[BOOK SPOILERS] Battles

[Corvinus85]

I was just thinking for season 2 they could at least show the little battle (skirmish) when Arya's party is attacked by Ser Amory Lorch. That should fit in the budget, and it ought to have plenty of gore which HBO likes.

No hopes for the Blackwater. Some hopes for Winterfell.

[Anomandaris86]

Season 2 Blackwater predictions. To all those saying that HBO won't screw us over on the Blackwater. Here's how they'll do it.

The Hound tells Tyrion of the horrors outside the walls and deserts. Then a long talking scene with Sansa happens. Tyrion gives a long speech to his men and is seen charging out of the gates with his men. Fade to black. He wakes up in a bed and Pod tells him of his heroic deeds and how Renly's ghost saved the day. Davos gives a long speech and then commands his lone ship to enter fiery haze with everything obscured by smoke. Fade to black. He wakes up in Sallador's ship and is told of what happened. No actual fighting happens.

I'll repost this after the Blackwater airs.

Fuck, I didn't need to read that.

[Sega AM2]

Is anyone really shocked that HBO didn't show both battles at all? GRRM himself said he didn't know HBO would handle the battle sequences and it is obvious now why they kept him in the dark.

When the show basically wrote off the direwolves completely the last few episodes I figured that CGI wasn't really in the budget and that we wouldn't see a larger version of Grey Wind or Ghost. And early scenes like the Hand's Tournament had sparsely a hundred extras in that scene as spectators, as opposed to the book where thousands from all over the realm come the King's Landing to spectate and participate. If HBO scaled down the Hand's Tournament then of course they would either scale down or eliminate battle sequences.

The worst is that we barely even see Robb's army, for people who haven't read the books it must be difficult for them to understand that Robb marches with 18,000 men behind him. It seems like Robb leads a band of maybe dozens if you are only a television viewer.

Very odd choices from HBO so far in the show and I can't say that I am impressed. Odd things like giving Littlefinger the Hound's lines about his burns and cutting Jorah's "when the high lords play their game of thrones" line puzzle me and I guess they'll be trying and failing to improve upon GRRM's work. Maybe they don't respect the source material enough and they think that they can do better than GRRM on his own story?

[Anomandaris86]

So mistaking a force 1/10th the size of the actual force is believable? The whole ruse works in the books because Robb commits the MAJORITY of his forces to the battle.

Can someone refresh my memory on the logistics of this? As I remember it it was close to an even split.

[gotthammer]

I also found the lack of battles disappointing. What's worse, I think, is also how the two events that should have had battles were depicted...they kinda felt 'rushed' (I also kinda get that feeling for most of the half of the episode, I think).

I guess for some folks, like me, there was an expectation to see more 'cool stuff'. I mean, the intro and the establishing shots for various locations were great...so I kinda assumed that we would see 'more'.

The Hand's tournament was disappointing (I really wanted to see Thoros, and I think my friend wanted a better intro for Dondarrion), but kinda understandable.

The lack of showing the battles in this episode, even one of them (particularly the one for the Whispering Woods) was rather...sad.

Oh well, I hope they do show battles and stuff next season (I wonder if they'll ever show the Ironborn AT sea. I mean, if they can't show a skirmish in the woods, at night... *shrugs* )

:)

[Tywin's bastard]

Is anyone really shocked that HBO didn't show both battles at all? GRRM himself said he didn't know HBO would handle the battle sequences and it is obvious now why they kept him in the dark.

I wasn't the least surprised. Looking at Rome, which had twice the budget and very little battle scenes (which still looked of less quality than the rest), it seemed obvious that there would be very little of that in GoT. As for what they told GRRM I have a very hard time believing that they deliberately keep things from him just because they think he won't like it. He's just not been that involved in the project since he has his writing.

[elmis]

Can someone refresh my memory on the logistics of this? As I remember it it was close to an even split.

If I remember it correctly...

In the books Robb takes all his knights and mounted men west towards Rivverrun where they surprise Jamie and his three hosts. As far as I can recall, they took about 7000 men (uncluding the men from the Twins). The rest of his forces (the foot and their commanders, Lord Bolton ect) move south toward the Ruby ford where they engage Lord Tywin.

Bolton is left in charge of that host because he knows that he won't overcommit in the battle against Tywin. He'll attack then withdraw, enabling Robb to lift the siege on Rivverrun.

[elmis]

I didn't really care that we didn't get to see the battle at the Green Fork, having Tyrion get knocked out and waking up when it was done wasn't a bad idea. I have a problem that apparently a Stonecrow or whatever was the one that knocked him out. That whole speech and the charge of the savages was not that great.

They really could have shown some of the battle in the Whispering Woods. I really felt like they missed their chance there. It is Robbs first taste of battle, we really get to see how good Jamie is, the sons of Karstark/Umber dying, it could have been some powerful stuff. Instead we get some riders galloping across fields filled with snow (also wtf, snow? Riverrun isn't THAT far north of King's Landing which is shown to have a Mediterranean climate.), and a super lame speech.

[stannis for king]

my post from another thread

i didnt like how they robbed us of the whispering wood, iirc it was more a skirmish with a few knights as jaime was rather over confident with his siege of riverrun and often went out with his scouts, so numbers shouldnt be a problem with regards to cost..

and in the books i really loved jaimes 'i would offer you my sword, but i seemed to have misplaced it' knowing full well that it was 'misplaced' in one of lord karstark's sons neck.. without seeing that it lost its dark humour and arrogance for me.

i just hope they have saved budget for next weeks episode, a bit worried that dany is going to come out of the fire with spyro, yoshi and godzuki around her!

still though, i am loving this adaptation, its only a opinion on my part, but the more i think about it and the more comments i read, the more sceptical i become. i know non-book readers i have encouraged to watch this have been asking me when are we gonna see some action... i promised them this episode would be full of it... oh well :blushing:

[Talleyrand]

I'm still trying to figure out how none of Tywin's scouts can tell the difference between 2,000 and 20,000. I suppose only members of the great houses can count

[Leuf]

I'm not even really sure if that was just the Whispering Wood or if they simplified things so much that Jaime's army is actually defeated already. They didn't set anything up as far as luring Jaime into the trap so if you haven't read the books wouldn't you just think in order to capture Jaime they had to defeat his army? If that's the case then it makes sense that they didn't show the Whispering Wood, because it just doesn't happen. If that was the Whispering Wood then they did a terrible job of setting it up and not showing it.

Whether there's 2000 or 12000 men for Tywin's army to fight doesn't really matter once he's engaged to the battle. The thing was that he had to think all of Robb's army was there so they couldn't get a message to the other army to warn them. If the surprise is already complete it doesn't matter that Tywin knows he's been had as soon as he can see the army.

[Morrigan]

I'm still trying to figure out how none of Tywin's scouts can tell the difference between 2,000 and 20,000. I suppose only members of the great houses can count

Uhh what? The scout didn't mistake 2000 men for 20000. He did mistake 18k with 20k, but the whole point of the strategy is that the scout will report 20k, but Robb will send only 2k against Tywin and sends the rest against Jaime.

[Talleyrand]

Uhh what? The scout didn't mistake 2000 men for 20000. He did mistake 18k with 20k, but the whole point of the strategy is that the scout will report 20k, but Robb will send only 2k against Tywin and sends the rest against Jaime.

No, how were none of the scouts able to tell that the force that left the Twins to go for Tywin was a tenth of the size they thought it was

[Morrigan]

What scouts were those? By the time the 2k men were around, it was too late for them to realize the main force wasn't there, they were already engaged.

[So1ar]

What scouts were those? By the time the 2k men were around, it was too late for them to realize the main force wasn't there, they were already engaged.

he's assuming tywin had scouts all over the place to warn them of any force marching towards them(which i'm sure he did), and the 2000 men didn't just appear over the horizion and yell "suprise!"

[Marcus Adler]

I'm worried about this.

It appears your worries were well justified. ;)

[gotthammer]

A slightly related point:

I think that putting subtitles for locations would have helped. If I hadn't read the books, I wouldn't know where the 'other battle' was.

Something like, for the aftermath of the battle of the Green Fork, in subtitles, during the scene showing the aftermath:

"Aftermath of the Battle of the Green Fork (in smaller letters "The Riverlands")"

Then at the scene where Robb was arriving:

"The Whispering Woods (in smaller letters: "The Riverlands, West <right?> of the Green Fork")"

Or something like that. the same for other locations (like: "The Sept of Baelor (in smaller letters: "the holiest sept of the Faith of the Seven")")

...or characters (think old WW2 movies where they show something like, Generalfeldmarschall Erich von Manstein, Commander, Army Group South. Ex.: while Tywin is present and in focus, subtitles saying: "Tywin Lannister (in smaller letters: "Lord of House Lannister, Shield of Lannisport and Warden of the West")")

IMHO, that would've helped with generating, if only a little, a better 'sense of scale'. (I'm pretty sure subtitles won't 'hurt the budget'...)

:)

[Nihilist]

Uhh what? The scout didn't mistake 2000 men for 20000. He did mistake 18k with 20k, but the whole point of the strategy is that the scout will report 20k, but Robb will send only 2k against Tywin and sends the rest against Jaime.

Which makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. In the books, Robb sends the majority of his force against Tywin and Bolton tries to attack them in surprise(they forced marched during the night) trying to catch him off guard. Tywin of course had scouts that spotted this host coming, but since it was the majority of the Stark host, they did not think to go "hey where are all those other guys?".

Tywin has a host of 30,000 men, and 2,000 march on him? How do his scouts not tell him that? Are we to believe he DOESN'T have scouts for miles around? So what exactly is the difference between him and Stafford Lannister? Whose mistakes of not posting sentries is vilified by pretty much everyone in the books...In fact, that would make Tywin even MORE of an idiot than Uncle Dolt. Since Dolty was actually in Lannister territory.

Completely unbelievable.

[Ser Warpechowski]

What scouts were those? By the time the 2k men were around, it was too late for them to realize the main force wasn't there, they were already engaged.

Look at the maps and see where they split and where they actually end fighting. There is a lot of ground to cover and a lot of oportunities for scouting.

[Abaddon]

Look at the maps and see where they split and where they actually end fighting. There is a lot of ground to cover and a lot of oportunities for scouting.

...if one were to take those opportunities, sure. My read on the matter is that Tywin is so confident that the "green boy" is coming head on with all of his forces, and he knows how many forces he has, that he doesn't feel a need to do any more extensive scouting. Robb's decoy force also steals a march on him (thus the early arrival) and by the time they are engaged it's far too late for them to do anything other than go through with the 'fight' (with such a small force, likely to be more of a slaughter).

Tywin has an over-inflated reputation as a commander, and he shows it here by grossly under-estimating his opponent and taking the bait that is laid out before him. Makes sense to me.