge in. Not complicated at all.

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Every single living fighter should have had a torch in hand. At the very least, they could at least see each other.

More trenches, really some earth palisades. What happened to that high ground Brienne mentioned last episode? 

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