Game of Thrones The Long Night Winterfell Battle - Tactical Genius! 

Remember, there was only one real goal - kill the Night King. They used tactics to set up several possible ways to achieve that and finally one of them worked. People arguing over conventional battle tactics is totally missing the point. They could NEVER win by defeating the Army of the Dead, because they could not defeat the *army*. They could ONLY win by killing the Night King.

200 IQ tactic, strap dragon glass daggers to hundered of crows, and have Bran fly them into the Night King, loose no one besides some crows.

I respect your positive coping mechanism, Matt

I like how the magic dragon that destroyed the 1000 foot wall couldn’t burn John at the end. Hiding behind a 6 foot tall rock

For once I disagree. :) The best way to draw out the Night King is to fight back against the army as efficiently as possible, and provoke him into using his dragon to enhance the attack. Which in fact he did, once their dragons were in action. And while their main goal is to kill the Night King, they also want to save as many people as possible, which also means to fight as efficiently as possible and try to minimize losses wherever it's feasible (such as using light cavalry to harass the enemy instead of a frontal charge, and having the army *behind* a flaming spiked trench to defeat stragglers and any potential breaches).

Mate, they literally ferried Dragonglass north for months. They didn't think about importing wood for bows? C'mon now.

If you have no tactics then the enemy cannot predict your strategy. It may just be dumb enough to potato

So the Dothraki travelled halfway across the world to fight for their Khaleesi but managed to do a Deadpool and forget to bring their bows? Hmmm ok . . .

3:53 I think you're being a bit generous in assuming the writers actually considered that. They were casting obsidian weapons, they clearly dont give a damn how real weapons are made.

I must give you credit for holding a straight face with the longest jokes ever.

This is Sarcasm Right?

hmm they can start mining operations thousands of kilometers away offshore and bring in the dragon glass from dragon stone, but they cant make enough bows.. ;P

I'm not mad about the episode, I'm just disappointed.

You didn't address why the army was in front of the defensive trenches, when it could of helped break the initial undead charge.

"Every dothraki learns how to fire a bow from horseback at age ten" Maester luwin also in season 7 you see most of the dothraki shooting arrows from horseback, the dothraki have archers, the writers just forgot about them

Just because they had to kill the Night King, they didnt have to waste all their resources. They should have manned the walls so they would hold longer. They should have left the cavalry and some infantry if they wouldnt fit inside. The infantry should have spent all the waiting time contructing several lines of defense as well as bastions. Line after line of spikes and trenches so they had defense in depth that they could give up gradually, while funneling the undead into places where they could be destroyed by fire (dragon or barrels of pitch). And the cavalry should have been used to charge into the undead to allow the infantry manning the outworks, so they could retreat to the next line of defense. Defeating the undead army is simple, since they just charge in mindlessly. Unless the Night King and his undead dragon joins the fight. And then they could have swooped down on him like they apparantly had planned to all along. They might have lost all the troops they did anyway. But they would have been far better used. What they did in the show was just idiotic, and it wasnt explained why they did it that way. While I can accept that most of the troops have a fanatical devotion to either Daenerys or John, I would think they would object to being thrown away like that. I hope your imagination didnt snap from stretching this far to cover up the inneptness of Benioff & Weiss.

Wait. Are you actually serious, or is this that famed dry British wit I've heard so much about...

The biggest mistake they made was believing the NIght King would be dumb enough to walk around Winterfell before they were completely overrun. Unfortunately he was.

It truly was an awful episode, it should stand as a guide on how not to fight a battle.

I would argue that the goal of making the night king reveal himself if anything makes some aspects of the plan even worse rather than justifying them. There is no real reason for him to take the bait and reveal himself at all, but prolonging the fight as long as possible would increase their chances of that happening, not blindly throwing away a large portion of their manpower in a blind charge when the night king might not even be present at all. They might not have the food for a long siege, but still any extra time they have means more chances of the night king revealing himself, especially if they can manage to hold off the wights from getting past the walls "for a time", forcing him to use the dragon. Of course the dragon could attack by itself, but in terms of probability he is more likely to be with it than at any other "specific" place on the battlefield, and having a chance to take out the dragon would still be worthwhile if he is not. Having a large portion of the troops outside of the walls is fine, if they just had done a better work on barricades and moats. As for Bran, the Night King could just as well just let the wights overrun them and be done with it without going personally. Under their circumstances any plan would require the night king being foolish, but apparently they lucked out and he turned out to be more than just that.

I love the way English ppl throw jokes with a straight face. That vid is almost monty python worthy. Hat down Mr Easton.

What about trenches behind the army instead of being in front? The argument that the trebuchets are outside to gain reach is not functional: first, it's only 300 mt top, then they've fired once with the cavalry charge and then nothing else because the army lost control of them too quickly. The cavalry charge didn't forced the Night King out, and it clearly wasn't the plan ... at least looking at Danerys reaction, plus cavalry tactic 101 is NOT to be stucked in a melee because you lose the main cavalry advantage: mobility. So why charge frontally a stupidly thick army of zombies on foot. The cavalry charge scene was only to get the cool dramatic effect of flaming swords rapidly extinguishing in the dark. If you don't have bows and arrows, at least make slings able to throw pointy rocks to the deads at some kind of range, we've seen them exploding in contact with the "dragonglass" traps and barricades, plus it has been established by the show that wights (the zombies) can be killed by anything, only Whitewalkers (the sentient ones on horses with armors) need Dragonglass or Valyrian Steel to be killed. So get regular arrows and thin down their numbers. You might not have much space in the castle, but the sacred woods were EMPTY, the courtyards were barely guarded and walls not enough manned. They wanted an outside battle just because one with a smart use of fortification would have been too boring for modern TV standards. Anyway, nice thought exercise there Matt. Keep up with the good work.

Except that by applying better tactics to try and defeat an "unbeatable" army, they would have still lured out the Night King. I can't simply find any pro for suiciding your cavalry like that when it could have done so much more by protecting the flanks/harassing the enemy. Same with the siege engine, considering the overwhelming amount of undead, I'm pretty sure you could have still fired them against the rear of their army without doing any friendly fire. Sure, I get what you mean, the aim was to kill the Night King, but it is hardly a justification for how poorly this battle was fought. A lot of these losses could have been avoided.

This episode was so dumb. The writers clearly just wanted to get the Whitewalker storyline over with....

After seeing that episode, I went to watch the Dothraki/Lannister battle in season 7, and they actually had Dothraki archers galore...

So...No. I disagree, and even if I accepted your argument, I don't believe that this was the rationale behind d&d's writing. The win condition for the living was to draw out the Night King. As the living will probably assume that the Night King is not an idiot, and that he knows that he is the weak point for his entire army (unlike the Night King in the show), drawing him out means creating a situation where the Night King needs to commit in order to win the battle. If (non-idiot) Night King wins the battle by throwing waves of Wights at winterfell, he will do so without showing himself, and the living lose. So yes, manning the walls means that the Night King can swoop in on his dragon and burn the defenders in their fortress. This, in turn, means that the Night King is vulnerable, because he has shown himself (let's leave aside for the moment the fact that, as a wight, the undead dragon should be highly vulnerable to dragonglass, to the point of being a liability.) This is exactly what the defenders WANT to happen. Yes, you're sacrificing more men, but you're doing it to draw out the night king, not throwing people away with a deployment that is ludicrously vulnerable to the kind of wave tactics the army of the dead is known to employ. Also, I'm FAR from convinced that the battle was unwinnable for the living without killing the Night King. per the showrunners, the army of the dead was about 145,000 strong. So a 1.45 advantage over the army of the living. The living have a fortress, 2 dragons (which, unlike Blue Eyes Wight Dragon) do not have a crippling vulnerability to dragonglass), Armor, better armaments, and far better tactics. The dead have no armor, a crippling vulnerability to fire and dragonglass, and no siege engines. Quite simply, they do not have the resources to overcome a well-defended fortress, even with the advantage of not suffering from issues of morale. Under the parameters we're given, the real challenge would be in convincing the Night King to offer battle at winterfell at all, because he would not be advantaged to win that fight. And if D&D had made reference to that at some point in the planning session ("Davos: We can hold winterfell, but we haven't the supplies to last out a siege. The dead don't need to eat, but we do") and this was given as the rationale for offering battle outside winterfell (to tempt the night king into an unfavorable engagement) I would be much less critical. But that's not what we got, and I decline to do the writer's job for them by justifying their laziness. Also, their plan to neutralize the night king was...what, exactly? Theon and a dozen ironborn? Not exactly a plan which inspires confidence. Sure, they had the dragons in reserve to swoop in if he committed to the battle, (and I'll give them a pass on that, as they have no reason to believe dragonfire would not be effective - hell, even now I think it's stupid that it didn't work, given all the lore we've had as to why dragonGLASS and dragonSTEEL work on white walkers - hint, it's the connection to dragons), but their entire plan was to lure the NK in with Bran, and the entirety of their planned counterstroke was...Theon. Not good planning however you slice it.

So maybe I'm too stupid to see the sarcasm, but you do bring some valid arguments for why they did the defense like they did. But there are so many counterarguments to your statements, that I am really questioning myself if you are serious or not. First of all, they had enough archers with the dothraki, and they had enough time to craft the bows for the archers. They had enough bows in the dothraki army and they started preperations for the battle in the middle of season 7. Secondly, having many people on the walls wouldn't be bad. You say that they would be too close together for the enemy dragon, but they had 2 dragons themselves that defended their troops from the enemy dragon. Also, if it would be that bad, it would at least lure out the enemy dragon, so it would have also worked as a successful bait to lure out the night king. Thirdly, using the trebuchets and katapults only once makes zero sense, you can't justify that. The enemy army was a huge chunk of undead, yes they are fast but you can hit them easily more than once if you let the enemy army come to you. Also, you say hiding behind the castle was not a viable option, because the enemy is dead and does not hunger. But they had Bran as bait, inside (!) the castle, so that the enemy would try and get inside the castle. Lets say they wouldn't come inside, then at least wait until it's daytime where you can actually see the enemy and plan accordingly, and then work out a plan for what you could do to, like for example kiting the undead forces with your dothraki army soldiers who can shoot dragon glass arrows while riding. Lastly, you make the statement that the whole point of staying inside the castle is to wait for allies, but that is just a small part of why it is more intelligent to fight from the walls. I mean, even if they had no arrows for whatever unlikely reason, they could even just drop large dragon glass junks from the walls. Also they wouldn't be overrun that badly, that way they could easily kill them one after another because the enemy will get to you much slower. Of course while Dany and Jon hunt down the Nights King, who would show himself as soon as he would want to respawn his army. So again, fighting outside the castle is just pointless. Also, the dothraki charge was a stupid "gamble" as you call it, why would the nights king come out when the enemy army sacrifices 100K people? He would just laugh and proceed to let his minions do his work. Also the barricades placement was just stupid. Sorry if I come across as a fool now, but if that really is sarcasm, then there could be also others that believe your words so I'm writing this just to give some counter arguments to your point of view.

As a supporter of Queen Cersei, I wholeheartedly approve of Daenerys destroying her Dothraki and Unsullied.

My strategy: • Fit Drogon and Rhaegal with dragonglass spikes, chanfrons, and grillz • Ram into Viserion, killing him • Bite Night's King • Have a nice cold pint, and wait for all this to blow over

That was really a dumb strategy, to begin with. Why have all the women and children in the Crypts if their strategy was to let Night king take over Winterfell and go for Bran? You don't go full in with bait (Brann) and kill tactics. The most important part of this type of tactic is to save much of your soldiers and civilians as possible while at the same time making your enemy believe that you have a larger army stationed. Most of the Soldiers and all of the Civilians should've left Winterfell and only leaving an amount to make your enemy believe that you are trying to defend it. Remember what Rob Stark did to capture Jaime? Why risk thousands of soldiers and civilians if their goal was to bait and kill the night king in a battle that is unwinnable?

You seem to try to justify things that can't be justified. ....

When digging a fire trench: 1) make it more than 6-foot wide and 2) make it much deeper than the one they dug. This makes it 1) harder to bridge, 2) allows more fuel to be stored in it. Finally, make sure your walls have not shrunk since Sansa and Theon jumped off them. It makes it a lot easier for the undead to scale them if they've suddenly become a lot lower.

You keep saying they had to engage the army in order for the NK to show. By what logic? The only reason I can think of is the NK just can't help himself. As soon as he sees dead people he's gotta resurrect. They were so sure of this character trait it was worth sacrificing tens of thousands of men to see if they where right.

I'm sorry, but first you have to sell us on the idea that the only chance would've been to kill the night-king, so it was all one massive, calculated gambit. If that idea doesn't hold up to scrutiny, and I would say it doesn't, then the entire argument is pointless. Supposedly not enough archers... yet they put their best archers next to the fucking tree. Not enough space in the castle... well, Shadiversity points out that through the right deployment, they still could've used the castle as a force multiplier, while deploying their army outside. The undead dragon negates the castle advantage... well, they have 2 dragons to counter him. 2 dragons could easily keep the undead dragon engaged. And don't give that 'it would be too dangerous' nonsense, all the other main characters are on the frontline and the plot armor is so thick that it doesn't matter anyway. 2 shots from your trebuchet is the most you are going to get... unless you put them behind the walls It's only us viewers who can't see shit, they can see the enemy formation perfectly fine... No, stop! Stop right there! That is bullshit and you know it. First of all, that is contrived as all hell to cover the asses of the creators. You don't keep the viewer in the dark or confuse them like that, we see what they see. Secondly, we see how these guys go from charging to utterly terrified. They didn't see shit. The suicide charge is still absolute bullshit. The enemies are necromancers, and I bet that at that moment they were VERY happy to receive such numerous reinforcements. Even if they were actually going for a 'draw out the night king' gambit, this guy is supposed to be super smart, he would lead from behind. There is really no need for him to get directly involved. No way would he fall for i... well I guess the script says that he had a lobotomy between episodes... Didn't know that the snowstorm would come... Isn#t it known by now that the Night King has that ability? Why WOULDN'T they assume that they would use it? How did Arya get past all these zombies, surrounding the Night King, when earlier she couldn't manage sneaking past a few of them in the library? No, she can't jump that far. But has any of what you are proposing actually been mentioned at any point leading up to the battle? Because right now, all I see is conjecture. It is the job of the writers and directors to communicate clearly to the audience what happens, and if this was really the plan, you'd think that someone at some point would have mentioned that. Even if you are right, it should be fairly obvious that they (the creators) failed at their job (of communicating to the audience). No matter how you slice it, it's bad writing and/or terrible execution. And we haven't even begun to talk about the massively retarded plot-armor the characters had, with fakeout-deaths galore, and plotholes massive enough to steer a cruise ship through them. Arya had no business killing the night king, that wasn't her plot, it should've been Jon (the actress agrees, btw.)... but he had to retardedly scream at the dragon instead, so never-mind. There was no rhyme or reason to any of this shit, other than "the script says so". Sorry, but you are putting more thought into this than the writers did. If you've got about 40 minutes to spare (long boy bad), this video really picks every issue with the episode apart: Game of Thrones S08E03: An Unbridled Rage - ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-GI7zy1PTMp0.html

(read the title) Hopes you are joking. (watch the video) ..of course you joking.

So the thought process goes like this. "Hey we need to stop this undead army before it kills all of us." "Ok I have a plan, let's fight so terribly stupid that he kills all of us so we draw the night king out so we can kill him so that he can't kill us." "Excellent plan Larry." Also "I don't want to use my dragons cause he might kill them and then I wouldn't be able to use my dragons which I'm not using."

I pretty much disagree with everything you said. - They were planning on defeating the Night King's army. - Bran and him being the bait for the Night King was not the primary goal. Otherwise, you'd concentrate your best 1-on-1 fighters there. - The Army of the Night King was extremely killable via dragonglass. Even a giant dies with a scratch from an otherwise non-lethal dragonglass attack. All offensive focus should have been on archery. - The ice dragon wasn't a threat. He would have been killed with dragonglass arrows and spears - The logistics of archery are not an issue. You cannot just justify their lack of such things when the show has over and over again demonstrated that logistics don't matter. They teleport from THOUSANDS of miles away with whole armies. Wood, finished bows, finished arrows could all have been imported in the months leading up to the battle. There were even scenes where Sansa was prepping Winterfell. - If you insist on the archery logistics argument, then I challenge you to go back and simply calculate how much time must have passed since preparations began. Take into consideration the travel time of armies which have been going North and South and North. - In the end, the wights were thinning out dramatically. Inside shots of Winterfell showed that there just weren't many anymore. - Wights were incredibly ineffective. - The fire barricade was only defeated by wights building a wight-bridge. These bridges could have been destroyed by a single dragon that kept near. - While these wights were lined up, a dragon could have destroyed literally all of them.

The MOST glaring issue to me is the choice of location. You get to choose the battlegrounds. Winterfell is one of the worst places to set up your defense at, open plains, no natural barriers... You could move your army (and Bran) to Moat Caitlin, or the twins (walder Freys castle/who is now dead, and the castle is presumably, unoccupied) that is a tacticians dream. The vale also. Surrounded by mountains. Or best yet, if the night king was truly after Bran, how about the iron islands? The night king would have to abandon his army and go alone on his dragon, since wights can't swim and the iron islands are in fact... Islands. These are much better defensive locations, w/natural barriers, and would make a better story plot.

Even if there's no bows, you can use slings that throw leftover dragon glass. They had enough wood, time, and engineers to make a bunch of trebuchets. Even if the wood is somehow not suitable for bow making, they could've made a bunch of dragon glass javelins or even ballistae which are smaller and can be shot from safer places. Mr. Easton, I love your channel, but I really hope you're being sarcastic in this video.

I can see what you’re saying. But if that was indeed the thinking the show *really* should of articulated it.

Well, I disagree. With regard to the dothraki cavalry attack, if it was supported by a dragon, let's say Rheagal with Jon/Aegon riding as a bait and with Drogon with Dany waiting the NK to appear, it might have been the same purpose, but without sacrificing the whole cavalry. But now honestly speaking, I don't think scholagladiatoria mean what he said, he just say that to make people debate. This kind of thinking is Stalin-like generalship in which the soldier is just a number that does not matter more then a frosting onion (old soviet-style thinking).

They still should have fought from behind their barricades, and put the ballistas at the back.

Pretty much everyone: "Every move they made in the show was ludicrous and didn't make sense from a tactical advantage" Matt Easton: " *W* *e* *l* *l* *a* *c* *t* *u* *a* *l* *l* *y* "

seems like denial

I like the 'devils advocate' approach but the easiest way to justify all this is bad writing. There's a real lack of believable motives and cohesion with the wider narrative. So many plot holes.

i'm not sure if this is sarcastic or serious 🤨

While it's a good attempt, there are various flaws with this analysis: 1) "It worked" is zero argument here. The NK did not fall to the plan, at all. He fell on one hand because he chose to expose himself in the middle of the castle before the battle was won, and on the other by Arya Ex Machina. Neither I can in any way attribute to the plan. 1b) Which is even worse if indeed Melisandre, and perhaps Bran, already knew the outcome. 2) I see no reason why the NK would expose himself for a bunch of Dothraki who, in the plan, were effectively unarmed; nor why the outside army would help achieve that, or indeed anything. All they are likely to do is give the NK another 100,000 soldiers for free... which if anything, reduces his reason to expose himself. If you can't use them in the castle, you may still be better off sending them to the Neck. Or the Reach. Or Essos. Or keep them behind for cleanup purposes. Reminder: the NK doesn't even need to raise the dead himself. All Walkers can do that, and Jon already knows that. 3) The NK has lived for 10,000 years. This means he either has no vulnerabilities, or he doesn't expose himself to them. He's also evidently patient, as he had bloodraven in the north for a hundred years or so and didn't even have that cave surrounded. So a plan that's based on trying to bait him into exposing himself, is probably very foolish either way. 3b) Admittedly, him entering the cave himself in the first place already creates that plothole. Unless he's invulnerable. 4) "They didn't have bows": they chose where to fight, and with that, when to fight. Indeed they marched their entire armies to the north. So any lack of time was because they chose to, and would be an utter strategic failure. Even worse if we state that castles in this case don't help. 5) In short, they had 2 options. 5a) Rule 1 of fighting necromancers: kill their army without risking yours. Then they'll be weak. 5b) Rule 2 of fighting necromancers: find ways to disperse their army and delay, until you can sufficiently isolate them to attack them personally. So to repeat: - They failed the basic rules of fighting necromancers - They failed on choosing when and where to fight - They used terrible weapons - They probably helped the enemy more than they hindered - Their entire plan relied on general enemy stupidity. - Their plan further relied on specific enemy stupidity - They didn't even actually know how to kill the NK, as evidenced by the attempt failing dismally. - It shouldn't, therefore, surprise us that the plan did indeed fail spectacularly, and mainly made their situation severely worse. They survived because the NK decides to solo Bran+guards, and because Arya was at the right place at the right time, and because apparently dragonsteel can kill the NK for no adequately explored reason.

FINALLY someone is not jumping on the bandwagon. RU-vid is awash with armchair generals pointing out how they diverged from what they imagine is medieval battlefield orthodoxy and people who don't understand the strategic role and logistical limitations of a castle. The strategic aims were different, the opponent was different, and the one thing everyone is ignoring is the fact the battle took place AT NIGHT AND IN A BLIZZARD, so there's very little point deploying medieval battlefield tactics 101 since the manual wasn't designed for zero visibility nor an opponent not susceptible to breaking due to morale.

Unfortunately GoT turned to Hollywood crap. Loved the early seasons.

What a fan boy, 😂 defending that garbage strategy. They won because the writers wanted to, not because of the strategy

I agree with the pointlessness of using conventional tactics, but I still also agree with others who say the episode was disappointing. To me, Avengers Endgame was more satisfying to watch. I basically watched these battles back to back as well, GOT monday and AVEG tuesday. Sidenote: It's a lil sad when marvel movies make more use of armor than medieval fantasy.

Shitposting like a boss!

If their goal was to give the night king an easy pass to Winterfell and Bran, why have a large army in the first place? just send half of them south. your theory debunked.

It's a case of being painted in the corner by making an all-powerful supernatural enemy. The only reason they won is because the Night King thought it would be fun to kill Bran himself, which he only did after the good guys were annihilated almost to a man. The same effect might have been achieved with a skeletal garrison that was easily beaten and then ambushing the Night King the same way. It would have had the same effect only tens of thousands of people fewer would have died. That, and you wouldn't have the epic battle you had been building up despite obviously having a weak resolution to. To be fair, having all those extra people in the battle adds to the fracas and makes it less unlikely that the Night King be caught off-guard, but that still makes all strategy moot when your army is there just to die. The idea is supported by the fact that the Dothraki didn't even have weapons to fight the white walkers until Melisandra showed up _ex machina_ and lit their swords on fire.

Jon Snow before the battle: "The whole point of this battle is to draw out the Night King so let's ignore every reasonable military tactic and have our army be destroyed as soon as possible." Some lord in the room: "Shouldn't we use the Dothraki as harassers and distrupt the zombie's horde? Shouldn't we put the Unsullied behind the spiked trench so they can't be flanked or overrun? Shouldn't we reinforce the gate, dig pits with flammable oil in it or put dragonglass shards on the walls?" Jon Snow: "I said let's ignore any reasonable military tactic!"

Literally the worst take I've heard on this episode so far. Clearly you went into this video with the idea that you were going to find a way to justify everything that happened in the episode, just to be different. There were literally hundreds of better way to kill the Night King than what happened in the show. Not only that but you are actively making shit up, and writing the show in your head for the writers. You conveniantly forget to mention in your video that literally everything they tried to do in the show FAILED. They all but lost the battle on every front, and were only saved in the end by the *_Arya ex Machina,_* which WASN'T SOMETHING THEY PLANNED FOR. Their plan was shit. It was bad writing, straight out. The amount of mental gymnastics required to justify the tactics in this episode, and to even say thay they were actually _good tactics,_ is astonishing.

This is why historically battles happened at dawn. Because ain't nobody got time for that much darkness.

Seems a lot of ppl never understood what this battle meant. It was not a matter of winning a battle, it was about ending a war that could never be won. Do you ever see a zombie apocalypse defeated? The living dead have endless numbers and are hard to put down again, they do not care for obstacles or wounds. Not defeating them at Winterfell where they actually had something the Night King wanted, Brand, the undead tide would spread all over Westeroes and there would never be another chance like it. That is why they did not bother thinking about their lives, gambling everything at once.

One problem with putting the army outside. If the Army of the Dead was so huge, why did they attack the castle from only one side, instead of attacking from every angle, especially since they were supposed to only care about Bran? They clearly showed they can climb the walls easily. I'm also not convinced the castle wasn't large enough for everyone, especially if they put the Dothraki somewhere outside. We didn't need that many people to die. One thing that I don't think I've seen anybody suggest. They should have put fire pits/bonefires in the field. It might not be something that makes a whole deal of sense militarily, but it probably would have made the audience's lives easier.

i love how the comment section is full of experts on "real" medieval warfare against an endless unstoppable horde of unkillable things.

Even if their only goal was to kill the Night King, and not to battle the army of the dead, there were much better ways to manage the conflict than what they did. Using the fire trench like a larger, secondary 'wall' for the unsullied to hold outside the castle, putting the trebuchets behind them, and having the dothraki circle around and attack the flanks of the army to try and find the Night King so Jon and Dany could swoop on him come to mind. Their plan was a terrible siege defense, and it was just as bad as a means of finding and killing the Night King.

I'm not a particularly well studied military historian. But my main thought is that the BIGGEST advantage the army of the dead has is the ability to turn your fallen soldiers into their own. Yes they massively outnumber the living in the battle. Yes their soldiers are vicious drones that don't feel fear or retreat. But the fact that every soldier you sacrifices can be added to their midst makes them extremely difficult to fight. Say they have 30K living vs the 100K dead. If every soldier kills 2 wights before dying they've reduced the dead from 100K to 40K. But that 30K formerly living soldiers will all be turned over to the other side. So it's then 70K vs a few heroes. Even if each soldier is able to kill 3 wights. 100k - 90k = 10K. But again + 30K for 40K vs a few heroes. In my eyes the best general strategy against the army of the dead is to deprive them of their greatest advantage. Don't let them turn your soldiers into theirs. Do as much as you can to dwindle their numbers without facing them directly and losing as few of your living soldiers as possible. I get your point about only being able to win by killing the NK. But sacrificing nearly their entire force, all of which could and did get turned against them isn't the best strategy to achieve that end goal in my opinion. Before he entered the God's Wood they managed to force him off his mount and almost kill him. They did this by slowing down and depleting his forces enough to force him into the battle and expose himself. I think about how he would possibly defend himself versus a volley of dragonglass arrows once he was unmounted.

But what if the Night King decided he would split his army and then march half of it off to somewhere else and leaving it to a lieutenant to lead the fight at Winterfell? The army of the living at Winterfell took a huge chance assuming the Night King would personally command the assault, but that was a rather dangerous and unwarranted assumption. They should have started the fight on the assumption he would not be there and only move to tactics that would seek to destroy him after they could confirm his presence on the battle field.

No.... just no. Seven seasons building up the Night King just for Arya to roll natural 20s and defeat the End Boss in 3 seconds ruined GoT.

It’s a great try, but with a startling logical flaw. Had they stayed on the walls the Night King would have had to reveal himself to attack the walls.

the undead would have still had to climb the wall to reach the army. This stops their charge stopping the front ranks getting instantly overrun in the charge while it also means the undead cannot use their weapons because their hands are taken up climbing the walls. Also the living have two dragons to stop the undead's one dragon from strafing the wall.

I think it was a failure of a battle, because it vastly weakened their own force for future engagements against the known threat of the other living army.

I don't see how sending the Dothraki out to die was supposed to lure the Night King out.

If you have not watched Invicta's video on the battle he has a lot of points that are similar to the ones you make. And does seem to be a better plan then what the show did, and still within the paramaters of the situation the show presents. Though not all of the points he makes are similar to yours.

U say They shouldn't stay inside the walls Cuz the night kings flies His Dragon to destroy the wall, Isn't that luring him out ?

They had archers (who we are told are some of the best in Westeros), but they put them in the Godswood, rather than on the wall. I'm kind of surprised you are defending this episode, to be honest. Are you joking? I can't tell.

The dothraki charge was to heroically save the studio millions in horse handling and CGI for the rest of the season.

Pyrrhic victory if you win a battle but lose 90% of your army then it's no victory. And besides episode 3 is s*** because of lazy script writing

6:09, "bunching them up on walls would mean they die faster when the dragon takes the wall down." But didn't you just lure out the Night King, if he has to destroy the walls. Wasn't that the ENTIRE BATTLE STRATEGY?

You are being nice

With this explanation of "making the Night King reveal itself" you can justify any bullshit that is happening. Make them dance naked on the snow? Yeah, makes sense. The night king would reveal himself ... I am calling you out on your BS!

1. Trebuchets should have been at the base of the walls if not behind them. Mangonels/catapults placed on the walls. This would have allowed them to fire at minimum range without risk to their own troops. 2. At least two trenches should have been laid and all troops stationed behind them. 3. Dothraki should have been used to slash at the flanks of the undead army. The difficulty of breaking through would have drawn the Night King out earlier, without sacrificing thousands.

If you cannot defeat the army, than you cannot defeat the Night King either, so you might aswell give up. Because if he has more than a single braincell, he won't run out of the protection of his army to be killed (that's what made his moronic actions in this show even worse). They had no reason at all to believe he would be so stupid, had they? Also: Sacrificing large portions of your army won't exactly draw him out - what is he supposed to do? He isn't even needed against the Dothraki. And they CAN defeat the army, as dragonglass kills wights for good and they seem to have close to infinite amounts of this stuff (considering how they are plastering it on spikey-things like they were making WW2-era tank traps. Get the smiths who found a magical way to melt and cast this stuff to stop with this nonesense and have them produce pikeheads exclusively; we have no need for bows, we need to hold a line here. Everybody can hold a pike, and everybody will, that goes for the Dothraki too as they are absolutely worthless as cavalry - how did they even win anything? What kind of force are they meant to represent? They have some strange little blade and ... a horse. And a shirt. They are more equipped to mugg people than to fight in a battle ... whatever, I assume they are meant to overpower the enemy in numbers. That won't help us here, the horses will feed our army for a pretty long time though. We'll go full Philipp II on the NK and his army and have his brainless and largely unarmored wights press against our phalanx. That is the most effective way to get rid of them and it does so in a VERY short time. Sarissa phalanxes are deadly in reality, but the casulties of the enemy only mount once the phalanx slowly moves forward and the enemy is unable to move backwards in an organised fashion - this is difficult to achieve with untrained soldiers. Luckily we don't have to as the enemy doesn't care for their own safety and will absolutely run into our pikes. Do you have any idea what kind of a lawnmower a phalanx like that could be under those circumstances? We are talking about 1 stab 1 kill here ... which means if we have 10k people engaged they could kill 100k wights in less than a minute. The problem? The enemy might human-wave us still because his morale won't break. We need one or two backup lines of phalanxes formed behind the first. If the enemy gets into the pikewall, drop the weapons and run for the next line, we'll reequip and reform further back. This way the NK has no other choice but to show up because his army will just be screwed otherwise. When he comes on his dragon, we'll pounce on him with two dragons and have every single archer we have (even if they are few) fire dragonglass projectiles on him. Oh, and horsearchers won't do much against the army of the dead I think. These zombies can run and they won't quit, right? Well, your horse will. And horses in reality don't run around at speed for long stretches of time, a human running at it without ever tiring will catch up. An archer is also only able to kill as many people as he has arrows, that means even IF we could stay out of range forever, we would run out of arrows to shoot and the enemy likely won't run out of wights ...

You only needed 3 people. Theon defending the three eyed racen and Arya waiting above in the tree. Everybody else just marches off and way, lol. Jobs done. 1 Casualty.

Intresting thoughts. But I think these are just excuses of a bad decisions. The writers didn't wrote it with these thoughts in mind. -The trebuchet is a siege machine. Not against infantry (as you mentioned why). Firing ranges was about 300m. -Yes, the dead dragon had destroy castle walls, but you missing that the good guys have 2 dragons to counter him. -Yes, the human army was much larger than it will fit in the castle. But that is no excuse to not man the walls. The stone castle is a very strong barrier, not a plank wall. It should slow them down very mutch. The remaining foot soldiers ahead of the castle should stay behind the barricades. It should soften a little bit the dead charge. The horsemans stay behind the castle, and make hit and run strikes at the dead armys back when they hit the castle walls. -The point was to hold out, until the Nightking is show himself and destroy him with the dragons. ...etc. But with the Nightking perspectives and his capabilities, mankind should have lost this battle. Just raise the dead about every 10 minutes. Every fallen castle defender will rise, making chaos inside the walls. But I think those bodies can't be resurected what is destroyed by fire, dragon glass or valyrian steel.

All they needed to do was send Arya to assassinate the Night King before the battle and they could have saved everyone.

Yes, they could have defeated the Army of the Dead. It's easy. Barely an inconvenience when you have two dragons to burn them to ashes. As known from earlier seasons and the books, wights are extremely vulnerable to fire; they burn like oil. As as soon as the army is largely standing still, for example because it is trying to overcome the fortifications, one dragon can fly in and start to do it's work from behind. Then, the NK has to fly in to try to save his troopers and you can attack him with the second dragon, who was in reserve waiting for the opportunity. The only crucial thing to achieve is killing the zombie-dragon; with all the dragon-glass shipped in from Dragonstone, the NK is basically finished as soon as he is on the ground and the wights all burned. The Dothraki can be kept in reserve behind Winterfell. If all works out without losing both dragons, you don't even need them for this battle.

The problem with that explanation for the Dothraki suicide charge is that it does not at all maximise the utility of that approach and might actually turn out to be a net loss. After all, the White Walkers are basically necromancers on steroids, so everybody dying _over there_ will come back as one of them unless their body is rendered unusable for necromancy. The keys to making it a net win would be the flaming swords, the trebuchets and _timing._ There is no way the Dothraki manage to hack up enough wights to make up for their numbers adding to the enemy's. But if you use them as "tracer ammo" for the trebuchets you stand a much better chance of destroying more bodies (including Dothraki ones) than you sent over and with that force the Night King to show his hand (or dragon). At first I thought that might have actually been the plan, but the trebuchets fire too early for that to be the case. Also, if their plan was to lure the Night King to Bran and then get him with archers they should _really_ look into how to place units for a potentially successful ambush.

This is why Robb stark will always be a better commander than Jon. He would of never organized the defense of winterfell like that . It was the dumbest defense . Why have your cavalry charge into the unknown, against superior odds.

Your new argument boils down to "The only way to win is kill the NK, so let's waste as much human life as possible with pointless charges and not using any defensive advantages so that the NK can be assassinated by a miraculous deus ex machina that nobody actually planned for. Waste lives to save lives." Vampires are super bad, and the only way to stop them is to kill Dracula. So it will be necessary to let as many people as possible to get bitten so Van Helsing can magically appear behind Dracula. Lol, good one.

Mat, they won because the screen writers wanted them to for fuck sake. Not because the plan had any sense in it. Arya literally spawned out of nowhere to stab the night king. If they used logic and proper tactics they could have minimised their casualties which would explain why Dany still had such a big army afterwards. In the show, they just all respawned miraculously. Another point, if you can’t fit all your troops in the castle, you put them behind the fucking thing not in front.

You realise that April fool's day was last month right? I guess the tactical idiot was the Nighy King who should have stayed away from the battle and wait for his army the wipe them out.

No, plan was dumb. It only worked because the Night King was even dumber. The only thing the charge did was strenghten the enemy army. Considering the speed at which they died, they most likely didn't make a dent into the undead. The Night King just has to stay back, zerg rush them and done. Their entire army is outside, they get zerged instantly and die, they have no archers on the walls, the walls themselves go down in one dragon breath. Just rush the undead in and wait until everyone is dead. The ONLY thing you shouldn't do as a Vampire Count player is send your lord in solo to get stabbed by a sneaky little girl.

They didn't have enough archers?! What kind of nonsense is this? How hard is it to be an archer? You're not shooting bull's eyes here.

I respect your opinion and I usually agree with it, but this is just reaching. If this is sarcasm then the kayfabe is too strong. Even if you accept that they put all their hopes in drawing out the night king, they still made massively stupid decisions. Sending the Dothraki out into the dark without dragonglass or any means to kill the wights (the fire was a last minute decision by Milisandre, they are all clearly surprised) only adds to the undead. There are better ways to draw the night king out, and this isn’t even a guaranteed outcome. Putting all the noncombatants in the crypt without removing the bodies? Tell me how that helps draw the night king out. Having no traps set around Bran? Just Theon and some visible archers? How about some hidden archers and snow covered dragonglass spike pits? What were they going to do if Arya hadn’t decided to take things into her own hands? Your argument against the catapults makes no sense. Even if the wights are fast moving targets their infantry is so large that you could just fire into the crowd and be guaranteed to hit something. If they just kept them on or behind the walls and aimed them just past the trenches then they wouldn’t hit their own forces and they could keep thinning the herd. If they wanted to draw out the NK and were willing to sacrifice some units to do so then they should have stayed behind the wall and defended them. This would force the NK to come out on the dragon to destroy the wall, and Dany and John could jump him.

You raise some good points I hadn't thought of. There are two things, however, that still bother me, even in THIS context. One is the way they fired the trebuchets as the Dothraki were charging. I agree it made for cool shots of dudes on horseback with big flaming things flying over their heads, but it also meant that they had to STOP firing them because the Dothraki were arriving at the place the shells were landing Yes, you can actually hear them yelling for the trebuchets to stop. It makes it fairly clear to me that they didn't run out of projectiles or were out of loaded trebuchets.

Maybe the Night King would have been forced into actively attacking the castle if they manned the walls heavily and fought the Wights while the Wights were at a disadvantage. You also admit that the defenders know that they cannot defeat the Night King. So why would you send your fast moving lightly armored cav head first into them, instead of retreating them and using them in quick hit and run strikes on the flanks? It makes less sense than a sunnyside up potato. If they wanted to bait the NIght King into attacking so you can kill him, it would help if their defense kept the dead outside the castle. Also only half the army died, so 50,000 troops retreated into the castle during the battle. That's already at least 20 times the troops you could fit in Winterfell.

They sent their calvary straight into a holding army, who were ready for the charge. Wouldnt the best use have been to defend their position, wait for the NK to charge, and use the Dothraki "calvary" to flank the attack?

I disagree about the use of the Dothraki. Cavalry charges are almost useless against wights. The Dothraki horses should have been used to evacuate all civilians from the area instead of putting them in the crypts, which was monumentally stupid. The entire point of holding the battle at Winterfell should have been to give the civilians time to evacuate. There was enough food at Winterfell to last the normal citizens for at least a couple years, so if you get rid of the citizens then an army that size should have been able to hold out for at least a year before food became a big problem. The thousands of Dothraki should have put to work manufacturing very simple hunting bows. You don’t need a proper warbow against a wight in rags. All you need is a low-quality hunting bow to launch flights of arrows over the wall. They should have jammed as many people as possible into that castle with multiple layers of defensive stakes and ditches to slow down the wights and funnel them into killing zones while the catapults rained fire down on them.

This show has officially turned Matt into a troll.

I agree with you Mat, except that I have a couple of things to add. First off no one ordered the Dothraki to charge. They simply did so on their own after Melisande set their swords on fire. Also one major point is that their are two people who know how the Knight King will die, Bran and Melisandre, and they withhold information and manipulate events so that the battle goes they way they need it too. When Bran is told the plan to kill the Night King with dragon fire he knows it won't work but only says " No one's tried it before". When Melisandre shows up she promptly sets the Dothraki swords on fire causing them to charge over confidently. She also waits to tell Aria about her role until the last minute. All this leads to the Night King being vulnerable allowing Aria to kill him with the dagger Bran gave her for that purpose.

I would line my infantry regiments up in front of the enemy, within musket range. I would use light infantry to protect my flanks. I would use my Dragoons to attack the enemy flanks while my infantry retreat a few yards with each volly as the enemy advance. My cannon would be directing fire into the centre of the enemy lines. As the Dragoons tire my Chasseurs a Chaval would take over the flanking attacks, at this stage I would keep my Hussars in reserve to protect the cannon. After the enemy centre has been broken by my cannon and withering musket fire, I would send in the Cuirassiers to deliver the Coup de Grace. The fleeing undead would be run down buy my Hussars and Uhlans. All wounded enemy would be put to the bayonet. The Maréchaussée will patrol the rear area and any deserters caught will be hanged.

Boy, you were trying hard here weren't you? If the goal was to bring out the NK being behind the walls would have made him have to come out with his dragon to destroy the walls just like they wanted him to do. I mean with your explanation behind or outside the walls wouldn't have mattered. Burn them on the ground or behind the walls. At least behind the walls you have a little bit of safety and cover. Nevermind trying to reduce your losses. . Jon and Dany with 2 dragons were waiting for him to reveal himself.

I think it can be summarized thusly... They weren't trying to defeat the Army of the Dead (cuz they can't). They were trying to get the Night King in a vulnerable position. The way they decided to do this was to control where the Night King goes to (by strategically placing Bran). In this... they did superbly well. Notes: Remember - Harrenhall was a great example of what dragons can do to towers and walls (and superb foreshadowing).

Either Jon or Daenerys should have focused on finding and killing the White Walkers (who were just kinda standing around on the edge of the woods while the wights attacked). The more White Walkers are killed = the more wights are killed. It would also push the Night King to show himself before the dragons take out all of his WW and soldiers.