"OK...

>decide to put all your units outside a fucking CASTLE
>open by charging literally all 10,000+ of your cavalry directly into the darkness
>fire your siege weapons in the same direction with no consideration of the margin of error for distance
>don't even guard the trebuchets, just put all of them at the front of your army which was already wide in the open
>your only trench is only s few feet wide and about a knee deep
>have like 4 archers and don't use them
>decide to not use the dragons to open combat, even though the hordes of dead are weak to fire and it would also illuminate the darkness so they knew what they were up against
>when the entire enemy army is just stood not moving whatsoever about 5 feet away from the wall, don't shoot them at all with your archers

This episode was a fucking disaster

He's not really a strategist kind of guy.

the entire bowl

minorities have to die first, the episode was literally a spooky horror B movie

>lets assemble in front of our immense stone fortress instead of safely inside its walls
>send the dothraki on a suicide charge into pure darkness
>be sure to fire the trebuchets into our own cavalry charge, also
>no, don't use the dragons until after we waste our cavalry and the enemy have engaged with our battle lines
>only do a couple passes with dragonfire then break off, we don't want to make it too boring, give the infantry a chance to mix it up with the undead even though literally every infantryman who dies joins their ranks
>yes it probably would've made more sense to do dragon drivebys at the start of the battle to thin their numbers and force the survivors to wade through the burning wreckage of their fellows, causing further attrition and slowing their advance, but then we couldn't do a cavalry charge!

shh, you're making too much sense.

DABID

why are you doing this ;_;

How do the dragons breathe fire? Is it some type of gland? If it was some type of flammable liquid they could have extracted that and saved it up for dumping on the undead.

i knew they would dabid it but that was even better than expected

He was seriously hoping they'd light it up in post.

Don't forget

>notice that your shitty flame trench is failing
>suddenly start screaming "man the walls"
>they were literally not already full manned before this point

They are better suited to open field battle, so you have them harass the flanks and keep the undead occupied so the pikemen and archers can deal with them. You don't have them charge headfirst even in broad daylight.

remember operation shield: protect our towers and catapults too

I don't think D&D understand the point of a castle. Or a cavalry charge. Or any other aspect of warfare.

Unless there was some hidden flanking position I don't know what else the dothraki could've done. The sheer volume of undead made them pretty much worthless, the fighters would've been better off on foot though, that I admit.

That reminds me. When the red lady walked out the castle there was carnage up to a certain point but the battle field was mostly pristine. No scorch marks or bodies where they should be. What the fuck?

> retreat inside walls and refuse to man them until the zombies arrive
> just stare at the zombies staring at your behind the trench fire
> inner bailey unmanned
> lands dragon on the field to be overwhelmed
> charging dragon straight into blind snowstorm
> hordes of dead invade the castle but the corridors are empty
Shoot the producer, shoot the writer, fuckign shoot the lot.

The plan all along should have been to let Dany and John while flanking one another in case the NK ambushed and then open up with the dragons from behind to at create enough space for a calvary charge to break the formation and circle back around but I feel most of the Dothraki would've been more useful off their horses.

Clearly no one at HBO ever played total war.
>Make the trench deeper so they can't wave it
>Use field artillery flamethrower(anti-inf) or ballista (amti-large) instead of trebuchet
>Use skirmisher infantry at the trench
>Leave strategic openings to funnel them into unsullied
>Use dragon fire (death wind) on clumps

I mean, that's kind of what they do. They're not known for their tactics.

The Westerosi who planned the defense are xenophobic and intentionally sent the Dothraki out to die first so that they wouldn't be around to cause trouble after the battle.

But seriously, it was stupid. Luckily the part of the episode after they reach the walls was kino tho.

I think "man the walls" just meant to replace the archers with swordsmen. idk

You have to wonder if they would've made the charge at all without the fire swords.

>How do the dragons breathe fire? Is it some type of gland? If it was some type of flammable liquid they could have extracted that and saved it up for dumping on the undead.
they have holes on the sides of their mouths, plus they make this obnoxious sound every time they are about to spit fire

>Luckily the part of the episode after they reach the walls was kino tho.
You lack any capacity as to what aesthetics are.

Dothraki are kinda useless in this case since the undead have no fear and won't break under a charge. They would be better suited as dragoons deployong quickly where needed with their horses to shore up defences.

But you know, gotta keep up the history of most retarded cavalry charges in cinematic history.

>Dragon skin cannot be pierced!
>Except by undead fingernails or icecicles

dont bother with the tactics
its made on purpose to fail so we have the bitter sweet win
dosnt matter that in the end the night king nearly ran out of zombos and had to ress more to secure his walk to bran
also the plot armor is strong
they could not just survive in big pockets of resistance
every secondary/main character had to fight 1vs100
also IDK how much more they could RIP OFF Darth Maul that pissed me off

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Much must be risked in war!

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Damn, oof...

Why was this guy so much better than darth maul

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Rate my battle strategy that I thought up as I wrote it:

>send as many people south to White Harbor as you can, including Sansa and most of Dany's inner circle
>keep the big brains and big names safe and gets rid of the dead weight who will eat precious rations without contributing to defense
>escort this evac with Dothraki, they won't be very useful in the coming battle and you can save them for later this way
>put all soldiers INSIDE the castle instead of in front of it
>focus efforts on fortifying Winterfell knowing they will use wave tactics
>open battle with dragons burning the first dozen ranks of enemies to cinders
>keep doing this to slow their advance until the NK is drawn out
>lure him south, away from Winterfell and his own army, isolate him
>try to finish NK as quickly as possible, if you can't, split up and have one person just keep him busy while the other goes back and resumes harassing wight army with dragon fire
>if he follows the one who went back, attack him from behind

Why were the trebuchets in front of the defenses, why didn't archers shoot from the walls before the fire wall failed, and why did their infantry fight on an open field instead of using the defensive fortifications?

>Melisandre predicts she will die
>She doesn't
>So she just fucking kills herself instead
Kind of cheating on that one.

youtube.com/watch?v=FqJwD35wWhY

The funny thing is that D&D are intensely proud of this episode, there was some tweet sent out at one point I think thanking the crew for their hard work on the Battle of Winterfell

I have no doubt that the crew did work their ass off but they deserved a better finished product than this

Ned Stark is literally rolling over in his grave right now.

>harass the flanks and keep the undead occupied
the undead don't give a shit, their strategy is to throw bodies out front until the enemy is overwhelmed
this isn't a fucking military vs military scenario

In one basket

I thought her blood would ignite the trench at first
Magic trench did shit anyway

Dothrakki didn't listen to Jon and did what they want, they said so in the behind the scenes

Lets lock the kids in the crypts, surely the necro wizard wont be able to harm them in there

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so that the sand niggers would die first

D: bretty gud idea Joan

D&D are going to have Arya assassinate you for coming up with an actual strategy.

Ok everybody, we will put all our trained spearman IN FRONT of the special dragonglass fire trenches

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>fire artillery at the enemy while your cavalry is fighting them killing your own men
>stand outside of the giant fortress to meet the unstoppable death force, instead of staying inside of it

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>send the Dothraki to die and have the Unsullied taske the blunt of the charge
Based and redpilled tactics

and the counter argument is so obvious and stupid that it hurts
>it looked cool to have all their lights extinguish in the distance
turn your brain off bro

the whole episode was just a dark blurry violent kindergarten

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Did Dany have no part in the planning here?

So it's literally Melly's fault for giving them fire swords and false hope?
lmao

Why didn't Dany keep the Dothraki on Dragonstone to save them for the war with Cersei?

That seems a more efficient use then just blindly and ineffectively charging at a vastly superior force

why didn't they dig actual fucking trenches deep as all hell and fill it with oil?

need to ramp the drama for the remaining eps

At most she should have only taken a small force for scouting. You know, so you can tell when the enemy are approaching and have time to harry them before they reach Winterfell. Could've had just small clumps of Dothraki sitting by big ass beacons they could torch and then ride to the next beacon and set it on fire. Just tell them it's like burning some peasant village in Essos, they have plenty of practice hucking torches on thatch roofs.

You just need 20 good men or Arya

I like to think that Ghost said "lolno" and fucked off into the forest to eat some rabbits and squirrels

how the fuck did ghost survive that?
summer was torn to pieces in 2 seconds

He did, he's alive in the preview

the funny thing is that they'll make Cersei kill both her remaining dragons super fast and easy

He fucked off to the forest

This was by far one of the funniest things I've seen on Game of Thrones. I literally burst out laughing.

I wish the show didn't forget wildfire existed. It would have made the siege a lot more exciting.

Why didnt the Night King starve them out?

Assuming there was enough room to maneuver they could be used to draw portions of the army away from the main battle. Harass the flank, retreat when you draw their attention, then turn and cut them down in the open when they spread out a bit.

Maybe it wouldn't be that effective, but it sure beats just blindly charging in to be slaughtered.

>needing more then 10 good men

>snipe the night king with jezails

The trenches were fine and would have served the purpose if D&D actually understood how to use them. In a battle people tend to follow the path of least resistance, and for mindless wights this is probably even more the case. So you leave a gap in the trenches. A funnel. A strategic choke point they will flood into to avoid the fire and dragon glass and rush to the exact point you want them to hit, where your defenses are most concentrated.

If you don't leave a gap then you are basically putting the ball in their court, letting them decide how and where they will attack your walls. This forces you to spread your forces thin and react haphazardly to the enemy attacking from many different positions.

If you leave openings you effectively make the enemy's choice for them and can plan around that. Knowing what the enemy will do in advance is probably the single greatest advantage you can have.

Worst of ALL they kept the Catapults at the front. If they kept their siege in the back and kept shooting for an hour this battle would be 9/10 theirs.

They thought they were literal geniuses for mimicking the Battle of Cannae in the Battle of the Bastards but that was executed stupidly as well

I hate these fucking yuppie manor born assholes and what they did to America's Tolkien

>mfw the catapults started shooting right as the cav were about to hit

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Jon being dead for hours has left him even more of a retard than he was before. This explains his military actions. Checkmate naysayers, it all makes perfect sense.

COHORS PARATI

Melly hates brown people.

>they were literal geniuses for mimicking the Battle of Cannae in the Battle of the Bastards
How? Cannae was an ambush, a brilliant use of terrain for tactical advantage and understanding how the enemy thought. The battle at Cannae was basically won before it was even fought.

kino wrinkles

Siege weapons weren't even that great at attacking a fixed structure, let alone a moving army.

Was anyone else triggered by how shit the defenses they set up were? They had thousands of men with a couple of days of prep time, they could have had 10x those trenches easily.

survy: docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdE-vkNIjJkPAaIX1b8IeLvMVMHwV8Zm-YAFc-C6K7lq02FcQ/viewform

>rides most of the way there then turns around once he realizes how retarded the plan is

Any webm for dothraki slaughter fest

they had a fucking fortress and instead of hiding behind it they went outside to fight. there was no defence.

Based Melly, the savior of Westeros

10x the trentches and fare more serious fortifications on Winterfell. They could've made a maze of those trenches and forced the undead to snake through them.

His army’s economy was desperately bad and he needed to seize Westeros and tax them ASAP to avoid his people dying

Only when he approaches to try and raise dead.

How the siege would've gone if not written by retards

>army inside castle
>waiting for NK and wights to show up
>they don't show up
>trapped in castle by terrible cold and constant storms
>food runs out
>starving
>desperately try to leave castle
>cut to pieces by waiting hoard of zombies and White Walkers that have completely surrounded Winterfell

Nigga waited thousands of years for the Wall to fall, I'm sure he could wait a few weeks to starve an army in a castle.

that was fun to watch, but they're kinda retarded with strategy

I was losing my fucking mind. Forget the ending. The tactics were the real crime.

>

They should've got Ash to help them.

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Apparently they decided to trench around all of winterfell even if they were only attacked on one flank. They also I guess assumed they would never reach the wall because they had nothing to stop the human wave ladder.

I don't remember much about the details but Cannae was won through an encirclement wasn't it? It's not like Hannibal was destined to win given the odds

In the show for some reason the Northerners and wildlings just allow themselves to be surrounded without bothering to break out but the actual Battle of Cannae (again, if I'm recalling correctly) basically involved tactically falling back or holding fast depending on where you were in the line in order to eventually surround the Romans

sounds much more interesting

>cast Banishment on the dead blob

It should have been him.
It should have been him.
>be Clegane
>burned by fire and develop an intense phobia of it since childhood
>go through the best character development in the series and turn into a hero
>become best friends with a red priest who brings you North
>Red Priest convinces you one last time to be the hero, overcome your fears and save the girl
>he dies helping you
>Melisandre looks right at you
>”he was brought back for a reason”
>Clegane, free of fear and doubt takes up the flaming sword
>the fire immediately turns a bright green, for he is the lord of light and wildfire is his to command
>cuts his way through a swarm of the dead to face the night king
>defeats him in single combat
>three episodes later his half dead brother becomes the new “night king”, a dead thing made from science
>the two brothers are the song of ice and fire
>last scene is them raising their blades against one another
>cut to black sopranos style
You know I’m right

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nah more like

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F to the niggas who died

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to be fair there is no good way to fight a death wall of running stab zombies
and staying in the castle and shooting arrows isn't an answer because they'll just make a zombie ramp

Whose idea was it to place literally hundreds of the white walker blocks on the table, did they just dump them out of a box

But fighting on an open field is hugely advantageous for the undead

F

more like hundreds of wight blocks, but yeah idfk, maybe they're autistic.

also tfw white walker clique didn't do jack shit but watch arya sonic coldsteel the shit out of their boss

>trebuchets fired twice
>not a single fucking archer firing a the horde
what the fuck

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What do you guys think they should've done with all the dothraki. Just put everyone in the castle? what the horses gonna do, no horses?

>Go to blacksmith
"I need you to make like 300 little blocks. Don't ask why, just do it."

I mean, a gutter runner DID kill him.

There are plenty of good ways. Look at the random anons here, who have come up with better strategies using their extensive military experience of playing total war.

The undead army has going for it:
>High numbers
>Fearless troops

And going against it:
>Predictable behavior
>Very little by way of tactics, mostly just zerg rushing
>Physically weak individual troops
>Super weak to fire

>Dragon skin cannot be pierced!
who has ever said that?
we saw her dragon get injured before by those masked guys in that slave city in a previous season
Cersei isn't even afraid of the dragons,
they were never depicted as invisible

they were shown making literally everything other than arrowheads. they made axe heads, spearheads, swords, FUCKING SWORDS, caltrops (???), but not a single fucking arrowhead.

The Romans were more numerous but Hannibal managed to pin them between a river and steep hills, making their superior numbers in infantry not worth much. He also forced the Romans to fight in the early morning while facing east so they'd have the sun in their eyes, limiting their ability to respond to the drastic changes in his battle line.

The masterful bit of the strategy was timing the controlled collapse of his center to bring the Roman main force between the flanks, and then hold, waiting for his cavalry to sweep in from behind, turning it into a slaughter.

It never would've worked on an open field, or at a different time of day.

>OK, and when all the undead are stopped by the fire barrier, we're just going to stand there on the wall looking at them, OK yeah? Sounds good? Ok.

>B...but what if we use our arrows to shoot at them while they are stuck behind the fire barrier?

>...........

Fuck this semenslurpingshow.

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Save them for when Cercei attacks

should have soaked the field outside the castle with oil, draw in the undead army to the walls, light the field on fire, dragons take care of the army on the far side of the fire, archers pick off the army on the side closer to the walls

Cannae wasn't an ambush, Lake Trasamine was. Cannae was a double envelopment

>Dothrakki didn't listen to Jon and did what they want
Why were they making up the vanguard of the army if they weren't going to be used first? You don't form a defensive center with cavalry. It's a total waste of their inherent advantages.

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they prob should've just shelves all the horses somewhere a bit more south i guess? idk, felt like there was no place for this much cavalry when they can't rly overwhelm or demoralize the zombos-- they just all got swallowed up lmfao. Or maybe they could've had them join later in the fight ?

give the mongols bows and have them ride in when the zombies are attacking the castle

Keep them separate at the start of the battle and wait for an opportunity to use them.

Then mostly just use them to harass the flanks of the army and draw some of it away, then cut them down when they spread out.

>blind cavalry charge
>no shield wall
>barely used ballistas/catapults
>waited to use dragons/archers until the dead were on top of the front line troops
They deserved to get their shit pushed in.

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>put the unsullied behind the trench
>put the trebuchets on the walls/towers (or inside of winterfell somewhere depending on their arc of fire
>keep the dothraki sidelined until you can see an opportunity for them to flank, or kill the white walkers at the back of the undead army
>have the dragons sit on the walls of winterfell breathing fire at the undead, waiting for the NK and his dragon to show up

the show is literally retarded

The corpses must have been pretty well preserved in the crypt seeing how not all of them were just spooky skeletons already

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the ones that popped out looked p skelemang to me

Trebia River was his most hilarious victory, wonder if he had a good laugh about it

For some reason a substantial portion of the Roman force punched through Hannibal's lines and just kept going and told everyone at the next village they arrived at that they won the battle, even though the battle was still occurring and the Romans that were left behind were getting ass raped

Anything else

>No muscles left
>Punch through stone

>he never played total war

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>Magic trench did shit anyway
It bought them time.

dammit.

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Jon knew they shouldn't be in Westeros so he had them and the unsullied charge knowing they'd die. based/ 10

Since Ned and Robb were never shown to be brought up there, pretty sure the freshest corpse in the crypt should've been Lyanna's which would be 23 years old at the time

A body should be decomposed in half that time

I feel like you guys have covered most of the dumb shit, but something else bothered me.

Why was everyone just fighting individually? The only people making any attempt at a defensive line were the unsullied. Has no one in westeros ever heard of a fucking shield wall?

>about to face millions of dead people armed with rusty knives and without a single siege weapon.
>stay outside the castle.
>"man the wall!'
>trench was 2 ft deep
>one line of trench
>one fucking line

>A body should be decomposed in half that time
Although to be fair that far up north they're pretty much in a freezer

I didn't realize GoT was that low budget to be honest.

so why did they stay north anyway, wouldn't it have been safer to retreat further south where it's not as cold and you could potentially choke them easier in bigger castles? i believe the twin towers of the frays would have been a good point to hold and convince king's landing to actually bring their forces

it kinda looked like everyone just got nutted in the face with dead ppl body when the wights attacked right after the dothraki got raped. idk shit tho lmfao.

breaking the center works when its 1:1, or 1:2 even, not 1:6

IMPOSSIBLE! NOTHING CAN GET THROUGH OUR SHIELDS

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How can an episode be so epic but so retarded at the same time. Like there was 0 logic to explain that battle, nothing. I'm not even mad Arya killed the NK, just what lead up to it was a complete joke.

>kills every single undead with dragonglass or valsteel
>they get back up anyways

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charging into an undead army just gives them more soilders m8

idk how much territory they had but that would've been a possibly valid plan? Idk maybe the winter would just spread south via magic bs?

probably that the dothraki horde can't be trusted to do anything after the fight, so they must be eliminated in the fight.

Where are those droidekas?

Not to mention, it makes more sense logistically.

Daenerys has the bigger and (apparently) better armies. Surely it would be easier for the northern troops to retreat to the south so that her troops would be fresher.
They could also spend the time fortifying the area they plan to fight in.

I feel you. It looked visually impressive but it was fucking retarded. I think I've been starved for fantasy sieges in movies for a while tho

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they weren't actually zerg rush tho, NK could control them. they also had frost storms making fire less effective. normal war tactics aren't that great when you can just fleshwall obstacles.

It's not Saudi Arabia, they don't have metric tones of petrol to use and even if they did either the frost storm would have killed it or they would just use a bridge of zombies and rush the choke point.

>I saw a movie once where cavalry was used this way, and it was effective
>so that's how it should always be used.

I can give some leeway to this battle because they didn't have that much time to prepare

also yeah, the wights deliberately made a tiny bridge to get past the trench pretty quickly, so I'd say that they're not 100% braindead.

they'd get fucking merked at the twins, dead don't need to breathe
a thicc castle like winterfell is by far better

not that guy, but I feel like sending all of the cavalry in first is a suicide mission? Wouldn't it be better to have the cavalry to distract the enemy while your other forces are also in combat?

>who has ever said that?
remember the whole meme plot about the new meme ballista that can NOW somehow pierce dragon armor, but before nothing could except icicles and nails like user said I guess.

They stood their until the night king flew in and commanded them, they're maybe 80% braindead

So much for "bigger than Helms Deep". I doubt they even watched the fucking movie to fuck up this hard. Imagine if all the peasants stood guard outside the wall when the Uruk Hai approached. Fucking kek.

bye bye fucking living cucks

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fucking kek I'm imagining that rn

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>how do we kill off the entire dothraki horde so the final battle will be realistic?
oh

that would happen anywhere, if you want to be technical harrenhall would be the best place to make a stand with the dead but it's not possible with the cerce.

>they weren't actually zerg rush tho

Literally all they did was send their entire army head first at winterfell, they didn't even surround it. Doesn't seem much different to zerg rushing to me.

>normal war tactics aren't that great when you can just fleshwall obstacles.

Normal war tactics are difficult because your enemy can respond to what you do and make you change your tactics mid battle.
They know exactly when the NK is going to do and should have been able to prepare accordingly. A 6 to 1 advantage is usually pretty terminal for the defenders, but there are examples of actual battles, against real thinking humans, where the defenders win against the odds. Beating an unthinking army that just runs blindly into any trap you set for them should have been relatively easy.

>Ignores Jorah, The Spear guys, and the rest of the legion
>Don't forget to place the epic "charging the enemy" shot from Sansa's shoulders
You suck Dabid

It wouldn't make sense to charge them like that even if they were full armored knights.

Let's be honest here, it would be impossible for the producers to raise the budget that much, too many horses in a battle is too expensive. There is no box office here.
Buy they should have made the Dothraki man the walls with bows if they wanted to get hid of the horses.

He looks kind of otherworldly while the NK looks like a blue human.

>Throw away 100k army lead and expose yourself to personally kill Wikipedia because reasons

undead magic

Why did nobody make any use of burning oil when the dead started climbing up the walls

that shit would have lit the wights the fuck up like a bonfire

His army would straight up abandon Winterfell with him though, he knows that after Bran everything else is a matter of time, the kid probably knows shit that could fuck him up.

They actually used it in the Battle of the Bastards.

not sure if they had that in supply?

against jon because he's a brainlet lmfao

they can avoid traps though, which was clearly stated in the episode. they waited at the trench and made a bridge and also made a flesh bridge to get over the wall.
there are just too many dead to make any sane military defense. best I heard was muh stay in the castle and shoot arrows but fleshwall counters that.
the plan to thin out the army are lure nk when he thinked he winned in was the best plan possible.

Exactly what I shouted at the tv

You realize that cavalry are an actual thing right, outside of movies? There are historical examples of how they are used to best effect.

you're kinda redpilling me on this fight

dothraki really got shafted tho, dammit.

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You mean
>Do you know where i can find little metal cubic caps roughly a half inch in diameter?

well, you never fight a war you know you're going to lose or are likely to. if they retreated south, they wouldn't have had to depend on kingslanding's word that they'll cooperate. they could have asked them to begin trenching the rivers that cross the land and prepare them for a defensive war instead. there's no downside to moving south

CALTROPS REALLY OUGHTA SLOW THESE UNFEELING ZOMBIES DOWN, BY THE WAY, NOBODY DIG ANYMORE TRENCHES WE HAVE ONE ALREADY
tactical genius at work

>Literal retards with an army of skilled warriors and 2 Dragons
Vs
>Normal guy with 5000 zombies, 1 giant, and a dragon

They never stood a chance

You forgot
>Abnormal amount of soldiers defending the kid, looks like they are using him to lure me, they could have a trap. Fuck it, i'll walk in anyway.

Yes, and that different cultures used them in different ways, across different centuries, and we have hundreds of records of battle. The moron screeching that they should be used for harassing flanks is the guy that seems to think they are good for one thing.

If the north is closest look alike is Alaska
is nearly impossible to dig in the winter

>but before nothing could
we see Drogon get fucked up in Meereen by a bunch of sand people in season 5
the dragon fucked off for most of the next season trying to rest and recover
dragons were never depicted as invincible
how are ballistas a meme? it's still the best chance they have at taking one down that's in the air,
dragons are tough, but getting swarmed by dozens of undead fuckers stabbing into it is gonna take its toll
it didn't even die, so what are you whining about

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>hey can avoid traps though, which was clearly stated in the episode

The army showed no knowledge of any sort of complex tactics. Avoiding fire and running at a thing until they overwhelm it with numbers aren't tactics.

The fear of fire can easily be used against them. Like other anons have said before me, use a more complex system of trenches/fire to force the army into narrow gaps that can be easily defended. Have several lines of this sort of thing and gradually fall back as the army break through. The AotD is going to take ridiculous losses before they get to the main keep.

They had Sam the Slayer chopping up blocks before the battle because that's all he's good for

>this thread
lmao this is the Disney MCU/Star Wars Fanction Era. you retards expect coherent action scenes? really?
just shake the camera bunch then collect emmys.

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Probably more like 100,000

If you told me this is DABID who wrote this shitty episode I'd buy it.

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Still three episodes left, dog. Next comes the political aftermath, but that's just to give us a false sense of security before we're hit with the episode cliffhanger: NK revived.

First half of the 2nd to last episode is Battle for Winterfell 2.0, 'cept this time it goes worse. More people die, including Arya now that NK has learned and adapted (as he's shown to do throughout the show) to her. Those that don't die flee to the Twins, Bran/3ER included, and try to figure out a new plan. Bran/3ER/Bran the Builder reveals that, during Battle of Winterhold 1.0, he was warged as ravens carrying messages to Cersei to send the Iron Fleet with building materials to the Neck. The fleet arrives at the port of the Twins as the episode ends.

Final episode is Bran warging into a bunch of workers to coordinate them and construct a new Wall in record speed, while Theon's sister leads survivors to skirmish and delay the NK's advance. Wall is constructed and then NK assaults the final defenders, but because he no longer has an undead dragon, the wall holds strong. NK retreats into the new North of the Wall, formerly known as Winterfell, waiting for the next attempt at stopping mankind. Westeros returns to politicking but with slightly less land due to the encroaching ice of the North. The whole cycle begins again as rulers forget why they stopped fighting.

I feel the same feelings for this as I felt for Phantom Menace.

It does push boundaries of what you can do on TV similar to how Phantom Menace utilized very experimental technology at the time for the movies, but it's stupid and I hate it.

>the plan to thin out the army are lure nk when he thinked he winned in was the best plan possible

All at the cost of their armies getting fucking decimated.

Had they actually took time to put more defense fortification around and on their walls the fleshwalls could be decently countered with fully manned walls.

The guy at the start of this comment chain posted one idea.

>The moron screeching that they should be used for harassing flanks is the guy that seems to think they are good for one thing.

This is in your head bro, not what that user wrote.

Can we not all agree that charging head first into them was stupid though? They would have been better off not fighting at all.

Honestly I was expecting the Dothraki riders to come back as undead riders to charge directly back at the unsullied. That would have been entertaining.

No, they neutered the NK's army hardcore.
He used to have undead giants and mammoths walking towards the wall in hardhome (if I remember right), but now it's 1 giant, no mammoths and a legion + recycled enemy troops

They had 2 years. How did they fuck up the budget this badly? Did HBO seriously short their biggest show?

Not the guy you are talking but lemme chime in just to say I know for a fact cavalry where never used to charge into complete darkness, at the very least.

Fuck, that would have been great.

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>the entire Dothraki civilization is basically wiped out overnight
>the entire Unsullied army is wiped out overnight

Based Dany purifying the continent

It was both of 'em.

Not just that, but a small army of giants after the first wave.
Hard home showed a bunch of giants, why is there only 1?

I just like to imagine Winterfell busy and fucking Jon Snow himself comes up to two soldiers who are sword practicing or something, thinking about saving their kids and surviving and thinking about how they can be useful, so he comes up to them and says
>"Cease your training lads, we need carefully chopped 200 rectangles painted blue for strategy meeting!"

Holy Jesus kek, thanks Yea Forums

Dont forget
>No ladders
>No siege machinery

The living had no business failing to defend that wall, ramp or no ramp.

All the plans were always shit. The show is mediocre.

any defenses would have been met with more fleshwalls, the plan to lure nk making him think he won was a valid choice

I audibly keked when that happened

This entire episode was trash, a fucking rando Yea Forumsirgin who played Total War for a few days could come up with a better battle strategy than these retards, and multiple people ITT literally prove it.

yea i'm finding it hard to see the downsides of retreating south. they would have been bringing the existential threat directly to kingslanding to confront and choose which side they're going to fight on. they have better terrain and warmer climate to their advantage south.

even if kingslanding showed themselves hostile, they have better odds winning kingslanding than a swarm endless of magic zombies

>tfw you'll never get your dream episode where there are fewer major players at winterfell and everyone at winterfell gets destroyed in massive miscalculation of "surely through the power of friendship and plot armor we'll be able to withstand an army of literally millions of undead"

CGI is expensive and David has a family to feed please understand

Good chance to get rid of the horse niggers.

Stannis attacking the wildings was at least and actual formation

All the flesh wall bought them was a tiny fucking sphincter of a chokepoint that any ancient commander would have sucked cock to have on the defense. 100 to 1 numbers are very much doable when you have chokepoints that nice.

Hey guys let's put a trench behind our own crack troops so they can't retreat back into the castle.

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kek

This
Everyone accusing the defense of retardation is even more retarded, it didnt matter what kind of resistance was put up, NK would only show up when he thought the battle was over.
The plan was to literally throw people at him until there was no people left, and when they realize dragonfire does nothing and shit's fucked that's when Melly comes in to tell Arya what happens next.

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How many of his own armies has Jon killed off now? Three or four?

>you ever hear of the emancipation proclamation?
>I don't listen to hiphop

>have a fuckton of experienced spearmen and cavalry
>no one thought of doing the classic hammer and anvil strategy

guaranteed victory against this brain dead AI

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>just shoot dragonglass arrows at a million zerg runstab zombies
>they won't just pile up in front of the wall and climb over themselves

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I came up with this shit in 10 minutes. Since they only had a few days to prepare, the back could be left undone and just use the dragons to corral the army into the funnel. No calvary charge until majority of army is in the funnel and they should be used to encircle the army and keep them in the funnel while the dragons perform strafing runs on the army and the catapults bombard them. Dig the trenches deep and wide to prevent bridges from being formed with archers laying down constant harassing fire. It could work provided the NK doesn't bail on the assault and just decide to starve out the defenders.

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>fire swords hype up retarded Dothraki and they charge into the night without orders, demoralizing remaining troops
So many things in this ep could have been great with tweaks. The shot of the fires slowly going out was great. In fact, there should have been one fire that lasted much longer than the hours to show the last man fought hard.

>send the dothraki on a suicide charge into pure darkness

Dothraki dumb enough to do it.

Why would you want literally your best soldiers and the only ones who hold a god damn formation while under attack in an actual tactically advantageous position?

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they made multiple chokepoints, not just the main one shown. they show it in the crane shot but it's a blink and you miss it moment.

She episode immediately took a shit after that. I was happy because I though the darkness in the episode was on purpose to contrast this scene. AND THEN THEY ALL COMMIT SUICIDE

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>be producer
>decide spending money/screen time on cgi dragons/fire special effects OR the hassle of dealing with hundreds of horses / animal safety / dealing with animals in general

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Cannae was a double envelopment, not an ambush, stupid.

>GoT writers meeting
>You guys seen ROTK
>member Faramir charges the orcs?
>lets do that in GoT, but without the gay music lol

Literally the ONLY reason why the show writers did that was to take away danys army for the big fight with cersei and force dany to play nice with the North.

It was a plot contrivance. Nothing more nothing less.

ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND DOTHRAKI SCREAMERS ON THE OPEN FIELD. THEY COMMITTED SUICIDE, NED! SUICIDE!

Just a random example off the top of my head.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defeat_of_Boudica

>10,000 vs 230,000, it's possible the numbers were exaggerated by the Romans, but they were outnumbered heavily by any account.
>Battle happens in the open, so the Romans were without fixed defenses.
>Britons are poorly equipped compared to the Romans, but they are actual functional humans instead of mindless zombies
>The Romans still fuck up the Britons big time using superior tactics/discipline.

She didn’t predict it, she was stating her plans.

It's 100% because they didn't know Night King was after Bran. 100% his fault. For all they know the dead are interested only in chopping up the living and they figured if they give them privilige of choosing when and where to fight they'd just slaughter some more innocent people who are somehow not aware of the threat or how to deal with it and end up surrounded by even more dead. Plus they expected to fight with Cersei's troops and just wanted to end it right then and there.

I guess they didn't want dead to roam free in Westeros, no one but them was armed for them.

And leaving their home, their lands, and all their people to die. Also how do you outrun an enemy that doesn't need to stop marching ever?

This whole thread makes me sad cause their are logistical failings (understandable since well the military situation is somewhat unprecedented) but everyone here is so nit-picky and meta-gamey. Also, I honestly can't tell if people using Total War as an example of some sort of military simulator are being sarcastic or not.

>They had 2 years. How did they fuck up the budget this badly? Did HBO seriously short their biggest show?
hbo is a bunch of money grubbing weasels. Since it was the last season the idiots decided to undercut the GOT budget and make it smaller than season 6. 90

Don't forget the other side was retarded too. The WW never threw a single ice lance at the dragons the entire time.

All we needed was one shot of the flaming catapult shots arching through total darkness and landing in a mass of undead lighting them all up for the audience to see.

That’s funny, I don’t remember anywhere in the episode them saying that “we want absolutely everyone to die and no one to survive this as it’s clearly the best strategy”. You might be a retard user

>fought in a narrow gorge with cliffs and forest to protect flanks and slow enemies
Yet again terrain used to advantage.

Yes he did. After the dragonfire didn't hurt him he threw one at Dany and missed.

>All the trebuchet shots missed

It was the humans getting back up, not the wights.

The only character who gets away with this is Bran because lolmagicvision.

Everyone other character gets no excuse for being incompetent, especially all the "hardened commanders".

>>decide to not use the dragons to open combat, even though the hordes of dead are weak to fire and it would also illuminate the darkness so they knew what they were up against
The point was to 2v1 dragon the NK. Also not be exposed early on so they don't get sniped by his olympic javelin throws.

If they used the dragons out in the open field again they run the risk of them of losing another one or even both to the ice spears.

holy fucking shit they mismanaged their troops so badly that the night king fucking deserves to win

>flee to kingslanding
>you now have to fight a battle between the hammer of cersei's forces and the anvil of the night king

Total war is a decent military simulator and most of the nitpicks in this thread are entirely accurate.

>siege catapults behind the walls, firing flaming balls into the lines early on to illuminate the battlefield
>no charging your most important units (cav) into the dark to die instantly, hold them in reserve to harass the undead and lure them off the battlefield to ease pressure on the front, cut down as many as you can who were dumb enough to run after the horses
>All spear infantry behind the big spiked trench, let them attack through the ditches to avoid that massive insane rugby surf charge by the zombies (or shrink its shock hit)
>Do not rely on dragons to light your trench, have anyone able and ready to light it when needed
>light the trench when the fighting grows quite bad, give everyone time to fall back if needed or pursue through the fighting (stop zombies making body bridges)
>dragons doing their fire thing for support
>everyone else on the walls with bows, fill the walls up as it's evident the attack on the walls held out longer than the formation did
>Loads more of those barricades on the walls that seemed to work, also make those things set on fire when needed
>continue having dragons spamming fire against the walls for zombies trying to climb up
>Fighting in tightly packed corridors and lines here is a huge advantage against an army that tries to mob you, have lots of tightly packed barricades in doorways, defences designed to funnel your enemy into them. honestly the living seemed to do best when they were inside the walls in tight areas were the undead couldn't swamp them
>continue to have the cav harass the best you can
>no dumb heroics just keep dragons flying around the castle to fight zombie dragon from owning your walls and spamming fire on people

100000000 years in total war btw

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Martin said that season 8 finality was D&D decision thought and that they could've gone on for up to season 11.

weren't dany and jon bumping around in the darkness for 20 minutes?

>NK snipes your dragon while you go chicago on his fron line
>he now has 3 blue eyed white dragons
>gg ez

To be honest, their hardened commanders take orders for 10 year old girl. So shit defense shouldn't come as big of a surprise.

Hammer and anvil only works in TW cause of the morale system. Nothing rattles the AI's morale meter harder than being suddenly flanked and hit with a charge at the same time while already engaged with the enemy, it instantly shatters morale and routes them.

But undead wights don't feel fear, so what good is shock and awe?

Exactly. Which is what should have happened at Winterfell, but didn't.

Having a purpose built keep and time to prepare defenses is a much bigger advantage than picking an advantageous, but largely uncontrolled open battlefield.

You can’t use that excuse. They could of totally lit up the troops when they got closer than gone after the night king

it's leaving your home or die fighting an enemy you can't kill and that may end the human race. staying in winterfell was a bad move. if they left for the south, they would be bringing the war right to kingslanding and force them to join.

man it was genius of D&D to have jaime decide to serve under Brienne or he might have said that plan was fucking dumb

Also can we pretend that the NK was overzealous and that's why he wanted to finish the battle early rather than doing a 10 year siege? Maybe he knew the win was close so he got baited and rekt. Just asking.

If an actual three way war we’re to begin the two human sides would join up very quickly. They aren’t going to stay enemies as the living ice dead is slaughtering everything that lives. Cersei would definitely lose control of the situation.

Nothing was more refreshing than hearing brianne sound like she was tried to push out a week old compacted turd in every one of her scenes

That’s wrong. Hammer and anvil works outside if total war and your hitting the enemy while they are totally defenseless then retreating before they have a chance to do major damage to you. I wouldn’t expect the average Yea Forumstars to know a thing about strategy though

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Is that the famous frontal retreat? Where you don't run backwards but forwards instead? Like passing the enemy on the way to his base to cap his flag.

>Also, I honestly can't tell if people using Total War as an example of some sort of military simulator are being sarcastic or not.

We are. The point is that neckbeard virgins with extensive experience of playing random games can point out how shit the plan was.

Harry their flanks and keep them from mass charging in a giant wave.

They'd have to abandon basically every civilian at winterfell to die.

Hammer and Anvil in real life =/= hammer and anvil in TW. In TW hammer and anvil is an exploitation of a couple different AI mechanics, its only top tier because of that and it has nothing to do with real life applications of the strategy, you arm chair wannabe general.

Ah! So that's why they had the dragons fly around the keep and land nearby before they even knew where the enemy was. And why they then had them immediately doing strafing runs back and forth after the dead started attacking.

Stop trying to defend the writing you fuckin' idiot.

>thinking winterfell civilians even exist anymore
They're feeding their armies plot armor right now, there's no way they show the citizens after this episode

>No Crystal Spiders
>No undead bears
>No war elephants
>No Azor Ahai
THEY CAN'T KEEP GETTING AWAY WITH THIS

Total War games are generally configured in such a way that using good tactics is a big advantage. Obviously it doesn't portray the difficulty of actually having a large army maneuver in a coordinated way. None the less, it's not like hammer and anvil is a meme because it's good in total war.

>charge head on into enemy
>be met with a wall of spiky things
>die
>charge into back of enemy
>not be met with a wall of spiky things
>live
This isn't that complicated a subject

The walls of the castle could have been fortified with spikes and shit to make some parts impassable and create proper choke points at the top. Much easier to defend.

The only shitty explanation is that no one in command has any idea of battle tactics. They are all incompetent fucks plus they killed anyone with an idea of what to do in the military aspect (Stannis, Tarly).

Explain to me why there were any civilians left in Winterfell? Why was Sansa there? Or anybody else important? They had weeks and weeks to prepare, why did they not strip Winterfell of all non-essential personnel long before this? You have ravens and fucking DRAGONS, move your command post to White Harbor or literally anywhere south of Winterfell and communicate remotely. Trust your battle commander in the field (probably Jon) to oversee defenses and lead the fight.

There should have been nobody left in Winterfell except those people essential for winning the battle.

Night King had like 2,000 long fucking years to prepare for this shit. And you think stupid sexy Jon Snow is a shit tactician?

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Hell if winterfell was larger than a gated apartment complex maybe they'd have had a chance

Seriously though, why wouldn't they have bears?

Right up until Mary, I mean Arya, teleported and killed The Big Bad I thought they might actually have some sort of compelling story going where the NK actually wins Winterfell and pretty much everyone dies.
But nope... That's not in the spirit of Game of Fan Service.

Are you literally so fucking stupid that you don’t think hammer and anvil was a good strategy in real life and was used by the Romans effectively? How about you do a little reading before you pretend to know shit fucktard

To be fair he probably still had like 80,000 wights left

This

Shes hundreds of years old and clearly still harboring some batty old racist views

Thats also why she chose to die after the battle. The ethnic cleansing was done, and therefore so was her lifes work

Total War is a great series that I have many hundreds of hours in and it is not really all that close to reality, and certainly not close to reality+dragons+zombies (At least not until a few years ago...). And if you can agree that they were nitpicks then maybe you see the point that any tactical failures here are irrelevant. It was an unwinnable battle that ended due to Arya outta nowhere.

Yes, they definitely could have gotten the entire population of the North to Kings Landing before the army that marches 24/7. And then I'm sure Cersei wouldn't have just taken her ships and just bailed. And Kings landing would be totally ready with all the dragon glass and entrenchments that they have. And again, abandoning their home, lands, and all the people they couldn't take with them would've probably been easy. Yes user, you're so right I apologize.

Way to put words in my mouth you raving asshole. Hammer and anvil in real life had nothing to do with what I was talking about but you just had to mouth off to make yourself feel important. Nothing I said had any bearing to real life, I was talking about TW and the only reason it was good in TW, yet apropos of nothing you start blathering like a cunt about "akshully in real life..." like I give a fuck.

And I already know how effective h&a is in real life, and unlike you I know that maneuvers are like tools and you use the best one for a job. h&a isn't magically superior to all other maneuvers, you use it when you can as best as you can, just like all the other ones.

Fucking idiot.

>literally rolling
kek i see what you did there

moving south is still a better plan than staying in winterfell. the climate and terrain works much more to their advantage than losing 99% of your army and civilians. even if cersei and her allies showed themselves hostile, dany's army has better odds routing through them than an endless undead army.

Again though, whether or not the plan was perfect is sort of irrelevant.

You literally said it was only good in total war don’t backpedal. And I never claimed it was “magically superior” so don’t project.

Man your just one sad idiot aren’t you?

His body never came back.

it worked notttinng perssoonollel kid

Only one dragon left bud

Hiding in the castle is also stupid if the enemies doesn't starve or freez. The NK could have waited 2 weeks and all of them would have starved to death. What I didn't understand is why not mount the wall and try everything to stop the enemie from crossing the wall instead of fighting him in the fucking yard.
Also why didn't they use oil or anything burnable when defending the wall?
Most of the battle didn't make sens but hiding the castle is also stupid

They were both shown in the preview for the next episode

I'm not really defending it. Trying to see if some sense can be made. Being a show and not a documentary, some artistic freedom was inserted, so the dragon ballet at the start. For the sake of it, consider it didn't happen. Thing is, the outcome would have been the same no matter the battle plan. I could win any battle as NK in his point, but the plot didn't allow this.

>So that's why they had the dragons fly around the keep and land nearby before they even knew where the enemy was.
For show. Also they had an general idea. And it was too far for him to throw spears anyway.

>And why they then had them immediately doing strafing runs back and forth after the dead started attacking.
Woman emotions trumping plan and male pussy whipping following suit.

>Stop trying to defend the writing you fuckin' idiot.
They pay me $50 per hour to do this. That's why they didn't have bears, elephants and the likes.

Admittedly all my war know-how comes from Total War, but even I know not to use cavalry as a front line charge when you have spearmen with shields. Not that flanking would have mattered much, but at least it wouldn't have been throwing an army away.

Also, why the fuck are the two greatest assets for eliminating the white walker army - the dragons - CHASING OFF THE NIGHT KING AND NOT STAYING CLOSE TO WINTERFELL WHEN ***THEY WANTED TO LURE THE NIGHT KING TO THEM***?

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There's a lot of space between perfect and fucking retarded.

>Sending dothraki to die randomly
>Armies in front of defenses
>Shit defenses at that
>No formations for anyone but the unsullied
>Bothering with siege weapons at all, let alone placing them outside the wall and only using them once
>Barely any archers, not firing constantly anyway
>"man the walls"

>WHEN ***THEY WANTED TO LURE THE NIGHT KING TO THEM***?
Plan A was to kill him outright. Plan B was bait.

>there should have been one fire that lasted much longer than the hours to show the last man fought hard.
So fucking kino

And what do you do if the NK just lays siege and starves your army inside? Hiding in the castle is of course the best option in battle. But the NK can just starve them to death because his troops don't need food.

Speaking of, hammer and anvil wouldn't even work here. The army was too big to flank around and clearly the white walkers were hanging back to protect the rear (or they were just lazy, hard to tell). Also, the enemy wouldn't panic or rout from a rear charge anyways. The point is that we're applying simplified video game tactics to real life, then adding zombies and dragons. Its fucking stupid to even argue.

Hammer and anvil isn’t just a video game tactic. And using the Dothraki to hit the walkers when they made contact with the spear wall would of been way more effective regardless of if they could actually flank them.

Did you took a course in fallacies or are you just that dense?
You know what i meant, now kindly fuck off.

they were facing an existential threat they had no reason to believe they could possibly survive. you don't fight that, you run away from that. it's like arming yourself with a knife when you know your opponent has a gun. you don't confront him or stay in place, you run the fuck away. besides, they ended up losing all of their army and people anyway.

So you accept that you were shitting out fallacies? Good I guess were on the same page, now I can gladly fuck off

What part of "It didnt matter what they did and they knew it" did you miss user?

>brake

>I-it doesn’t matter that they were retarded! They knew they were retarded so it’s ok
Do you even listen to your own arguments?

>Nuh-uh user the last word is mine even though i dont know what "fallacy" means

I could spend all morning nit-picking your nit-picks, for instance:

>Dany has watched Dothraki charge down things frontally like a million times. She underestimated an enemy she barely understands. Also, its a cool visual (This is the primary reason, I know).
>The idea was to use the defenses to stall the wights while they re-positioned. Probably accepted that most of the Unsullied on the other side would die
>Unsullied are the only ones trained to fight in formations (not a super common thing for medieval peasant levy armies) The dismounted knights obviously wouldn't have infantry formation training, nor would the wildlings (they called "wild"lings for fucks sake

Why bother though? The plot was never going to be "Thanks to the brilliant strategy, the battle was won with minimal fuss. Back to our regularly scheduled human on human violence."

They studied under the master, clearly it was a tactic taken from another war against an unliving northern aggressor.

operation get behind the darkies.

I agree its not just a video game tactic, but in reality its a bit harder to time and pull off when your anvil crumbles in minutes and the army you need to flank is like 7 miles wide. Also, it wouldn't have mattered anyways cause they would have just charged the same enormous fearless mob of murder from different angle.

You would run away from it because you have no attachment to the people/land you're fleeing.

Also zombies aren't existential. They're just scary.