The living overestimated the deads strength

[Tywin Tytosson]

OP

I don't agree re. the size of the AotD.  It was guestimated at 100,000 by Dany at the Siege of Wight Lake.  We should assume that is has grown since then.  The wildlings and NW at Eastwatch are now in it.  The Umbers and their people are now in it.  Anyone in the NE part of the North not in Winterfell is in it.  Etc.  The AotD is at least 150,000 strong, and likely more.  My guess is in the neighborhood of 200,000 - 250,000.  Maybe even 300,000.  In short, we really don't know the size of the AotD, but is has to be larger than when Dan saw it.

[divica]

8 minutes ago, darksellsword said:

If they are going where all of the prophecy points in the books then it's Jaime that strangles Cersei for sure.

Who knows if they won t think Jaime is too obvious?

But honestly, after last season I don t think Jaime or tyrion have it in them to kill cersei.

Unless 1 of them goes crazy because of bron killing the other I just don t see it happening. Tyrion had a pretty emotional moment in the season finale and Jaime only left because he thought the dead were too important (the sucker, arya handled them just fine).

[divica]

8 minutes ago, Tywin Tytosson said:

OP

I don't agree re. the size of the AotD.  It was guestimated at 100,000 by Dany at the Siege of Wight Lake.  We should assume that is has grown since then.  The wildlings and NW at Eastwatch are now in it.  The Umbers and their people are now in it.  Anyone in the NE part of the North not in Winterfell is in it.  Etc.  The AotD is at least 150,000 strong, and likely more.  My guess is in the neighborhood of 200,000 - 250,000.  Maybe even 300,000.  In short, we really don't know the size of the AotD, but is has to be larger than when Dan saw it.

Even if it is 200 000 undead. 100 000 dothriaki, 8000 unsulied, 20K northmen ? and 20k valemen? (this numbers are pretty low for the north and the vale)...

The living have around 150 000. The odds are in favor of the living given they have a castle they can use for defense.

[darksellsword]

2 minutes ago, divica said:

Who knows if they won t think Jaime is too obvious?

But honestly, after last season I don t think Jaime or tyrion have it in them to kill cersei.

Unless 1 of them goes crazy because of bron killing the other I just don t see it happening. Tyrion had a pretty emotional moment in the season finale and Jaime only left because he thought the dead were too important (the sucker, arya handled them just fine).

There are other factors, they might be afraid of having Jaime kill Cersei because of the amount of controversy the sex scene between them beside Joffreys body generated

[Tywin Tytosson]

42 minutes ago, darksellsword said:

If they are going where all of the prophecy points in the books then it's Jaime that strangles Cersei for sure.

 Do we really want to fire up this debate here?

My bet is on Littlefinger.  Or Arya. 

[MinscS2]

2 hours ago, darksellsword said:

The idiotic thing was Dany knew the dothraki were being sent out to blindly attack the enemy in the dark, she couldn't have expected anything other than mass casualties

We should really make a sticky of this because I'm not sure how many times I've said this, but.
 

The dothraki charge was not a planned move! 

- It's not part of the livings battleplan in episode 2.
- Jorah is their acting commander and he's clearly surprised by them suddenly charging into the night. It takes a few seconds for him to gather himself and charge along, when most of them have already passed him.
- Everyone we see who watches their charge (Daenerys, Sansa, Arya, Jon) seems slightly puzzled by it, but by the time it has already began, there's no stopping it, so they just hope for the best.

The dothraki screamers are undisciplined, reckless, impetuous and slightly arrogant, overconfident in their own combat-prowess (as seen in S7 when they slaughter the Lannister/Tarly's), and had no true idea what they where facing.
Melisandre setting their arakhs ablaze literally pushed them over the edge. 

[darksellsword]

11 minutes ago, Tywin Tytosson said:

 Do we really want to fire up this debate here?

My bet is on Littlefinger.  Or Arya. 

littlefinger you say, ermmm I hate to break it to you buddy but...

[darksellsword]

1 minute ago, MinscS2 said:

We should really make a sticky of this because I'm not sure how many times I've said this, but.
 

The dothraki charge was not a planned move! 

- It's not part of the livings battleplan in episode 2.
- Jorah is their acting commander and he's clearly surprised by them suddenly charging into the night. It takes a few seconds for him to gather himself and charge along, when most of them have already passed him.
- Everyone we see who watches their charge (Daenerys, Sansa, Arya, Jon) seems slightly puzzled by it, but by the time it has already began, there's no stopping it, so they just hope for the best.

The dothraki screamers are undisciplined, reckless, impetuous and slightly arrogant, overconfident in their own combat-prowess (as seen in S7 when they slaughter the Lannister/Tarly's), and had no true idea what they where facing.
Melisandre setting their arakhs ablaze literally pushed them over the edge. 

Man I would love for you to be right about that honestly because that would be amazing. I think the moment they started charging and it wasn't planned as you suggested then Jorah wouldn't follow them in and Daenerys would've started moving towards mounting her Dragon or even discuss the fact something has gone wrong with Jon. It looks pretty clear that Dany only considers flying in to assist her army after the Dothraki and their flaming arakhs started to vanish.

[Tywin Tytosson]

10 minutes ago, darksellsword said:

littlefinger you say, ermmm I hate to break it to you buddy but...

Yes, I say.    Littlefinger is not dead in the books 

[darksellsword]

1 minute ago, Tywin Tytosson said:

Littlefinger is not dead in the books 

I pray to the seven that George fixes littlefingers ending in the books and he isn't taken out by Bran the wikipedia of all the lies and schemes Petyr got away with.

[Tywin Tytosson]

5 minutes ago, darksellsword said:

Man I would love for you to be right about that honestly because that would be amazing. I think the moment they started charging and it wasn't planned as you suggested then Jorah wouldn't follow them in and Daenerys would've started moving towards mounting her Dragon or even discuss the fact something has gone wrong with Jon. It looks pretty clear that Dany only considers flying in to assist her army after the Dothraki and their flaming arakhs started to vanish.

Sure Jorah would have followed them in.  Dany isn't the field commander.  She would assume that there was a reason for the charge.

[D2procon]

1 hour ago, darksellsword said:

at the start of this thread I made a conservative estimate that the army of the living is just 50,000 when it could be easily argued that it's somewhere between 70k to 90k that is almost 1 living armored warrior with at least an obsidian weapon to kill 1 skinny undead skeleton that will explode the moment you stab it anywhere on its body. I think one of the most egregious shots in the whole episode is the tide of Wytes flowing over the unsullied. There isn't any bipedal being that can move in that kind of mass without falling on their asses, it actually looked like the ghost army from LOTR return of the king. It was all cringey. D&D literally told the director to throw out the rule book on everything that has been established for seven seasons. If you have that kind of nonsensical crap you might aswell have Gandalf come flying in on the back of an eagle because you didn't know that Gandalf exists in this world right?

Youre missing the point. It doesnt matter how much westeros army outpowers the dead. The fact remains. NK will summon all day and eventually wipe out westeros army

[darksellsword]

3 minutes ago, Tywin Tytosson said:

Sure Jorah would have followed them in.  Dany isn't the field commander.  She would assume that there was a reason for the charge.

sure if you write that Jorah follows them into charge of the light brigade 2.0 then he will do it but based on his character and him not being an idiot he wouldn't have charged if it weren't planned. He really wouldn't have done that either way but the writing is so poor. I won't argue too much against this theory because I like it so much.

[darksellsword]

2 minutes ago, D2procon said:

Youre missing the point. It doesnt matter how much westeros army outpowers the dead. The fact remains. NK will summon all day and eventually wipe out westeros army

You do realise that once the Wytes are pierced with dragonglass or Valyrian steel or set on fire they are dead right? not going to be raised from the dead again? The best battle reference to illustrate what should've happened in the battle at winterfell in the show is Stannis vs Mance Rayder 100k strong wildling army was a rout because the wildling army was beaten by a smaller army that had better armor ,weapons and training. They had seasons of exposition on how they needed to gather all the living warriors in the seven kingdoms to fight "the only war that matters" They had so much exposition on how Dragonglass is what defeats them and where to find dragonglass. Jon travelled all the way to Dragonstone just on the off chance that Daenerys might give him a substantial amount of dragonglass. It all amounted to nothing but a hail Mary pass, better hope someone stabs that guy that made them all like the NightKing is Count Dracula or something.

[D2procon]

14 minutes ago, darksellsword said:

You do realise that once the Wytes are pierced with dragonglass or Valyrian steel or set on fire they are dead right? not going to be raised from the dead again? The best battle reference to illustrate what should've happened in the battle at winterfell in the show is Stannis vs Mance Rayder 100k strong wildling army was a rout because the wildling army was beaten by a smaller army that had better armor ,weapons and training. They had seasons of exposition on how they needed to gather all the living warriors in the seven kingdoms to fight "the only war that matters" They had so much exposition on how Dragonglass is what defeats them and where to find dragonglass. Jon travelled all the way to Dragonstone just on the off chance that Daenerys might give him a substantial amount of dragonglass. It all amounted to nothing but a hail Mary pass, better hope someone stabs that guy that made them all like the NightKing is Count Dracula or something.

What about the westeros army that died and got raised. You realize in the end when Jon Snow charged towards NK and NK turned around and summoned the dead, had he continued doing what he was doing they would have outnumbered westeros army at some point.

Yet you rave about the dragonglass. The thousands and thousands of dragon glass made for battle of winterfel. Did you not see how much rised from the dead? Clearly they still outnumbered the living

[darksellsword]

2 minutes ago, D2procon said:

What about the westeros army that died and got raised. You realize in the end when Jon Snow charged towards NK and NK turned around and summoned the dead, had he continued doing what he was doing they would have outnumbered westeros army at some point

The whole concept of what I was saying was based on everything that happened in that episode not happening because its outcomes were a result of a superior army not playing to its strengths and squandering its soldiers so if they had fought the right way the smart way there wouldn't have been a substantial amount of living soldiers killed to be a continuing threat. If you think about it the plan of the army of the living was to sustain massive losses and lure the Nightking to Bran they didn't need 90 percent of their army to do that shit if their plan was to mug the NightKing in the woods. It all points to George not being on board with this whole Kill the NightKing save the world plot. The size of the army the living assembled was an inconvenience for D&D and their B movie plot. That is why they ignored all the carefully woven prophecies well they did do the whole "gold will be their crowns  gold their shrouds" although myrcella was never crowned as she was in the books. These guys D&D don't give a shit any more they phone it in.

[Runaway Penguin]

3 hours ago, MinscS2 said:

We should really make a sticky of this because I'm not sure how many times I've said this, but.
 

The dothraki charge was not a planned move! 

- It's not part of the livings battleplan in episode 2.
- Jorah is their acting commander and he's clearly surprised by them suddenly charging into the night. It takes a few seconds for him to gather himself and charge along, when most of them have already passed him.
- Everyone we see who watches their charge (Daenerys, Sansa, Arya, Jon) seems slightly puzzled by it, but by the time it has already began, there's no stopping it, so they just hope for the best.
 

I would say A CHARGE was planned (that is the only reason to have cavalry up front). However not necessarily so early and so far (and definitely not with flaming arakhs).

 

That being said, given Dothraki strengths and weaknesses the best use of them would be maintaining contact with AoTD from safe distance (ie out of wightreach) and act as living distance markers with torches  

3 hours ago, D2procon said:

Youre missing the point. It doesnt matter how much westeros army outpowers the dead. The fact remains. NK will summon all day and eventually wipe out westeros army

 

That is why meeting AotD in the field and moreover with such shabby tactics was wrong. Night King cannot raise his dead so the living should have focused on maximizing the kills and minimizing losses. The higher K/D ratio, the worse the exchange gets for the Night King. And he cannot raise wights killed by fire or obsidian or Valyrian steel.

 

At the same time a sensible defender would prepare a lot of engineering obstacles to immobilize wights. You do not need a fire trench, a normal ditch with spikes / timbers close enough to prevent a human from pushing through but apart enough to be able to poke a blade through them gives the defenders chance to get rid of at least few wights per defender and then fall back before the zombies manage to get through. Rinse and repeat while having most of the defenders in the castle. In no case fight en masse in front of an insurmountable obstacle - stand behind it and stab zombies slowed down by the obstacle (which is also why the fire trench was not that practical. It prevents the defenders from defending once lit up).

Also take a page from Cersei's book and have some scorpions for AA defense - even though your main asset there are the dragons. Remind the dragonriders to try to flame the enemy dragon actually.

And the castle could be adequately manned with far fewer defenders than they had - so it would be easy to establish rotation to prevent fatigue. Have 5 men per crenel, rotate them every few minutes.

 

In general the Living just surrendered their main advantages with their battle plan and they played right into the Night King's resurrection trick.

[Reclox]

Get real people, the army was made mostly irrelevant once the NK got a dragon, had that battle been realistic the NK would have simply kept his army back, sent a blizzard to cripple the defenders' vision and dragon bombed the shit out of Winterfell. But meh, he's as retarded as the writers needed him to be, so this is what we got instead, your braincells would be better used on any other task than analyzing this dungheap.

[Tywin Tytosson]

4 hours ago, Runaway Penguin said:

In general the Living just surrendered their main advantages with their battle plan and they played right into the Night King's resurrection trick.

The Living may have defeated the original AotD.  It looked like things were winding down right before the NK resurrected the fallen defenders.  I could be misinterpreting what I saw, but that's what it looked like to me.  But then the NK got 30,000+ reinforcements.

 

[Runaway Penguin]

2 minutes ago, Tywin Tytosson said:

The Living may have defeated the original AotD.  It looked like things were winding down right before the NK resurrected the fallen defenders.  I could be misinterpreting what I saw, but that's what it looked like to me.  But then the NK got 30,000+ reinforcements.

 

The defences were breached though and most of the Living force seems to have been killed as well.

 

That is the point: The Living stupidly increased the bodycount so that the resurrection schtick worked.