Game of Thrones fans?

[waz]

Preview for episode 4, good news seems like quite a few unsullied around;

 

[LeGenD]

I didn't realise Denerys has made you Propaganda Minister or something? Dude relax its a TV show. You've got waaay too much time on your hands.

This is a 'discussion' forum, right?

I get it that the living did not execute the battle [in question] brilliantly but there were numerous factors that influenced the course of events in this battle. I noticed some over-the-top criticism of how the battle was depicted, and decided to provide some answers accordingly.

People are free to express their displeasure for an episode if they did not like it but at the least get your criticism right. Appreciate the art for what it is - it is absolutely brilliant, and nothing comes close.

 

[waz]

I didn't realise Denerys has made you Propaganda Minister or something? Dude relax its a TV show. You've got waaay too much time on your hands.

He's the night king

House Mormont.

The ancient house of Bear Island is one of the oldest in Westeros. It’s long stood as one of house Stark’s strongest allies, and one of the most respected houses in the North. Its last two surviving members, Lyanna Mormont and Jorah Mormont, both heroically fell in defense of Winterfell in the fight to protect the living.

RIP....

 

[VCheng]

Why couldn’t he also blind the dead or create an illusion or something? Totally useless bro.

Lol and John did nothing, the dragon did more damage...

But he was willing to be the bait which drew the Night King out. That turned out to be quite useful, no?

 

[WinterNights]

As much as it was tactically stupid to see the dothraki charge, I have to say, it did an amazing job to capture this hopelessness feeling this episode was filled with. Seeing the horde of this great warrior tribe get swallowed into the darkness induced much chills in our spine!

 

[HannibalBarca]

Arya move...Typical American Hollywood BS... One move to Save them ALL... literally 5 sec action...
5 sec... to End 8 Season build up...
Thank you... and Nope.

Let's Hope Cersei downfall isn't under 5 sec...

Hollywood... the cancer of Book Adaptations...
And please...Read the Book... And No... those 8 seasons DO NOT give credits in anyway to the book...

 

[VCheng]

Arya move...Typical American Hollywood BS... One move to Save them ALL... literally 5 sec action...
5 sec... to End 8 Season build up...
Thank you... and Nope.

Let's Hope Cersei downfall isn't under 5 sec...

Hollywood... the cancer of Book Adaptations...
And please...Read the Book... And No... those 8 seasons DO NOT give credits in anyway to the book...

So why did you watch it?

 

[Cookie Monster]

Bro, I am not asserting that your views do not have merit but you are overlooking different realities as well. Continue to read below.

Understand that the army of the living was also massive in size - 8 - 9 banners were involved in various capacities in total.

Winterfell was/is a large castle but not large enough to accommodate battlefield-relevant formations of a huge force within. A large number of men were stationed outside the castle before the dead arrived - you can notice this dynamic in episode 2. In fact, Sansa Stark pointed out that she wasn't equipped to provide for a huge force to begin with - refer to episode 1.

I don't remember her mentioning anything about space. She only mentioned the food shortage bcuz of too many mouths to feed.

In the light of the above, the living had no choice but to establish battlefield-relevant formations of men outside the castle in the face of the expected battle. They chose to lay lot of traps and obstacles inside the castle and also a thick layer of obstacles outside the castle. But they had to factor-in the possibility of retreating behind the walls (if need be) before setting the outer layer of obstacles on fire.

Yes they should have retreated behind the walls as the most advantageous and last of their defense lines. None of that required charging at the undead hordes like an idiot.

Please understand that a purely defensive fight can/could also go wrong.

Yes anything can go wrong...that doesn't mean one shouldn't pick for themselves the strategy that's most likely to yield the best results in a given situation. In fact this was one of those scenarios where almost everything meant certain defeat and just prolonging the inevitable death...unless they somehow killed the Night King or weakened his numbers a great deal by killing a significant chunk of his lieutenants. Anything short of that was just death...at various different time frames. A fully defensive strategy would've given them the most time to hunt for the Night King and his lieutenants while the bulk of the forces keep the huge swarms of undead bogged down.

Perhaps the living felt that the Dothraki horde would take a major bite out of the dead with a powerful charge (the horde was large enough to cut through a large force of men with ease) but the dead had no fear and proved much resilient/relentless

That would be an acceptable move from someone who had never faced the undead army in battle. However Jon and Bran both had witnessed this swarm behavior. They saw that the undead raised by the Night King dont feel pain, don't tire, don't sleep...I think Jon even mentioned something along those lines. So what good is a charge against mindless swarming "robots" in a sense? They wont be demoralized by a fierce charge like a normal human army, they wont fear being cut down or feel any sort of pain, their formations don't matter much to them so even if their formations are disrupted by the Dothraki charge...they just keep on swarming, their only goal for which they stop at nothing is a psychopathic killer instinct and nothing else.

Add to this their huge numbers...and that Dothraki charge is quite obviously a lost cause. If there were a 100 undead...that's fine...if a 1000 even a couple of thousand that's still fine...but they were literally hundreds of thousands in numbers. So whatever the living thought they could achieve by charging with the Dothraki the first thing and not using freaking catapults was not only wrong but utterly stupid.

the look on the face of the people at the sight of the Dothraki horde falling apart so easily was very telling. Daenerys lost her temper and decided to take matters into her hands soon after whereas many were like WTF (morale was apparently waning at this stage).

Yup all flawed planning...which seems very uncharacteristic of the good strategists in charge of planning this eventual war.

The dead charged next - and did you notice the sheer size of the first wave and the punch it packed? If it weren't for the dragons, even the initial wave of the dead would have cut down many of the living in a short span. Thanks to the dragons, a large number of men got the opportunity to retreat behind the walls.

yes I already know the dead had a huge army...I'm the one arguing that charging against them in an open field was idiotic. Just like how dragon fire was able to reduce their numbers from long distance(up in the sky), u know what else could've reduced their numbers effectively? More trenches at various stages lit on fire, more dragon glass wooden obstacles in the path and while these things are slowing them down...more bombardment with catapults at long range and hails of arrows(if the flaming arrows are not working then dragon glass ones).

Dude, you serious?

1. Army of the dead had about 100 lieutenants in total.

No he didn't. I would like to see some proof of that. The Night King showed up with all his might...that includes all of his lieutenants. Towards the end when the Night King is approaching Bran, there's a scene where they show his lieutenants marching behind him...they number roughly around 10. Idk where u r getting that 100 number but u r wrong.

2. Visibility was very poor.

That was never an argument...nowhere did I say the visibility was great.

3. Daenerys and John were like miles away from the castle - bringing some men to this spot would have been inconsequential.

If that spot was super far away...then right underneath that cliff was a thick forest. If as u say that it was too cramped in the castle for the Dothraki to fit and be of any use...the Dothraki could've been positioned in the forest until the bulk of the undead army was bogged down swarming the castle...they could've led their charge to attack the rear hoping to find the Night King or his lieutenants. No one knew where the Night King or his lieutenants might be...if they were gonna lead from the front...then that's good bcuz that would give the living(facing off at the castle) a chance to strike them down. If they were gonna stay back and wait for their undead army to clear out the living forces then the Dothraki would've covered that(charging in the rear from their position in that forest). If they were going to be so useless in the castle and throwing them at the enemy was the only option, then at least that surprise attack when the bulk of the undead army is away betters the chances of the living striking down some of Night King's lieutenants.

When Tormund and Edd arrived from seeing that the umbers had already been massacred, they knew the Night King was already on his way and they predicted when he would be here with his army. Bran saw them marching past the wall and pretty much could have aerial recon whenever by warging into crows. According to their battle plans shown in the picture u attached, they were able to more or less predict the enemy positions and plan their own formations. So with this knowledge they could've planted the Dothraki(they had time prior to the night king and his army arrived) in a position from which they could charge the rear(if the night king and his lieutenants were nowhere to be found in the front lines).

4. Daenerys and John were waiting for the Night King to show up but the latter proved smarter.

Yes I take no issue with how Jon and Dany proceeded to do things in battle. The night king should've been the number one priority and his undead dragon posed a significant threat...it needed to be dealt with as quickly as possible. The only thing that Dany shouldnt have done was land her dragon(that she did towards the end) bcuz distance from the swarming undead was a significant advantage but in the heat of the battle mistakes happen so its not a big deal and quite natural.

5. How would the living know that the Night King would choose to keep his lieutenants in the rear during the course of the assault of the dead on the living?

They wouldn't...which is why they should try to account for other possible scenarios rather than just taking endless swarms of the undead zombies head on.

You are assuming too much.

I assume that the Dothraki and Unsullied could've stayed back inside castle walls and defended and u assumed that there wasn't enough space...
u also assume that there's a 100 night king's lieutenants...but of course I'm the one who is assuming too much.

Indeed, but the Night King and his lieutenants were not taking the bait.

The real bait as discussed by the war planners of the living...was Bran...it was mutually agreed upon and the Night King and his lieutenants did take that bait...and yet the living found themselves underprepared when the night king did get there. The Ironborn made a heroic stand but if it wasn't for Arya being a last minute ninja, Bran would've died.

I get the impression that the dead did not give Winterfell much time for preparations.

More assumptions on ur part. Winterfell had been preparing for the Night King and his undead army since Jon was declared King in the North. He briefed the nobles and members of the court about the threat of the white walkers. He told them how dragon glass kills white walkers and their army, he said that "dragon glass is more precious to us now than gold, we need to find it, we need to mine it, and make weapons with it". An episode later(almost soon after) he got a letter from Sam(at the citadel) saying dragon glass is underneath dragon stone and a letter from Tyrion inviting him to dragon stone to bend the knee to Dany. That's when winterfell had started preparing for this(at the time not knowing if they will get any allies). Jon then left leaving Sansa in charge. So during all that time of Jon being at dragon stone, mining dragon glass, then going north capturing a white walker, bringing it to south for the meeting with Cersei to show her, then again marching all the way north with a huge army...during all of this, winterfell didnt have much time for preparations?

They might be short on oil at the time?

See above.

As I pointed out above, the living had no choice but to take their chances with the dead outside the castle, to reduce numbers of the dead and to kill the Night King if possible.

And that worked out great for the Dothraki and the Unsullied?
In all that time that winterfell had to prepare...they hardly had any defenses prepared. That one trench was dug last minute. Any offensive strategy against the hundreds of thousands of undead is bound to fail...eventually it will come to a halt...its best to keep distance and have a defensive strategy against the undead horde, killing them at range with dragon fire, arrows, catapults, etc.
...the only offensive strategy that would be smart would be against the night king and his lieutenants.

1. Lack of space inside the castle for battlefield-relevant formations like in the outside.

Battlefield formations, cavalry charge, infantry charge, use of long swords or battle axes...nothing of this sort matters when u r facing the undead horde...all of these various strategies eventually end in silence(as in the living are eventually overpowered and killed by the constant onslaught).

For the nth time, engaging the undead horde shouldnt be the goal...one should only face them if necessary and that too from an advantageous position. Distance(like flying atop a dragon setting them alight) is the most useful of these advantages. The undead horde can do absolutely nothing from a distance...which is why charging at them in open field is giving away all the advantage to the undead horde while putting urself at a disadvantage. An example of this is shown in that episode itself, for as long as drogon was up in the air, he(not sure if its male or female) roasted the undead by the hundreds if not thousands...without even a scratch...the moment drogon landed, he was swarmed. So while there's only two dragons and not everyone can keep distance and spit fire from the air while flying on their dragons, they could however have kept distance by having more obstacles in the way...more dragon glass tipped wooden obstacles, more trenches on fire. This would've killed some undead and greatly slowed down their approach towards the castle during which time the living could've made more use of the catapults.

The second goal...besides keeping distance and keeping the undead army at bay for as long as possible is to buy time to hunt down the night king and/or his lieutenants. U can't buy time effectively when u've laid to waste some of ur most elite fighters in the way of a stupid strategy that got them killed in a matter of minutes.

2. Lack of time for best possible preparations.

Again see above...not at all true. Whatever time is spent between Jon becoming King in the North until the night before this battle...Winterfell and their surrounding areas(with possible additional help of the Eyrie) had all this time to prepare defenses for this battle. The only ppl who had little time to prepare are the ones who joined last bcuz it took a long time to convince them. Other unpreparedness would include(as it did) not knowing about a large contingent of army coming to help and hence not having enough food rations(and that's fine bcuz Sansa didnt know that they would be joined by this huge army)...but not having dug trenches and other such defensive measures...there was certainly enough time for that, which they failed to do to it's full extent.

3. The Dothraki could maneuver best out in the open; horses could provide mobility and speed.

If that's the only way then they should've done so from that forest's cover underneath that cliff I pointed out...at the night king's lieutenants. That's the only enemy on which an offensive charge makes sense...and not against the undead horde.

4. Numerous fire arrows were unloaded on the thick layer of obstacles outside the castle but stormy conditions prevented them from setting fire to the obstacles instead

That's bcuz there was no oil in the trench. It was wood or some other combustible materials.

The dead managed to scale the walls by climbing over each other until the mass of reanimated bodies reached high enough from the surface for numerous reanimated bodies to get through. Not sure why this development irk you.

What irks me is ur assumption of this. U said that the dragon glass shards did prevent the dead from climbing the walls and they only managed to climb over the bodies of the other dead(like how they crossed the fire trench)...I didnt see that in this episode...can u point out to me the exact time stamp where this happens? I would like to see that.

Night King's death in episode 3 make sense because how he would be stopped at a later stage?

That's fine...I was expecting him to die in this episode or the next so they can conclude Cersei and the iron throne ruler story in the last two to three episodes. It's not the fact that he died...it's how he died.

Like showing the red woman walking in slow motion outside to light fire was unnecessary...or showing night king walking in slow motion towards bran(less unnecessary but still if push comes to shove could've been cut short).
- They didn't need to show the characters like Sam, Jaime, Brienne getting dogpiled by the swarms of dead multiple times. Showing them getting overpowered/swarmed once is enough to convey to the audience that the living are getting decimated and overpowered...if they wanted to show that those characters survived and how they survived then again once was enough. Like for example Sam got dogpiled and got saved by Edd(Night's watch lord commander? as per Jon)...and then they showed Sam getting dogpiled again as Jon was walking through...all this redundancy was less important than cutting short the Night King's death to less than a minute.

Instead of wasting time here they could've perhaps dedicated 5 minutes to a more detailed death of the night king...u know the big bad villain who humans + children of the forest couldn't kill despite fighting him for a generation(the long night)...the dude who has lived for thousands of years...who has insane magic that can raise the dead, is immune to fire and all other regular weapons not made of valyrian steel shatter to pieces if they come in contact with him...
...yeah that guy...the villain they have been building up since the first episode when Ned executes a night's watch deserter not believing his white walkers story. Do u honestly think it was more important to show Melisandre walking in slow motion than showing how this big bad powerful villain was brought down?

 

[darksider]

please use spoiler tag if you want to reveal details of the episode.
so people who didn't start watching it yet can join the discussion.

 

[HannibalBarca]

So why did you watch it?

Curiosity... It's a good show, very good show...with some BS... But you have to watch it as something separated from the book... and it's hard, very hard when you have the book in the head...

That's why there is so much hype from ppl who never read the book...

 

[M.AsfandYar]

FGS if you wanted battle strategy read the bloody books, those take care of that, Battle of Blackwater, Whispering woods, even Green Fork had that in great detail. In seasons they never took strategy into play. Hell they didnt even show some of the great battles that eventually led to the betrayal of Rob Stark. Grow Up.
AS for this episode, i have mixed feelings. I knew that it was going to be Arya, but not the way it happened. And i was expecting more people to die, especially Bran. I also was expecting it to end there in winterfell, and that was also true. I was also hoping that an old rumor in the books would come into play, about verthimor laying eggs at winterfell, especially as crypts kept coming up. Anyway lets see how it actually ends.
On a sidenote i dont think this is how it will end in books. Thats a different ball game. There i think Daenerys will die or sacrifice herself for any of the two Aegon's (1 is Jon) or whoever might be the prince, in order to kill the night king.

I didnt see him in the preview.

At 0:18 secs

 

[Kambojaric]

FGS if you wanted battle strategy read the bloody books, those take care of that, Battle of Blackwater, Whispering woods, even Green Fork had that in great detail. In seasons they never took strategy into play. Hell they didnt even show some of the great battles that eventually led to the betrayal of Rob Stark. Grow Up.
AS for this episode, i have mixed feelings. I knew that it was going to be Arya, but not the way it happened. And i was expecting more people to die, especially Bran. I also was expecting it to end there in winterfell, and that was also true. I was also hoping that an old rumor in the books would come into play, about verthimor laying eggs at winterfell, especially as crypts kept coming up. Anyway lets see how it actually ends.
On a sidenote i dont think this is how it will end in books. Thats a different ball game. There i think Daenerys will die or sacrifice herself for any of the two Aegon's (1 is Jon) or whoever might be the prince, in order to kill the night king.

Yes Martin has no qualms with killing key characters. The quality of the series has markedly declined since the series overtook the books. D&D overkilled the "Deus ex Machina" plot device in this episode for example, where everytime a key character got dogpiled, out of nowhere some hero would emerge to save the day. I think Brienna and Jamie together got dogpiled about 6, 7 times. The acting on its own was great and the cast did a great job of conveying their dismayed emotions. However if the script is weak, the cast can go only so far as to redeem the episode.

One of the top Youtube comments on the bts video was something along the lines of if " the dead dogpile a normal character, they tear him into bits. However if they dogpile a major character they start humping him instead"!

 

[M.AsfandYar]

Yes Martin has no qualms with killing key characters. The quality of the series has markedly declined since the series overtook the books. D&D overkilled the "Deus ex Machina" plot device in this episode for example, where everytime a key character got dogpiled, out of nowhere some hero would emerge to save the day. I think Brienna and Jamie together got dogpiled about 6, 7 times. The acting on its own was great and the cast did a great job of conveying their dismayed emotions. However if the script is weak, the cast can go only so far as to redeem the episode.

One of the top Youtube comments on the bts video was something along the lines of if " the dead dogpile a normal character, they tear him into bits. However if they dogpile a major character they start humping him instead"!

I think you are right to a certain extent. As the storylines in the book are shaping up, there are certain characters, that must survive, here in the season, in this episode almost all the characters that were present were those. So in a sense, show shot itself in the foot. They needed those characters and hence couldnot live upto its own hype.
I wish Martin would hurry the hell up, instead of squeezing every last cent out of this. He just wrote Fire and Blood (900 pages) instead of finishing WoW. its been 9 years FGS.

 

[darksider]

Transportation explained in Got

https://imgur.com/lL2Gyf0

 

[newb3e]

Arya move...Typical American Hollywood BS... One move to Save them ALL... literally 5 sec action...
5 sec... to End 8 Season build up...
Thank you... and Nope.

Let's Hope Cersei downfall isn't under 5 sec...

Hollywood... the cancer of Book Adaptations...
And please...Read the Book... And No... those 8 seasons DO NOT give credits in anyway to the book...

exactly the all power NK went down in 5 seconds that was stupid first thanos now NK both were disappointing