can daenerys's/ barristan's army militarily defeat their enemies?

[Bannerman of Winterfell]

true dany has the best infantry in the world, the unsullied. 10,000 of them and 2000 hard mercenary cavalry. But beyond that she has 10-20,000 half trained slaves.

The yunkish are a pathetic bunch, true, they nearly lost to the untrained unsullied at astapor but they have 10,000+ sellsword cavalry and even more the 4 ghiscari legions fielding over 20,000 soldiers. The legions can fight and can fight well. Maybe not as well as the unsullied but being twice as numerous would negate that disadvantage.

Plus there are the 10,000+ cavalry to deal with, to which ser barristan has little response.

Can daenerys's forces truly defeat them in the field?

The dragons could come attracted by the great noise but they would not know between friend or foe and could end up setting Mereen on fire.

That too leads to another advantage for the slavers, they have artillery, dany has none.

The pale mare is only among the yunkai not the legionaries or the sellswords

[SeanF]

I don' want to comment on the sample chapters from TWOW.

However, Ser Barristan's soldiers have the advantage of surprise; they can concentrate their attack in one place, whereas the besiegers are surrounding the city; they can retreat to safety if the attack goes wrong; their enemies are suffering from disease; it's possible that the Windblown and Second Sons will change sides; and, unknown to all, Victarion is about to take the besiegers by surprise.

So, yes, I think Ser Barristan's army can win.

[Mad Monkey]

A lot of people think that the Volantenes will go over to Dany when they arrive (we get hints of that from the Widow of the Waterfront and from all of the Red Priest pro-Dany propaganda in Volantis earlier in the book). They rely heavily on slave warriors, and they have a goo reason to back free Meereen over Yunkai. Tyrion seems to also want to make the Second Sons turn their cloaks again I think, which should be pretty helpful since Meereen will theoretically get the Tattered Prince's company and the Second Sons as well as the Stormcrows, which sounds like a lot. And I'm not sure how screwy the geography is but Victarion's navy should be arriving at some point too..

[Lord Jennings]

Until I see that horn tame a dragon I am going to say that Dany has superiority over every one right now.

[Bright Blue Eyes]

Yes. Without any spoilers, it would be a very close fight.

But one statement of yours is wrong:

true dany has the best infantry in the world, the unsullied.

:bs:
That's the Astapori sales pitch, the Unsullied can't back that claim. They are outdated by two milennia, completely outclassed. That the Yunkai and Dany's Freedmen are even worse is also true, but doesn't change the worth of the Unsullied compared to Westerosi men-at-arms.