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Great battle plan! Dubious tactics discussion.


Wagshell

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The Dothraki should of been used to flank the dead once they hit the unsullied. They were used extremely poorly against a foe that will not rout once hit with the cavalry line. That is the whole point of a cavalry charge to begin with to break the enemies' front line but there's no way to do that against an enemy who is literally throwing their body at you without fear of death. Charging straight into the dead was a death sentence and crime against conventional battle tactics. They were completely wasted. They should of been used for quick hit and runs to support the unsullied and take some pressure off them.

But all of this being said the whole living army should of been BEHIND the flaming trench to begin with so they were already screwed anyways.

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On 5/1/2019 at 10:34 AM, The Coconut God said:

A few notes on the tactics they should have used:

  • Wasting the Dothraki in a blind charge was idiotic. They should have been kept in reserve to secure a potential retreat or used to flank the dead after they engaged with the unsullied. That being said, the impact of the charge was severely weakened by the fact that there was no order for it and no explanation from Jorah as to what they had faced. My best head-canon explanation is that the Dothraki fought and killed most of the undead giants; that's why they died so fast and why we only saw one giant later during the battle. 

We saw 2 giants later during the battle.  Drogon toasted one in a strafing run.

 

 

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On 5/2/2019 at 4:10 PM, TwiceBorn said:

1. Dismount. They don’t know this in US?

2. Artillery cannot or at very least should not fire through the walls.

Asking a Dothraki to dismount is tantamount to insulting him.  They live and fight on horseback.  The Dothraki are not trained to fight as infantry nor are they disciplined enough to do so effectively.

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On 5/1/2019 at 9:06 PM, #teamNightking said:

But there was no order to charge shown. Wouldn't Jorah have been in the front instead of being passed? 

And the thought is not that they weren't supposed to charge at all, just not yet. 

Honestly I don't care. It doesn't matter. It's just that this was the least of the episodes issues to me. 

I mean I have more of an issue of how they only lasted a matter of seconds when later our heroes and even the unsullied last waaaaay longer.

I could guess that possibly the WW or NK somehow extinguished their flaming weapons but that wasn't shown. So as far as I'm concerned it didn't happen. 

They should have survived longer and more should have been able to retreat than was shown. 

The total annihilation was a bit over the top and in my opinion was clearly meant as an OMG moment and to insure Dany lost her army making fighting Cersei later more challenging. 

 

The Dothraki were in  a loose formation and quickly surrounded by the dead, either by their own momentum or by the dead counter-charging them.  The unsullied held formation and had shields.  And had air support.

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You need to make dead that cant come back so you soak the field all the way up to your obstacle line and light it and the obstacle when the dead fill the field. And you use dragons to take out any that get through the obstacle, one doing the work the other on watch, and your unsullied should have dragon glass spears and tips on the shields. None of this leads to a win but you at least tried. 

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1 hour ago, Tywin Tytosson said:

Asking a Dothraki to dismount is tantamount to insulting him.  They live and fight on horseback.  The Dothraki are not trained to fight as infantry nor are they disciplined enough to do so effectively.

So how do they ever conquer towns - scale the city walls on horseback?

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6 minutes ago, TwiceBorn said:

So how do they ever conquer towns - scale the city walls on horseback?

Its likely the towns dont have walls or the walls are not that large.  Quick charge to get through the gates if they can.  Otherwise, ride up and climb off of the horses.  Think the wildlings attacking Castle Black from the south side.  They scaled that pretty easily.  Fight to the gates, open them, and the rest ride in.  A town with a strong/high enough wall and closed gate would by bypassed.  They wouldn't attack a city, which would have walls way too high.

 

The Dothraki are operating on open plains, mostly.  Most of the towns may not even have walls.

 

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7 minutes ago, TwiceBorn said:

So how do they ever conquer towns - scale the city walls on horseback?

As Tywin Tytosson said......The Dothraki are based on Mongols, Huns, Alans, etc.........I can certainly see the Dothraki taking towns without walls, slaughtering most of the inhabitants, and allowing a few survivors to spread fear amongst other nearby walled  towns, who then simply surrender their wealth and some inhabitants as slaves to avoid the slaughter of everyone.

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17 minutes ago, Tywin Tytosson said:

Its likely the towns dont have walls or the walls are not that large.  Quick charge to get through the gates if they can.  Otherwise, ride up and climb off of the horses.  Think the wildlings attacking Castle Black from the south side.  They scaled that pretty easily.  Fight to the gates, open them, and the rest ride in.  A town with a strong/high enough wall and closed gate would by bypassed.  They wouldn't attack a city, which would have walls way too high.

 

The Dothraki are operating on open plains, mostly.  Most of the towns may not even have walls.

 

Book Dothraki certainly attack cities with walls. They destroyed plenty of fabulous legendary cities of the Sarnori (walled city states) and Qaathi. Solharis, Pentos are walled cities paying the Dothraki khals so they don't destroy the city. It's from these walled city (states) they got the plunder of statues from they drag across the Dothraki Sea back to Vaes Dothrak. We saw that in the show, so yup same like book Dothraki.

ETA: it's not an insult for them to fight with their feet on their ground, to scale walls, etc. But it's an insult if you have to travel on foot instead of horseback.

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3 hours ago, sweetsunray said:

Book Dothraki certainly attack cities with walls. They destroyed plenty of fabulous legendary cities of the Sarnori (walled city states) and Qaathi. Solharis, Pentos are walled cities paying the Dothraki khals so they don't destroy the city. It's from these walled city (states) they got the plunder of statues from they drag across the Dothraki Sea back to Vaes Dothrak. We saw that in the show, so yup same like book Dothraki.

ETA: it's not an insult for them to fight with their feet on their ground, to scale walls, etc. But it's an insult if you have to travel on foot instead of horseback.

Ah Ok.  I was forgetting all of that.  I was assuming that the Dothraki would refuse to fight on foot.

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Just now, Tywin Tytosson said:

Ah Ok.  I was forgetting all of that.  I was assuming that the Dothraki would refuse to fight on foot.

They fight all the time even amongst themselves and against Jorah on foot. Only dishonor in fighting for them is wearing armor.

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On 4/29/2019 at 9:20 PM, Wik said:

 

I get it though, send thousands to their death because they are probably only useful while leading a spearhead charge. Soldiers on horseback couldn't possibly have done anything else. 

 

Sending them to their death is the least of your worries, since your enemy can literally bring them back to half-life and use them against you. So you basically are giving the attacking enemy a few thousand Dothraki. SMART! Very smart! The most clever people in the Realm sure do know how to draw up those battle tactics!

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1 hour ago, Relic said:

Sending them to their death is the least of your worries, since your enemy can literally bring them back to half-life and use them against you. So you basically are giving the attacking enemy a few thousand Dothraki. SMART! Very smart! The most clever people in the Realm sure do know how to draw up those battle tactics!

Yep, all that military know how and experience, and to be brutally honest common sense, standing around the battle map......and the big idea was to NOT man the walls with as many missile troops as possible, (even though Jon asked for women folk etc to be able to use a bow in S7), stick the artillery in front of your lines, throw a pointless 30k of cavalry frontally, and unsupported, into 120k plus of frenzied undead, they couldn't even see....have no polearms, etc to fight on/over the battlements, use archers piecemeal, not use the dragons from the get go, or fire, embers, oil, or indeed anything flammable to chuck down the walls, sacrifice your best troops to cover a retreat, for the troops outside your best assett, a massive curtain wall, and have a ditch and stakes BEHIND your deployment, hindering your retreat, and protect Bran with 20 men, ....in the hope the NK will fall into the trap, before everyone gets slaugtered....because the NK isn't as intelligent as we are....(lol).....now that's a plan..... time for drinking....

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59 minutes ago, Jora the Explorer said:

Yep, all that military know how and experience, and to be brutally honest common sense, standing around the battle map......and the big idea was to NOT man the walls with as many missile troops as possible, (even though Jon asked for women folk etc to be able to use a bow in S7), stick the artillery in front of your lines, throw a pointless 30k of cavalry frontally, and unsupported, into 120k plus of frenzied undead, they couldn't even see....have no polearms, etc to fight on/over the battlements, use archers piecemeal, not use the dragons from the get go, or fire, embers, oil, or indeed anything flammable to chuck down the walls, sacrifice your best troops to cover a retreat, for the troops outside your best assett, a massive curtain wall, and have a ditch and stakes BEHIND your deployment, hindering your retreat, and protect Bran with 20 men, ....in the hope the NK will fall into the trap, before everyone gets slaugtered....because the NK isn't as intelligent as we are....(lol).....now that's a plan..... time for drinking....

Agree re. 'The Plan'.   Unfortunately, nobody around that table was a proven military strategist.  Tyrion may come the closest, but in the show he proved to be a one-hit-wonder.  Royce and Khal Q, I am not sure about.  Of course, the 3-Eyed-Raven should be, with all of his memories, esp. those of Bloodraven.  But the 3-Eyed-Raven had a different agenda, apparently.

I'm not sure who was in charge of troop positioning and whatnot, but the Living certainly setup as if they were facing a (living) human enemy.

 

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Sending the cavalry straight forward, straight into the enemy's spears, meant they had 0% chance of surviving. And their charge served no tactical value. But it'll be fun to see if ferrelhadley can make it an even dozen of pages denying that.

Now, someone pointed out that the charge was unplanned, as shown by Jorah being surprised by it. I'd say it was planned, but he was surprised by it coming too early.

The defenders had only two advantages: Tall walls and big dragons. How this SHOULD have been fought: stay behind the walls like people always did when they had walls, and send the dragons out to spam fire. And to take down Zombie Viserion first of all. Forget the horses, let every warrior you have man the walls. But if the Dothraki must have their horses, let them attack the enemy from the flanks (that dreaded word, hadley!) while the enemy pile up to reach the top of the walls. THEN you'd have some tactical value in the charge.

 

How is it possible that we got this entire battle with nothing crucial done by the dragons? I have waited TWO DECADES to see those dragons have a crucial role in fighting the Others. It is "A Song of Ice and Fire", meaning fire-breathing dragons against icy Others. But when they thinned the enemy lines the enemy didn't even stop. The one who stopped them was Melisandre, with magic. They couldn't even take down the Night King's lieutenants or the zombie dragon. What a letdown.

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Some of the Dothraki would have been put to better use skirmishing, using their legendary bow skills to start whittling down the undead......500 to 1000 of the best horse archers spread out, shooting 48 arrows apiece, at 200 to 300 metres, loosing off 20 to 30 arrows per minute....avoiding contact, and retreating, to flow around Winterfell, or through the gates...second nature to the Dothraki horse lords taught to fire bows from horseback from boyhood....assisted by a few large bonfires on the plain to give some idea of the undead dispositions...keep the rest of the Dothraki behind Winterfell as a counter attack.....that would have provoked the undead to charge the walls etc, and thus no one else needed to be outside the walls in the first place.!!!.....and that's without dragons!!!!

 

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2 hours ago, Tywin Tytosson said:

Agree re. 'The Plan'.   Unfortunately, nobody around that table was a proven military strategist.  

No, I guess you are right.....I made the mistake that Jorah could have used his experience from the siege of Pyke, Jamie from Riverun, and Jon from Castle Black, and Grey Worm from Casterly Rock, with Tyrion, Royce et al throwing their ideas in as well.!!!...they were clearly just  too seduced by the full proof  plan...'Bran Bait'.....lol

 

 

 

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